Business
Economics professor offers grossly misleading analysis of inequality in Canada

From the Fraser Institute
By: Philip Cross
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.
Carbon Tax
The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read

By Franco Terrazzano
Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote a 500-page book praising carbon taxes.
Well, I just wrote a book smashing through the government’s carbon tax propaganda.
It tells the inside story of the fight against the carbon tax. And it’s THE book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read.
My book is called Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax.
Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax
Every now and then, the underdog wins one.
And it looks like that’s happening in the fight against the carbon tax.
It’s not over yet, but support for the carbon tax is crumbling. Some politicians vow to scrap it. Others hide behind vague plans to repackage it. But virtually everyone recognizes support for the current carbon tax has collapsed.
It wasn’t always this way.
For about a decade now, powerful politicians, government bureaucrats, academics, media elites and even big business have been pushing carbon taxes on the people.
But most of the time, politicians never asked the people if they supported carbon taxes. In other words, carbon taxes, and the resulting higher gas prices and heating bills, were forced on us.
We were told it was good for us. We were told carbon taxes were inevitable. We were told politicians couldn’t win elections without carbon taxes, even though the politicians that imposed them didn’t openly run on them. We were told that we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to leave a healthy environment for our kids and grandkids. We were told we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to be respected in the international community.
In this decade-long fight, it would have been understandable if the people had given up and given in to these claims. It would have been easier to accept what the elites wanted and just pay the damn bill. But against all odds, ordinary Canadians didn’t give up.
Canadians knew you could care about the environment and oppose carbon taxes. Canadians saw what they were paying at the gas station and on their heating bills, and they knew they were worse off, regardless of how many politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics tried to convince them otherwise. Canadians didn’t need advanced degrees in economics, climate science or politics to understand they were being sold a false bill of goods.
Making it more expensive for a mom in Port Hope to get to work, or grandparents in Toronto to pay their heating bill, or a student in Coquitlam to afford food won’t reduce emissions in China, Russia, India or the United States. It just leaves these Canadians, and many like them, with less money to afford everything else.
Ordinary Canadians understood carbon taxes amount to little more than a way for governments to take more money from us and dictate how we should live our lives. Ordinary Canadians also saw through the unfairness of the carbon tax.
Many of the elites pushing the carbon tax—the media, politicians, taxpayer-funded professors, laptop activists and corporate lobbyists—were well off and wouldn’t feel the brunt of carbon taxes. After all, living in a downtown condo and clamouring for higher carbon taxes doesn’t require much gas, diesel or propane.
But running a business, working in a shop, getting kids to soccer and growing food on the farm does. These are the Canadians the political class forgot about when pushing carbon taxes. These are the Canadians who never gave up. These are the Canadians who took time out of their busy lives to sign petitions, organize and attend rallies, share posts on social media, email politicians and hand out bumper stickers.
Because of these Canadians, the carbon tax could soon be swept onto the ash heap of history. I wrote this book for two reasons.
The first is because these ordinary Canadians deserve it. They worked really hard for a really long time against the odds. When all the power brokers in government told them, “Do what we say—or pay,” they didn’t give up. They deserve to know the time and effort they spent fighting the carbon tax mattered. They deserve all the credit.
Thank you for everything you did.
The second reason I wrote this book is so people know the real story of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was bad from the start and we fought it from the start. By reading this book, you will get the real story about the carbon tax, a story you won’t find anywhere else.
This book is important because if the federal Liberals’ carbon tax is killed, the carbon taxers will try to lay blame for their defeat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will try to say that carbon taxes are a good idea, but Trudeau bungled the policy or wasn’t a good enough salesman. They will try to revive the carbon tax and once again make you pay more for gas, groceries, and home heating.
Just like with any failed five-year plan, there is a lingering whiff among the laptop class and the taxpayer-funded desk rulers that this was all a communication problem, that the ideal carbon tax hasn’t been tried yet. I can smell it outside my office building in Ottawa, where I write these words. We can’t let those embers smoulder and start a fire again.
This book shows why the carbon tax is and always will be bad policy for ordinary Canadians.
Franco’s note: You can pre-order a copy of my new book, Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax, here: https://www.amazon.ca/Axing-
2025 Federal Election
Poilievre To Create ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor

From Conservative Party Communications
Poilievre will create the ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to rapidly approve & build the infrastructure we need to end our energy dependence on America so we can stand up to Trump from a position of strength.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced today he will create a ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to fast-track approvals for transmission lines, railways, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure across Canada in a pre-approved transport corridor entirely within Canada, transporting our resources within Canada and to the world while bypassing the United States. It will bring billions of dollars of new investment into Canada’s economy, create powerful paycheques for Canadian workers, and restore our economic independence.
“After the Lost Liberal decade, Canada is poorer, weaker, and more dependent on the United States than ever before,” said Poilievre. “My ‘Canada First National Energy Corridor’ will enable us to quickly build the infrastructure we need to strengthen our country so we can stand on our own two feet and stand up to the Americans.”
In the corridor, all levels of government will provide legally binding commitments to approve projects. This means investors will no longer face the endless regulatory limbo that has made Canadians poorer. First Nations will be involved from the outset, ensuring that economic benefits flow directly to them and that their approval is secured before any money is spent.
Between 2015 and 2020, Canada cancelled 16 major energy projects, resulting in a $176 billion hit to our economy. The Liberals killed the Energy East pipeline and passed Bill C-69, the “No-New-Pipelines” law, which makes it all but impossible to build the pipelines and energy infrastructure we need to strengthen the Canadian economy. And now, the PBO projects that the ‘Carney cap’ on Canadian energy will reduce oil and gas production by nearly 5%, slash GDP by $20.5 billion annually, and eliminate 54,400 full-time jobs by 2032. An average mine opening lead time is now nearly 18 years—23% longer than Australia and 38% longer than the US. As a result of the Lost Liberal Decade, Canada now ranks 23rd in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index for 2024, a seven-place drop since 2015.
“In 2024, Canada exported 98% of its crude oil to the United States. This leaves us too dependent on the Americans,” said Poilievre. “Our Canada First National Energy Corridor will get us out from under America’s thumb and enable us to build the infrastructure we need to sell our natural resources to new markets, bring home jobs and dollars, and make us sovereign and self-reliant to stand up to Trump from a position of strength.”
Mark Carney’s economic advice to Justin Trudeau made Canada weaker while he and his rich friends made out like bandits. While he advised Trudeau to cancel Canadian energy projects, his own company spent billions on pipelines in South America and the Middle East. And unlike our competitors Australia and America, which work with builders to get projects approved, Mark Carney and Steven Guilbeault’s radical “keep-it-in-the-ground” ideology has blocked development, killed jobs, and left Canada dependent on foreign imports.
“The choice is clear: a fourth Liberal term that will keep our resources in the ground and keep us weak and vulnerable to Trump’s threats, or a strong new Conservative government that will approve projects, build an economic fortress, bring jobs and dollars home, and put Canada First—For a Change.”
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