A Tax Plan for the 99%
Avi Lewis for NDP Leader

Inequality is at an all-time high in Canada. Everyday Canadians work harder and harder while falling further and further behind. Meanwhile, Canada's highest-paid CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year. CEO pay is up 49% since 2020: average wages only 15%. Parents are skipping meals to feed their children, people are moving away from cities they love because they're priced out, and homeownership feels impossible, all while the ultra-wealthy enjoy new tax cuts on their private jets and super yachts (yes, this really happened).

Carney's tax cuts have cost the government billions and have worsened inequality. The November 2025 federal budget announced that overall program spending will be slashed by nearly $60 billion within five years, while 40,000 jobs will be cut from the federal public service.

This level of austerity hasn't been seen since the brutal cuts of the mid 1990s: it will only worsen the crisis we're in.

Our campaign's plan for tax fairness offers solutions to make life more affordable for all Canadians, address the massive gaps in our social safety net caused by decades of Liberal and Conservative austerity, and to tackle historic inequality. We will:

1. Tax the ultra-rich
2. End corporate handouts and breakup monopolies
3. Crack down on the corporate hoarding class
4. Raise the floor for all of us

Tax the ultra-rich

Income inequality is the highest it has ever been in Canada.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the richest 1% in Canada hold nearly $3.9 trillion in wealth today — almost as much as the bottom 80% combined. It's time for a government to work for everyday Canadians and balance the scales back towards the 99%.

An Avi-led NDP will:

• Implement a Wealth Tax on the 1%

The top 100 CEOs in Canada made an average of $16.2 million in 2024, most of which is paid out in bonuses from excess profits. The concentration of wealth and power at the very top leaves average Canadians scrambling to get by. Enough is enough.

We will introduce a wealth tax of 1% on net wealth above $10 million, 2% above $50 million and 3% above $100 million. Such a tax would impact only a small number of Canadians, but could generate a much-needed $40 billion a year, and $500 billion over ten years.

A wealth tax proposal is often framed as an unachievable policy because of fear of rich people leaving Canada entirely. But, the evidence is clear: this is a self-serving myth. People of means have deep ties to place, community, and their networks. A wealth tax is a key revenue measure to fund essential services without shrinking the tax base.

And this is a winning idea. 88% of Canadians across party lines want to see a wealth tax applied, but the NDP is the only party willing to stand up to the ultra-rich to make this a reality.

• Create a new top marginal personal income tax bracket

In 1971, the combined federal and provincial tax rate on income over $400,000 was 82.4%. Since then, the highest income tax bracket has been scaled back significantly, contributing to growing inequality. Instead of giving out massive bonuses to executives, companies could raise salaries of their average workers.

We are proposing a new top income tax bracket of 37% on all income above $1 million. Only 43,000 Canadians would fall into this tax bracket, yet it would raise over $1 billion in federal revenue.

• Align ourselves with other industrial economies and introduce an inheritance tax

Canada is the only G7 country without an inheritance or estate tax. We propose a 45% tax on the estate/inheritance of wealth of over $5 million, which Canadians for Tax Fairness have estimated would generate over $2 billion annually. Such a policy would tackle generational wealth inequality and allow us to reinvest money in essential social welfare programs, lifting many out of poverty.

• Close the capital gains loophole

When a bus driver, a teacher or carpenter does their taxes, they're taxed on all the income they make. Big investors, who make much of their money from selling things like properties and stock options, pay tax on only a proportion of what they make. While 100% of workers' income is subject to tax, only 50% of income from capital gains is taxed. This is wrong: as the Royal Commission on Taxation famously put it, "a buck is a buck". We agree, and that's why we will make the tax system fairer by treating capital gains the same as employment income while allowing for an inflation adjustment and maintaining existing exemptions for farms, fisheries, small businesses and primary residences. This would raise an additional $11 billion a year.

End corporate handouts and break up monopolies

In 1972, NDP Leader David Lewis coined the term "Corporate Welfare Bums" referring to big companies that were benefitting from millions of dollars in government subsidies. While corporate welfare was a big problem in the 1970s, it has grown into a genuine crisis today.

Today, the Liberal government is giving away billions of dollars to profitable corporate giants in the form of subsidies and tax breaks, with very few strings attached. The lack of conditions to these grants have led to corporations maximizing profits while workers are left behind.

Just before Christmas, Algoma Steel laid off 1000 workers despite benefitting from $400 million in subsidies. Ubisoft, which received nearly $1 billion in combined subsidies from the federal and provincial governments, shut down operations in Halifax when workers unionized, choosing to close up shop rather than negotiate a first contract. The federal government provided over $250 million to GM's CAMI plant in Ingersoll in 2022. In December, GM stopped production of electric cargo vans at the plant and laid off 1,100 workers. And of course the most egregious example is the Liberal government providing $30 billion in subsidies and financing to the fossil fuel industry, while their pollution only increases and wildfires burn through our forests every summer.

