Economic inequality – both income inequality and wealth inequality – has reached crisis levels in Canada. In 2025, income inequality was at a record high. Wealth inequality, while harder to measure as a result of how Statistics Canada collects data, is also growing in Canada and is part of a larger global trend.

Across the world, billionaire wealth has never been higher than it is today. Today, the world’s 12 richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity combined, or more than four billion people. In Canada, the billionaire class is growing – in 2025, according to data from Maclean’s and

Forbes, there were approximately 89 Canadian billionaires. Between 2024 and 2025 the wealth of Canada’s richest 40 billionaires grew by almost

$95B – more than 20 per cent.

The richest one percent in Canada, which is those with a net-worth of $7M and above, hold nearly $1.25 trillion in wealth – almost as much as the bottom 80 per cent combined. That isn’t a narrow wealth gap but a wide, expansive, echoing wealth chasm. This chasm is driven by a rise in the cost of essentials like food and housing. In 2024, more than 25 per cent of Canadians were living in food-insecure households and it is estimated that up to 300,000 were experiencing homelessness.

This brief explores in more detail wealth inequality in Canada, the billionaires that are driving it, the negative impacts of wealth inequality, and the policy solutions we should consider advancing to stem the widening chasm of inequality Canada is experiencing today.