March 2026
Any time I need ideas for my next column, all I need to do is read the opinion section of The Hamilton Spectator. Today’s column was inspired by “Has the moment arrived for Canada to seriously consider a wealth tax?” (Tyler Firth, The Hamilton Spectator, 27 March). My answer is a resounding NO.
A wealth Tax is indeed a source of revenue for governments.
A wealth tax would have the effect of driving investment and the millionaires to lower tax jurisdictions. Do you doubt that? Why do you think musicians from high tax countries like the UK will temporarily re-locate to lower tax countries? Why do you think Mark Carney’s former company Brookfield relocated their head office to America?
No one wants to pay more than they have to for anything, including taxes, regardless of how much money you have in the bank. People donate to charities and get a tax receipt or put money in their RRSP, which reduces their taxable income. People coupon shop, price match or shop around for the best deal when buying a product or service. For some major purchases, like a home or car, savvy people will haggle with the salesperson for a lower price, rather than pay the sticker price. So, please tell me why a multi-millionaire would willingly give over any more of their income to the government than they had to as well?
When I hear “we just need to make the ultra-rich pay a little more,” my question to proponents is how much money is enough? How much money is too much for an individual to keep? Should the multi-millionaires be forced to pay 70% of their income in tax? If you have $100 million in the bank, could you reasonably get by on just $30 million? Of course you could. Maybe you have to sell one of your 12 mansions, but you would hardly be forced to shop at the Dollar Store or the Salvation Army Thrift Store. You could definitely survive if the government taxed you at 80%, even 90%, but why would any sane person agree to pay that much to the government.
Besides the fact that, as long as the money is earned legally, I don’t have a problem with someone having $100 million in the bank. It also bears mentioning that any millionaire/billionaire facing an 80% tax rate would have the resources to move to a lower tax jurisdiction. It happens every day, not just for individuals, but for corporations, who will re-locate to jurisdictions that offer lower taxes, including carbon taxes, fewer restrictive regulations and anything else that adds costs to the individual or corporation.
The “make the rich pay more” proponents are the same kind of “government knows best how to spend our tax money” financial “experts” who brought us the ArriveCan App, an app that was supposed to cost $80, 000, yet ballooned to $60 million. Imagine how many teachers, doctors, nurses, hospital beds, MRI machines, road repairs, school repairs, new schools, new hospitals, new affordable housing units, women’s shelter beds, police officers, judges and court staff, probation and parole officers, museums, libraries, daycare spaces, and on, could have been funded by that $60 million.
Several programming firms succeeded in making a clone version of ArriveCan over the course of a weekend, for well under $500, 000. I would argue that the beleaguered taxpayer would have been much better off if the Liberals had just gathered a bunch of university computer programmers together, supplied them with pizza and Red Bull and let them loose for a weekend.
Oh, but wouldn’t these ultra-rich individuals and corporations just willingly hand over their money to the government? The short answer is a resounding NO. The ultra-rich would be more likely to donate their money to a charitable cause, including things like funding hospital wings or community centres, than remain in a jurisdiction that wants to hike their taxes “just a little more.”
I’m in agreement with with Martha Hall Findlay when she says that money is “…better left in the hands of the super wealthy…” and “…that money raised by a wealth tax will be squandered by a capricious government.”
There is no need to tax the ultra-rich a “little bit more.” Governments across Canada just need to stop shoveling our tax dollars into a blast furnace.
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The original column that inspired my column:
Opinion | Has the moment arrived for Canada to seriously consider a wealth tax?
An estimated $40 billion per year could be used to address pressing social deficits in health care, education, income support and housing.
March 27, 2026
By Tyler Firth
Tyler Firth lives in Hamilton.
If you’ve been paying attention to the obscene way wealth and income inequality has wreaked havoc in this country since the early 1980s, it looks like this idea is moving from the fringes to the mainstream.
Chief among the idea’s champions is veteran Canadian muckraker, Linda McQuaig. McQuaig and co-author Neil Brooks, a professor of tax law and policy at York University, have written a new book entitled, “Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax.”
McQuaig and Brooks propose enacting a wealth tax in such a way that only the top 0.5 per cent of earners would pay anything. So you can breathe a sigh of relief; it’s unlikely more than a handful of readers would see their tax bills increase under this proposal.
And even then, the rate is minuscule: one per cent on net assets between $10 million and $50 million; two per cent between $50 million and $100 million; and three per cent over $100 million. Folks with this kind of cash wouldn’t even feel the bite, inured as they are to the economic headwinds the rest of us face such as inflation, tariffs and unemployment.
McQuaig and Brooks have been making the rounds, flogging the book to juice sales, but more importantly to make a wealth tax part of the political conversation.
On a recent episode of “The Paikin Podcast,” McQuaig sparred with former Liberal cabinet minister Martha Hall Findlay. Findlay objected to McQuaig’s enthusiasm that money raised from a wealth tax (as much as $40 billion per year by some estimates) could be used to address pressing social deficits in health care, education, income support and housing. She was skeptical that governments raising this kind of money would manage it wisely.
It’s better left in the hands of the super wealthy, she said, or channeled toward their philanthropic foundations.
McQuaig defended her position admirably, but by this time I was shouting at my cellphone. “You’re debating the wrong question. Governments don’t tax and spend. They spend and tax.”
For the economically wonky, it’s known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Governments don’t budget the way businesses and households do. They create money and spend it; then they tax back a portion.
Two recent examples demonstrate how this works.
The first was the array of programs created and rolled out virtually overnight when COVID-19 hit in 2020. That year, the federal government ran a monstrous deficit of $327 billion, and nobody questioned where the government was getting the money. It was a necessary response to an urgent crisis. The government spent in an unprecedented way to support people and businesses who were idled through no fault of their own.
Secondly, Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced the federal government will spend nearly $35 billion to fortify the Arctic. In The Globe and Mail’s report on the announcement, not once was the word “taxes” used, shoring up the argument that governments spend before they tax.
So what does all this have to do with a wealth tax?
If we accept the proposition that governments spend first and then tax, it renders moot the concerns of critics like Hall Findlay, who worry that money raised by a wealth tax will be squandered by a capricious government. A wealth tax is not a source of revenue. When problems arise demanding action, be it a pandemic, a security threat or a housing crisis, governments in command of a fiat currency can easily create the money to address the problem.
McQuaig could have defended her position by shifting the conversation to one of tax fairness rather than the competency of administrators charged with designing government programs.
We need a wealth tax because it is reasonable to expect the richest among us to contribute to the smooth running of society. Full stop.
Sources: ArriveCan flop casts shadow over future projects, experts say | CBC News, ArriveCan cost $54M. A programmer was able to duplicate it in two days | National Post, Has the moment arrived to seriously consider a wealth tax?.