We need to ensure that every public dollar invested by the federal government is spent in the public interest.

To end unchecked corporate welfare, put money back in the pockets of everyday Canadians, and invest in the things that matter, we will:

• Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies

In 2009, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies, but did nothing to advance this. Trudeau ran on the same promise in 2015, 2019, and again in 2021, but the subsidies grew rather than decreased, profits exploded, and workers got laid off. Despite announcing another end to fossil fuel subsidies in June 2023, the Liberal government continues to provide billions to oil and gas giants every year.

• Keep costly consultants out of the public service

The practice of hiring private consultants on contracts in the public service has doubled since pre-pandemic levels. Spending on professional services is projected to hit $26.1 billion this year — a 37 per cent increase from last year, and a record high.

Privatizing the public sector means that instead of public dollars funding good public services, taxpayers are paying the bills for corporate consultants like McKinsey and Deloitte to "advise" the government. At the same time as the government outsources its hard-won expertise, Prime Minister Carney is cutting 40,000 jobs from the public service, meaning wait times for passport renewals will worsen, call times for the CRA will be longer, and immigration cases will continue to flounder.

An Avi-led NDP will ensure that the public service is run by dedicated experts who serve Canadians, not wealthy corporations who serve the money.

• Break up monopolies

Canadians are well aware that our economy is dominated by massive corporations in banking, groceries, and energy. In a 2023 poll, 92% of respondents said that a lack of competition is driving up the price of groceries, phone and internet plans.

To tackle the root cause of the lack of competition in the Canadian economy, we will amend the Competition Act to make it easier to block mergers that result in increased market concentration, address algorithmic price-fixing and the realities of a concentrated tech market, and reintroducing measures to address greenwashing by big polluters, which were just rolled back in the 2025 Federal Budget.

And of course, we are proposing a number of new crown corporations to provide public options that will bring actual competition to sectors dominated by effective monopolies.

• Ensure that federal subsidies are contingent on Community Benefit Agreements.

In theory, the role of government subsidies is to address a market failure – to make a particular sector more attractive to investors or to bolster crucial supply chains where investors aren't stepping up. An important example of this is the growing renewable energy market, where small companies are forced to compete with fossil fuel giants. The reality is that the current system offers money to massive wealthy corporations with very few strings attached.

To ensure that Canadian tax dollars are invested in major projects that benefit Canadians, we will ensure that federal subsidies offered to large businesses require Community Benefit Agreements to address labour, environmental, and community concerns.

Further, we will keep public dollars in the Canadian economy by requiring:

• a minimum share of production, research and development, or procurement be Canadian;
• restrictions on offshoring work; and,
• binding commitments to procurement from Canadian and Indigenous-owned businesses.

The message to companies receiving federal support should be crystal clear: if you want to sell products or services to Canadians, you have to produce and hire here as well.

Finally, fighting the climate crisis requires a whole-economy approach. That's why, in addition to finally ending fossil fuel subsidies, we will require companies that access federal subsidies to have clear transition plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, with benchmark targets along the way.

With these measures alone, Canadians can expect to gain back billions to be reinvested in public priorities like the housing crisis, the cost of groceries, and fighting climate change.

Crack down on the corporate hoarding class

Since 1995, corporate profit rates have doubled, while corporate taxes have been slashed, all in the hopes that wealth will trickle down to the everyday Canadian. Today, folks are still waiting for the money to trickle down and prices are soaring. We need immediate solutions.

An Avi-led NDP will:

• Stop excess corporate profits in times of crisis

Excess profits are corporate earnings that far exceed a "normal" or expected return on investments. They typically occur under exceptional circumstances. Between 2021 and 2023, Canadian corporations gained $441 billion in excess profits. These excess profits were primarily driven by the oil and gas sector, but also by banks, insurance, and real estate, and grocery chains. While Canadians were struggling with impacts of the pandemic and increasingly high cost of living, large corporations were laughing all the way to the bank. Due to pressure from the NDP at the time, the Liberal government implemented a windfall profits tax on the excess profits of big banks and insurance companies in Budget 2022, which resulted in an estimated $5.3 billion in government revenue.

By implementing a one-time windfall profits tax, the government could raise over $50 billion. This tax could be paid across five years to address corporate liquidity concerns. To slow inflation and curb excessive corporate profits, we will also implement an ongoing excess profits tax. Corporations that exceed $100 million in total profits across their related companies will face a 5% increase in the corporate tax rate on those profits. An ongoing excess profits tax could raise over $8 billion annually.

