Canada is a wealthy country. So why are so many Canadians struggling to afford the basics? The NDP has put forward an answer that deserves a serious consideration: perhaps it’s time to tax accumulated wealth and start investing in the people that make our country work.

There’s something to be said about how remarkable Canadian politics operates.

We can happily spend billions subsidizing industries, offer enormous tax incentives to corporations, and find a seemingly endless wellspring of enthusiasm for attracting private investment. We can announce ambitious economic strategies, celebrate record-breaking corporate profits, and talk about Canada’s enormous economic potential.

But the moment someone suggests asking the wealthiest amongst us to contribute a little more, suddenly we’ve stumbled into dangerous territory.

Apparently, taxing extraordinary fortunes is a radical proposition. Asking working people to stretch yet another paycheque, postpone retirement, accept rising housing costs, and or make do with increasingly strained public services is just the way things are. While the Canadian C-Suite and their technocratic political allies worship the growth of Canadian capital and record corporate profits, it’s ultimately set against a background of public service layoffs, record-breaking food bank access and a rise of unemployment in youth.

It’s certainly an interesting set of priorities and national values.

Federal NDP leader Avi Lewis has put forward a proposal ahead of the 2026 federal budget that deserves considerably more attention than it has received by Canadian news media. The New Democrats are calling for a wealth tax starting at one per cent on fortunes exceeding $10 million, increasing to just three percent on the largest fortunes in our country. The party itself has admitted its intended wealth tax rate is modest. Compared to Bernie Sander’s proposed wealth tax in the U.S, his plan actually starts at 5%, with the difference between the two plans being the taxation threshold.

With such a modest wealth tax rate, the party estimates that the proposal could generate as much as $40 billion annually.

And rather than just simply talking about tax fairness in the abstract, the NDP has attached that new revenue to something Canadians can actually use: public grocery stores, community housing, and investments into the Canadian healthcare system.

It’s a proposal with a fairly straightforward premise. If Canada has the resources to build a prosperous country, perhaps we should start making sure that prosperity reaches the people who live in it.

Understanding two very different relationships with money and taxation

For most working class Canadians, taxation is an unavoidable part of earning a living.

A teacher receives a paycheque, and income tax is deducted. A mechanic works overtime, and the additional earnings are taxable. A nurse picks up another shift, and the government takes its share before that money reaches their bank account.

That’s how our tax system generally works. Income earned through employment is visible, reported and taxed.

But accumulated wealth is an entirely different story.

A person with an enormous investment portfolio, substantial corporate ownership, and millions of dollars in appreciating assets doesn’t necessarily have the same relationship with the tax system as someone earning a regular salary. Wealth can accumulate through rising asset values and investments without generating equivalent taxable income every year. There are legitimate differences between investment income and employment income, but the result is two people with vastly different different economic circumstances can experience very different relationships with taxation.

This is the distinction that the NDP is attempting to address.

A wealth tax is not a tax on someone’s annual salary. It’s a tax on the overall net worth above a specified threshold, taking assets and liabilities into account.

And let’s be clear about that threshold. We’re not talking about taxing someone who has managed to pay off their mortgage, accumulated a modest retirement fund, or inherited the family’s cottage.

We’re talking about fortunes that exceed $10 million.

That is a considerable difference between being financially comfortable and possessing extraordinary concentrations of wealth. Asking those at the very top to contribute more isn’t an attack on folks who have worked hard. It’s a systematic recognition that the economic circumstances of a billionaire are fundamentally different from those who are struggling to pay their fucking rent.

A Viewpoint from Northern Ontario

Here in Northern Ontario, the relationship between wealth and everyday life is not particularly abstract.

Our communities help generate a lion’s share of our province’s economic value. Mining, forestry, energy, and other resource industries contribute to the provincial and national economy. The work is grueling and demanding, the resources are extremely valuable, and the industries are often presented and highlighted as essential to Canada’s economic futures.

But the wealth generated by these industries doesn’t automatically translate into prosperity for the communities where that labour takes place.

A region can be rich in resources while its residents struggle with housing affordability, access to healthcare, transportation and the services that our communities sustainable. Investment can flow into major projects without necessarily creating the needed long-term public infrastructure and economic security that local residents need.

That raises an important question about what we should expect in return. If communities contribute labour, resources and infrastructure to the wider economy, shouldn’t they also share meaningfully in the benefits? For Northern Ontario, that means looking beyond the carefully worded headline value of major projects and asking what lasting benefits remain for the people who make them possible.

The failure of trickle-down economics

For decades now, governments of all spectrums of neoliberalism and their bankrollers have been pontificating that reducing taxes on the wealthy, offering incentives to corporations and making life easier for investors will eventually benefit everyone. Give big businesses room to grow, the argument goes, and prosperity will slowly drip down to workers and their communities.

But the promised benefits have never been automatic. Economic growth does not guarantee affordable housing. Record profits do not translate to better wages, and investment announcements do not provide stronger public services.

Research shows that major tax cuts for wealthy people across 18 OECD countries between 1965 and 2015 found that these cuts actually increased income inequality without producing significant improvements in economic growth or unemployment. The promise that benefits will eventually touch all classes were not realized.

The NDP’s wealth-tax proposal is ultimately about challenging that assumption. It asks whether a portion of the wealth concentrated at the very top could do more good when directly invested in the things that people actually rely on.

A country should be judged not simply by how much wealth it produces, but by how well that wealth translates into a decent life for the people who produce it. If the economy can generate fortunes worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, surely it can also afford homes people can live in and full stomachs for even the most downtrodden amongst us. The problem isn’t that Canada lacks wealth. It’s that we’ve become far too comfortable with the idea that so much of it should remain concentrated in so few hands.

-K-