Oxfam Canada launches 2025 Inequality Scorecard
Ottawa, ON — October 27, 2025— Inequality in Canada is on the rise. Billionaires rake in hundreds of millions daily, while ordinary people struggle with impossibly stark choices like whether to pay rent or eat. The growing gulf between the rich and the rest is a great concern, but inequality isn’t just about wealth, money and economics, it’s about opportunity, outcomes, whose voice gets heard, and who has power. Oxfam Canada’s new Inequality Scorecard 2025 – The state of inequality: Is Canada bridging or widening the gap exposes the policy choices driving Canada’s growing economic and social divide, and through bold recommendations, charts a path toward a fairer future.
What does inequality look like? As the cost of food continues to rise across the country more than two million people visit a foodbank every month. In 93 per cent of neighborhoods in Canada, a full-time minimum wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment. The richest one percent in Canada hold more than $1 trillion in wealth – almost as much as the bottom 80 percent combined. Across Canada 40 percent of women have experienced intimate partner violence, and two women are killed weekly by intimate partners – yet 700 women and over 200 children are turned away from shelters every day. Every year, air pollution costs our healthcare system $146B while our governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels. Systemic racism in the justice system continues to drive over incarceration of Indigenous Peoples, with Indigenous women incarcerated at rates up to fifteen times higher than non-Indigenous women.
What’s driving the rise in inequality in Canada? It’s tax policy that lets wealth concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. It’s monopolies in key sectors that keep prices high. It’s big polluters who reap record profits while wrecking the planet. It’s Canada’s continued legacy of colonialism and failure to uphold the rights of Indigenous people. It’s the exploitation of migrants while failing to offer pathways to citizenship. It’s Canada’s hesitancy to invest in the care economy at the scale required, and it’s the disparities in access to healthcare that exist across the country.
“Inequality in Canada isn’t inevitable, it’s the product of policy choices,” said Policy & Advocacy Manager, Daniel Komesch. “We have the power to reverse course by prioritizing people and the planet over profit, and by redistributing power, resources, and opportunity.”
Oxfam Canada’s Inequality Scorecard examines the state of inequality in Canada today, evaluating federal measures and offering bold, practical policy recommendations to tackle the crisis head-on. The Scorecard covers eight key areas:
- Poverty, affordability and basic needs
- Tax justice and wealth redistribution
- Canada’s care economy
- Bodily autonomy and health equity
- Climate action
- Hate, marginalization, and fundamental rights
- Indigenous justice
- Global leadership
Across each issue area, Oxfam proposes solutions that put people first – like putting price caps on essential goods at the grocery store, new taxes on the country’s wealthiest and on the profits of fossil fuel producers, ensuring fair wagers for workers, scrapping dangerous legislation that infringes on the rights of migrants, protecting and fulfilling the rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and taking leadership globally to close the inequality gap, including sustaining Canada’s focus on supporting and funding programs that advance gender equality and 2SLGBTQI+ rights worldwide.
“Women, Indigenous Peoples, racialized and marginalized communities bear the heaviest burden of inequality. Any effort to build a fairer Canada must centre those most excluded from economic and political power and ensure their rights, voices and leadership shape the solutions,” said Women’s Rights Policy and Advocacy Specialist, Nirvana Mujtaba.
To build a fairer, more resilient country, decision-makers must invest in policies that advance justice, equity, and socio-economic security for all. Tackling inequality requires more than words, it demands bold leadership that puts people and the planet before profit, ensuring every person in Canada can live with dignity, security, and hope.
Contact Information
Laveza Khan | laveza.khan@oxfam.org | 613-240-4157