The annual incomes of Canada’s wealthiest people jumped by nearly 10 per cent on average, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic — at a time when the bottom half of the nation’s wealth distribution saw their incomes slump for the first time in decades, according to a recent report from Statistics Canada.
In 2021, the latest data Statistics Canada has made available, Canada’s top one per cent earned an average $579,100 — a 9.4 per cent increase from 2020, and one of the largest gains seen in recent years, the report found. The data is based on the tax filings of individuals prior to paying their taxes, an analyst from Statistics Canada noted.
