The analysis reveals the richest families control $7.4M or more in assets
Canada’s richest families continue to hold an eyewatering share of the nation’s wealth, though their grip has eased slightly in recent years.
A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) examines the concentration of wealth across Canadian households using fresh survey data and rich lists, offering one of the most detailed snapshots yet of inequality at the very top.
As of 2023, the wealthiest 1% of Canadian families controlled about 23.8% of total net wealth and required at least $7.4 million in assets to be in the cohort, which around 169,400 managed to achieve.
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The PBO projects that by the end of 2024, the number of high-net-worth families will rise to nearly 177,000, each with at least $7.5 million in wealth.
The report also reveals how steeply assets are concentrated with the top 10% of families collectively holding about 53% of all wealth, while the top 20% account for 69%. By contrast, the middle 40% of families share about 27.6%, and the bottom 40% hold just 3.3%.
Wealth inequality grew from 2016 to 2019, but the latest figures suggest a modest reversal since then. The share of wealth held by the top 1% and 5% fell slightly between 2019 and 2023, a decline the PBO notes is statistically significant.
Even so, the wealthiest families remain in a vastly different financial position compared with the rest of the population.
The PBO combines survey data with external sources such as Forbes and Maclean’s rankings of Canada’s wealthiest individuals. A mathematical technique called Pareto interpolation is then used to fill in the distribution between the richest households surveyed and those appearing on public rich lists.
This blending of data provides a clearer picture of where the country’s wealth is concentrated, but it comes with caveats. Sampling variability, shifting asset values, and differences in who appears on rich lists year to year all introduce uncertainty.
