Understanding what has been happening in recent years with income inequality in Canada is vitally important.

What do we know, for example, about the incidence of low income and poverty, or the impact of taxes and income transfers on the level and distribution of family income? What are the differences in income across provinces, or between different kinds of families, such as seniors and lone-parent families? More pressingly from a public policy perspective, what difference has government policy made to the economic well-being of Canadian families and to the fairness and equity of Canadian society?

Answering these questions relies on having sound data that are reliable and comparable over time.

A landmark survey commissioned by the Broadbent Institute finds that Canadians vastly underestimate the wealth gap in Canada and want a much more balanced distribution.

Click here to watch our animated video about the survey results. Wealth Inequality in Canada is narrated by Institute chair Ed Broadbent.

Canada is “moving towards exactly the same degree of income and wealth inequality” as the United States, says a former cabinet secretary in the administration of President Bill Clinton.

By David Olive / The Toronto Star

TORONTO—The Broadbent Institute’s Progress Gala is shining the light on the issue of our time with tonight's keynote address on inequality by former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

By Marco Chown Oved / The Toronto Star

Columnist Andrew Coyne is a huge fan of the Conservative government's new income splitting proposal. It's in the interest of fairness, you see.  Single-earner couples, so his logic goes, aren't getting a fair shake in being taxed more than their dual-earner couple counterparts with the same total income.

By now, however, we are familiar with some of the patently unfair aspects of the Conservative scheme. There's the fact that the tax giveaway stands to exclude single parent families that need the most help. Or that even with the $2,000 cap, benefits from income splitting will accrue disproportionately to wealthy single-earner families. 

OTTAWA—The Conservative government's new tax package is a throwback to an earlier era that stands to deepen inequality and will do little to alleviate child care costs, the Broadbent Institute says.

OTTAWA—The Broadbent Institute is pleased to announce that Hugh Segal, Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, will be interviewing renowned economist and author Robert Reich following Reich's keynote address at the Institute's second annual Progress Gala in November in Toronto.

Leader of the Opposition Thomas Mulcair has launched a new round of debate over the need for a national child care and early learning program. The NDP poposal would help the provinces to finance quality, affordable child care systems, delivered by regulated providers in place of the current patchwork quilt of formal and informal care of varying price and quality.