Economics professor offers grossly misleading analysis of inequality in Canada

Dalhousie economics professor Lars Osberg’s The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada was published just in time to be eligible for the always hotly-contested title of worst Canadian economics book of the year.

Osberg’s central theme is that inequality in Canada has been steadily increasing and this poses a threat to economic growth, financial stability, social mobility, limiting climate change and even democracy—at times, it seems every imaginable problem is blamed on inequality. This makes it even more important to get the facts about inequality right.

The most misleading chapter in the book concerns top-income earners. Osberg claims that “the income share of the top 1 per cent… is the aspect of inequality that has changed the most in recent years.” However, the chapter on inequality at the top of the income distribution exclusively features data for its increase in the United States, driven by the outrageous success of technology firms such as Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia. Nowhere is the data for Canada cited, but in fact the 1 per cent’s share of income in Canada has fallen since 2007, which probably explains why Osberg avoided it.

The real problem with Canada’s high-income earners over the last two decades is not that they’re gobbling up more income at the expense of everyone else, but that we do not have enough of them. Nor do the top 1 per cent in Canada earn nearly as much as in the U.S. Pretending that incomes in Canada are as skewed as in the U.S. is another example of importing narratives without examining whether they are applicable here. This might be forgivable for the average person, but it’s scandalous and disingenuous for a professor specializing in income distribution.

Raising taxes on the richest 1 per cent has a “populist” appeal. However, former finance minister Bill Morneau wrote in his memoire Where To From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity that he came to “regret supporting the idea of a tax increase on the 1 percent” because “it began a narrative that made it difficult to have a constructive dialogue with the people prepared to invest in research and development to benefit the country… our proposal’s biggest impact was to reduce business confidence in us.” Before becoming the Trudeau government’s current finance minister, Chrystia Freeland acknowledged that “many of the ultra-high net-worth individuals flourishing in today’s global economy are admirable entrepreneurs, and we would all be poorer without them.”

Another practical consideration for Morneau was that “Canada’s personal income tax rates are not competitive with the U.S. where highly skilled labour is concerned.” Finally, Morneau acknowledged that taxing the rich in Canada will not raise much money, because “the number of taxpayers affected will be quite small… the math just doesn’t work.” I calculate that confiscating all of the income the 1 per cent earn above $200,000 would fund total government spending in Canada for a paltry 44.2 days.

Besides misrepresenting the importance of Canada’s 1 per cent, Osberg twice makes the patently false claim in his book that “income from capital… is roughly half of GDP in Canada.” Just last week, Statistics Canada’s estimated labour income’s share of GDP was 51.3 per cent while corporate profits garnered 26.0 per cent (including profits reaped by government-owned businesses through their monopolies on utilities, gambling and alcohol sales). Another 12.6 per cent of GDP was mixed income earned by farmers and small businesses, which StatsCan cannot disentangle between labour and capital. The final 10.2 per cent of GDP went to government taxes on production and imports, which clearly is not a return on capital. I would expect undergraduate economic students to have a better grasp of the distribution of GDP than Osberg demonstrates.

Among the many evils generated by inequality, Osberg cites democracy as “threatened by the increasing concentration of wealth and economic power in Canada.” Osberg must believe Justin Trudeau’s decade-long tenure as prime minister reflects the choice of our economic elites. If so, they have much to answer for; besides steadily-degrading Canada’s economic performance and international standing, Trudeau attacked these same elites by raising income taxes on upper incomes, increasing the capital gains tax, and undercutting the fortunes of the oil and gas industry on which much wealth relies. If our economic elite really controls government, it seems they made an incredibly bad choice for prime minister.

Philip Cross

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Related Topics:#FraserInstitute #PhilipCross InequalityInCanada LarsOsberg ScandalousRiseOfInequalityInCanada

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Conservatives demand Brookfield Asset Management reveal Mark Carney’s compensation

Published on January 16, 2025

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Canadians Deserve to Know How Much Carney is Being Paid

Today, Common Sense Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Michael Barrett wrote this letter to Bruce Flatt, the CEO of Brookfield, calling on him to fully disclose Carbon Tax Carney’s compensation for his role as Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. The full text can be found below:

Dear Mr. Flatt,

We are writing with regard to the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, Mark Carney, who has acted in a senior leadership position for your company for some time now.

During the same time period, Mr. Carney has been advising Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, and advocating for policies that have arguably wreaked havoc on Canada’s economy, like the carbon tax.

After nine years of this NDP-Liberal Government, which by their own very public admissions have relied on Mark Carney for advice, Canadians are witnessing the worst decline in living standards in forty years. The cost of housing has doubled, and record numbers of Canadians are having to depend on food banks to survive.

Since August 2020, Mr. Carney has helped the NDP-Liberal Government hike its carbon tax on the backs of working Canadians, even endorsing it in his book, saying “One of the most important initiatives is carbon pricing…The Canadian federal carbon pricing framework is a model for others.” And since September 2024, when Trudeau appointed Carney as the Liberal Party’s Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, he would have had input into the most recent Fall Economic Statement which plunged Canada into a $62 billion deficit, blowing past the NDP-Liberal Government’s own fiscal guardrails.

And all the while Carney was advising the Liberals to continue carrying out their agenda of economic vandalism, he remained the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, posing grave ethical questions that could have real-life consequences for millions of Canadians.

For instance, just a few days after his official appointment as Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, The Logic reported that Brookfield Asset Management has been actively lobbying the same federal Liberal government he’s been advising for $10 billion from the Canadian taxpayer. And Mr. Carney has strongly advocated for policies that would destroy Canada’s oil and gas sector, while at the same time your company invested in oil companies in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.

There are many other instances of questionable policy decisions the NDP-Liberal Government has made while Mark Carney was both advising them and acting as the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management – decisions that potentially could have resulted in Mr. Carney’s personal gain.

While we have written to the Federal Lobbying Commissioner to examine whether this arrangement broke any lobbying rules, that investigation may not shed public light on whether Mr. Carney was personally motivated by the structure of his compensation model with your company to advocate for certain policies in his senior advisory capacity with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Executive compensation for a Chair at a company the size of Brookfield can include salary, performance bonuses, stock options, lucrative expense accounts and more. Since Mr. Carney has a direct, senior, advisory line into Justin Trudeau’s government, and since your company has many interests which involve the type of policy on which Mr. Carney was advising the government, revealing the full scope of Mr. Carney’s compensation package to the public is essential to understanding what impact his access into the federal Liberal government had on his personal fortunes, if any.

For this reason, you must disclose Carney’s compensation structure with Brookfield Asset Management. This is especially important as Carney is now mounting a leadership campaign – with the help of members of Justin Trudeau’s inner circle – that could see him become the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the Prime Minister of this country, with even more power and more access.

It is vitally important for Canadians to know whether or not Mr. Carney’s compensation with Brookfield could increase if the Liberals implement his policy ideas. While food banks report over two million visits in a single month, Canadians have a right to know the fine details about the impact of insider access on their lives.

You must be transparent with Canadians on this matter. The stakes could not be higher.