That's right, and in terms of personal taxation, interestingly. The personal tax rate for someone living in Ontario, for instance, is now about the same as it was in the 1930s. The downside of having this concentration of wealth at the top is that everybody doesn't participate in economic growth. So we see GDP go up, and that should be good for everyone, but the problem is that it's not necessarily good for everyone. It's definitely good for wealthier Canadians, but it's not necessarily good for middle-class Canadians, who haven't seen their incomes go up in about three decades.
Of course it also drags down economic growth, because you don't see middle-class Canadians buying cars, buying TVs, and so on.
In terms of the budget bill, small steps can be taken. One of the things I suggested was a new income tax bracket at the higher end that would put us part of the way back away from the low rates of the 1930s and today. That's part of it.
The growing debt load on Canadians, which has likely reached somewhere around its peak, is stable in the short term as long as interest rates don't go up, but once they do we have a very serious problem in terms of economic growth, because consumers are debt-poor.
In that instance, I'm not sure this budget can address that in particular, but I think that better expenditures on social programs, for instance, do support middle-class and lower-income Canadians. They're more likely to take advantage of those services.