• Crack down on tax havens

Every year, income hidden in tax havens costs Canadians $15 billion in lost revenue for essential services. The ultra-rich hide hundreds of billions of dollars in offshore accounts to avoid taxes. Ending tax havens is a massively popular idea, with 90% of Canadians believing that more should be done to fight this practice.

That is why we will require companies to have a genuine business case to set up foreign subsidiaries in known tax havens. We'll also end tax agreements with known tax havens to disrupt international tax avoidance schemes, and work with allies on international governing bodies to address tax havens and treat it as an international issue to be solved.

• Adequately fund the CRA to crack down on tax avoidance by wealthy corporations

A study from the government's fiscal watchdog states that for every dollar invested in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Canadian taxpayers would see $4 to 5 dollars back. By front-loading funding to the CRA, this policy will not only pay for itself quickly, it will recoup $2 billion over 3 years. This investment would go directly into hiring hundreds of new permanent auditors and technical advisors to investigate tax compliance for ultra-wealthy Canadians and corporations.

Finally, we will stand up to Trump and his tech oligarch friends by:

• Reinstating the Digital Services Tax

Restoring this tax will generate $7 billion a year. This past summer, the Prime Minister capitulated to Trump when he cancelled the Digital Services Tax. Big Tech has avoided billions of dollars in taxes across multiple international jurisdictions. The Digital Service Tax is an attempt to start tackling this tax avoidance scheme. We will make sure to continue to stand up to Trump and his oligarchs and hold Mark Carney accountable to his election promise to do the same.

In addition to these measures, we will implement a tax on oil and gas exports to the US, as previously laid out in our Green New Deal plan.

All of these policies will reign in corporate greed and help fund essential policies and programs to help Canadians get by.

Raise the floor for all of us

The existence of poverty in Canada is a political choice. We live in one of the richest countries in the world, but 1 in 8 of us live in poverty. Living in poverty means being deprived of the means and power to maintain a basic level of living standards and fully participate in society – a huge loss for those impacted and for society as a whole. Here's what this looks like: 860,000 people access the food bank each month in Canada; over 60,000 people experience homelessness on any given night in Canada; and a stunning one in five children live in poverty in Canada.

There is no question that Canada has the wealth, resources and knowledge to swiftly address wealth inequality and put an end to poverty within five years. Decades of Liberal and Conservative governments have chosen to abandon people who are struggling to meet their basic needs – people who are more often racialized, Indigenous, disabled, women and people who face gender-based discrimination.

Avi will advance a four-point program of enhancements to federal income support, for children and families; people with disabilities; seniors and low-income adults. These supports, in combination with the expansion of universal public services outlined in our other policy documents, are a key pillar in Avi's plan to end poverty within five years.

• People with disabilities: increase the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) amount to a minimum benefit of $2,150 per month and make it easier to access by removing red tape. This includes expanding eligibility to those approved for other public disability income support programs, whether federal, provincial or territorial; removing the requirement that you must be approved for the Disability Tax Credit to receive the CDB; and using federal levers, including legislation to prevent the benefit from being clawed back by provincial governments or by insurance companies.
• Children and families: create a new supplement to the Canada Child Benefit for all children residing in Canada. For the poorest children - in families earning under $19,000 - the supplement will increase the CCB by $8,500 for the first child, and smaller amounts for additional children.
• Adults: create a new benefit for working age, low-income adults who do not have children or disabilities. This benefit will initially provide an additional $9,000 per year for individuals, and $11,000 per couple – in addition to provincial income assistance. A second phase would increase these amounts further. Both phases of the benefit will gradually reduce if incomes increase.
• Seniors: improve seniors' benefit programs to better reach those with low incomes (often, single seniors, women, racialized and immigrant seniors). This includes increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) by 10%, doubling the temporary increase proposed by the Liberals, and making it permanent.

Establish A National Framework for a Guaranteed Liveable Basic Income

In addition to the immediate income support enhancements outlined above, an Avi-led NDP would push for the establishment of a national framework for a Guaranteed Liveable Basic Income (GLBI), as proposed in Leah Gazan's Bill C-223.

A GLBI would build out and expand existing income support programs, including the CDB, GIS and CCB, to ensure that there's a liveable floor for everyone who falls through the gaps of our inadequate social safety net. Rather than sending money to everyone, including the 1%, the GLBI that Avi supports would be income-tested through the tax system and send money to those who need it. If you fall through the cracks in our system, a GLBI should be there to catch you. We don't need a social safety net full of holes, but a solid floor to stand on.