Canada's Billionaires Have Actually Gotten Richer Throughout The Pandemic

Well, it turns out that the saying is true. The rich just keep on getting richer. For a lot of the richest Canadians, their wealth has actually increased throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Some billionaires made billions of more dollars since March.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has taken information on the 20 richest people in this country and compared what they had on March 18 to their wealth as of September 14.

When you add up the growth of the 20 most well off billionaires between those dates, there's an increase of $37 billion from when the country went into lockdown.

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Canada's richest family, the Thomsons, made the most money since March with their wealth going up by almost $9 billion from $41.7 billion to $50.6 billion.

For individuals, the increases weren't as huge as that but they were still pretty big.

Shopify's CEO Tobi Lutke had the biggest gain of any one person and more than doubled his wealth in half a year from $4 billion to $10.6 billion.

Joseph Tsai, the co-founder and executive vice-chairman of tech company Alibaba Group, made $4.5 billion since March so his wealth is now at $17.7 billion.

He also owns the NBA's Brooklyn Nets.

Lululemon founder Chip Wilson also got richer during the pandemic with a growth of $2.8 billion to $7 billion.

James Irving, a New Brunswick businessman, made $2.1 billion from March to September which brings his wealth up to $8.1 billion.

Alain Bouchard's wealth grew by $1.8 billion from $4.1 billion to $5.9 billion.

He's the co-founder and chairman of Alimentation Couche-Tard which operates convenience stores like Circle K and Couche-Tard.

This comes after Canada's unemployment rate was the highest it had ever been back in May, when some provinces had just started their reopening plans.

A month later, almost one million jobs were added but many people were still out of work because of the pandemic.

Speaking of rich people, Jagmeet Singh recently blamed Justin Trudeau for letting an American billionaire come into Canada without isolating for 14 days.

However, it's been reported that only four federal ministers can grant this exemption and Trudeau isn't one of them.