1

(In other words, Occupy Toronto!!)

If we look at the top 30 corporations in Canada, the picture is even rosier. As we can see in Table 1, while corporate profit last year is still $10 billion shy of the best year ever- 2007- these top corporations have been gobbling up more and more assets taking advantage of depressed prices due to the global recession (adding an extra $1 trillion in the past 3 years!) and these increased assets will surely bring another spike in profits in the very near future. Table 1: Profits and Assets of the Top 30 Corporations in Canada, 2006-10 2006 2007 2008 Top 30 Total Profits, $bn $55.39 $68.55 $52.42 % of Total Corporate Profits in Canada 38% 48% 32% Assets of Top 30, $bn $2,841 $3,370 $3,471
Source: My calculations from Forbes.com and Global Insight

2009 $41.36 46% $3,704

2010 $58.12 47% $4,248

1 Compiled by Sean Starrs, PhD student at York University. If you have any questions or comments about this
data, please email: tempura_temptations@yahoo.ca My dissertation is actually on the US, not Canada, so I have MOUNTAINS of data on why we should also Occupy Wall Street, if youre interested!

And in fact, the top 10 are doing better than ever. In 2007 they accounted for 23% of all corporate profit in Canada, and last year they ran off with 26%. In other words, just ten corporations, out of the thousands upon thousands in Canada, took over a quarter of total profit! Lets take a closer look at the top 10 corporations in Canada in 2010. Table 2 shows that half of the top ten are Big Banks, and notice how they all own each other (this means, among other things, that when one corporation increases its profit, they all gain as theyre all in it together). And note how 7 of the top 10 have their head-quarters in Toronto so its a good place to occupy! Table 2: Top Ten Corporations in Canada, 2010 Name HeadProfits, Quarters $bn 1 Royal Bank of TO $5.6 Canada 2 TD Bank TO $4.9 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Bank of Nova Scotia Suncor Energy Bank of Montreal CIBC Sun Life Financial BCE (Bell) Canadian Natural Resources Barrick Gold TO (!!) Calgary TO (!!) TO TO Montreal Calgary TO $4.4 $3.6 $2.9 $2.6 $1.7 $2.1 $1.7 $3.3

Assets, $bn $721 $616 $541 $71 $413 $363 $211 $39.5 $43 $33.3

Sample of Top Owners, % TD Bank 6.02; CIBC 4.59; Harris Financial 3.71; Bank of Nova Scotia 3.41 RBC 7.83; CIBC 5.46; Harris Financial 3.97; Bank of Nova Scotia 2.85 RBC 7.12; TD 6.83; Harris Financial 3.94; CIBC 3.91 RBC 2.71; Harris Financial 2.52; CIBC 2.33 TD 6.69; CIBC 4.91; RBC 7.25; Bank of Nova Scotia 3.05; Harris Financial 2.12 TD 9.45; Harris Financial 4.4; Bank of Nova Scotia 4.19; RBC 3.98 RBC 6.92; TD 3.68; CIBC 2.51; Harris Financial 2.47; Bank of Nova Scotia 2.36 RBC 5.41; Harris Financial 3.67; CIBC 2.51; TD 3.31 RBC 2.75 TD 2.78; Harris Financial 2.18; RBC 1.97

Note: Ranked by Composite Index of Assets, Market Cap, Profits, and Sales. Harris Financial is owned by Bank of Montreal. Source: Top Corporations, Profits, Assets from Forbes.com; Top Owners from Bloomberg database

But what about those people who say that what is good for the best corporations is good for society at large? Since the top Canadian corporations have massively expanded their wealth in the past 20 years, and their profits have almost fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, doesnt that also mean that the wealth of all Canadians have massively expanded as well? That a rising tide floats all boats? Well, not exactly Chart Two clearly shows that the massive explosion of corporate profits over the past twenty years in Canada has come at the expense of the wages of ordinary people. That is, increasingly more of the GDP (an estimate of the total value of goods and services produced in one year in Canada) is going towards corporate profit instead of wages. Another way of looking at this Chart is to see it as the distributional class struggle between capital and labour- when the line goes up thats good for capital, when it goes down thats good for labour- the story was mixed until around 1990, but then ever since has been getting worse and worse for the vast majority of us who arent dominant shareholders of the top corporations 2

 And it has only been getting better and better for the tiny elite who are the biggest shareholders of the top corporations. Indeed, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report The Rise of Canadas Richest 1%2, from 1945 to 1977 the income share of the richest 1% (who are the biggest owners of the top corporations) in Canada declined from 14% to 7.7% (as income inequality declined), and then over the past 30 years doubled right back up to 14%, with the top 0.1% tripling their share, and the top 100th of 1% quintupling! And related to this over the past couple decades there are more and more millionaires and billionaires in Canada, while the vast majority of the rest of us have either seen our wealth stagnate or decline, as most of us get deeper into debt just to make ends meet Check out Table 3. While the number of millionaires in Canada declined because of the 2008 global financial crisis, they have since more than recovered, and there are now more millionaires in Canada than ever before! The number of billionaires has also increased since the crisis, and is almost back up to its peak in 2007. Table 3: Number of Millionaires and Billionaires in Canada 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Millionaires n/a n/a 232,000 248,000 274,000 213,000 251,000 282,000 Billionaires 5 15 22 23 25 20 24 24 Source: CapGemini World Wealth Report various years, and Forbes Magazine various years Lets take a closer look at these billionaires. Chart 3 shows their combined total wealth.
2 By

Armine Yalnizan, published Dec. 2010. Download it free: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/rise-canadas-richest-1

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Chart 3: Total Billionaire Wealth in Canada

$44.8

$15.8

1995

2000

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Source: I compiled this from various Forbes magazines, and from Forbes.com

So in 2010, the 24 billionaires in Canada had a combined wealth of $85.2 billion dollars!! Thats more than enough to provide EVERYONE in Canada with decent housing, healthcare, education, food, etc. And yet successive waves of BOTH Liberal and Conservative governments keep saying that were broke, and they keep saying that we need to cut more social welfare, while at the same time they keep cutting taxes for the rich and their corporations! Guess what happens when you cut taxes for corporations and the rich? They get richer!! Surprise! So a rising tide of corporate profit certainly raises some boats3, but most of us continue to drown!

For starters, in the short to medium-term, we could raise taxes on the rich and on corporations to what they were before- for example, in 1948 in Canada the top tax rate for income above $2.37 million (in todays dollars) was 80%! That would give us ample funds to beef up social welfare to make sure there is no unnecessary suffering in this country, AND increase funding for social movements and noncorporate media that does not present the world through the lens of the powerful. In the medium to longterm, we have to increasingly democratize our workplaces and our government. Most of us work in highly authoritarian workplaces where we have no say over how to redistribute and invest the profit (hence more of it goes to the bosses and biggest shareholders- i.e. the millionaires and billionaires). Also, our government is a plutocracy- the more money you have, the more influence you have over policy and the more you are able to pressure politicians- so it is no wonder why the ruling politicians from whatever party keep pursuing policies that make the rich richer at the expense of the rest of us.

We CANNOT continue the endless accumulation of profit at the expense of humanity and the planet. We must educate ourselves, increase awareness of how the world really works, discuss, exchange ideas, experiment, and organize, organize, organize!! We must challenge illegitimate concentrations of power, and build a better future now. We MUST believe its possible- we must never lose hope, and we must never stop trying. Another world is not only possible, but our future depends on it! Thank U OccupyTO! 3 For example, David Thomson, Canadas richest person and Chairperson of the global media giant Thomson
Reuters, increased his wealth from $13 billion in 2008 to $23 billion in 2010 (Forbes).