Canada's 1% Own A Quarter Of The Country's Wealth & That Includes Galen Weston

How rich is rich, really? According to a new report, Canada's richest families might be even more wealthy than people thought. In total, the top one percent controls over a quarter of the nation's wealth, and that includes Loblaws chairman and executive officer Galen Weston.

The newly published report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) uses a new modelling approach for existing data to create a new analytical resource called the High-net-worth Family Database (HFD).

Using this new methodology revealed that the richest one percent in Canada controls 25.6% of the country's total wealth.

That number is about the same as the amount held by the middle 40% in the country, which stands at 25.3%.

It also stands in stark contrast to the bottom 40%, who control just 1.2% of Canada's money.

The PBO's new approach to calculating these numbers was created to address underreported and missing data pertaining to high net-worth families.

Under the old methodology, the top 1 percent was calculated as controlling 13.7% of the country's wealth, slightly more than half of the new number.

The richest families in Canada as of March 2020, according to Forbes, include familiar names like Galen Weston and the Saputo Family, but also White Claw owner Anthony Von Mandl.

Weston came under fire recently after Loblaws ended the pandemic pay program for its employees, which gave them an extra $2 an hour.

The Weston family's net worth is currently about $7 billion, making them the third richest family in Canada.

At the top of the list is David Thomson, the heir to the Thomson-Reuters fortune.

He and his family lay claim to about $31.6 billion, which also makes them the 24th richest family worldwide.

Conversations about Canada's wealth disparities and corporate tax rates became more prevalent during the pandemic.