Number of one per cent earners in Sask grows: StatsCan
The number of people living in Saskatchewan whose annual income places them among the top one per cent of all Canadian taxpayers grew 81 per cent between 2000 and 2013, according to Statistics Canada.
The number of Saskatchewan residents whose income places them among the top one per cent of Canadian taxpayers almost doubled between 2000 and 2013, which suggests the province's economy is relatively strong, one expert says.	Denis Pepin / Fotolia
The number of Saskatchewan residents whose income places them among the top one per cent of Canadian taxpayers almost doubled between 2000 and 2013, which suggests the province's economy is relatively strong, one expert says.
"The more buoyant economies, if there's a sense of optimism, people ask for more and they get more," said Edwards School of Business dean Daphne Taras. "When there's a downturn, it's much harder for people to ask for — and get — a lot more, which would perhaps bump them into that higher group."
The presence of high earners also suggests the potential for new job creation and other opportunities, she added.
Canada's highest earners, known colloquially as the one per cent, had an average income of $454,800 in 2013, the last year for which data is available, according to a new report from Statistics Canada. The number of Saskatchewan residents in the one per cent grew to 6,255, or 2.4 per cent of the national total, up from 3,440, or 1.5 per cent, in 2000, the government data bureau reported Tuesday.
While some chief executives who earn millions of dollars per year boost the average salary considerably, Canada's one per cent also includes physicians, dentists, lawyers and people working in the top echelons of leadership in the private and public sectors, Taras said.
"These salaries are accessible provided people work really hard, overcome obstacles (and) generally speaking, get an education," she said, noting that no one disputes the existence of poverty and other social problems afflicting some people in Saskatchewan. "(Generally,) there is access to the one per cent."
But while Canada's one per cent threshold may be low compared to that of the United States, the increasingly high barrier to entry is a concern, said Charles Plante, an economic sociologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
"Research suggests that … if inequality increases, it threatens the mobility of everyone," Plante said. "(And) if mobility decreases, there's a good case to be made that the economy's becoming less meritocratic. People that are talented are less likely to rise to the top if mobility decreases and there's a real threat to the economy as a whole."
The growth of Saskatchewan's one per cent reflects a decades-long transfer of wealth within Canada, from east to west, suggesting economic strength, but Plante, a former policy director at Upstream: Institute for a Healthy Society, thinks curbing excessive growth through taxation or other measures is important.
"You need a little bit of inequality to motivate people, right?" he said. "But what isn't obvious is that the inequality has to be as extensive as it is. Just because people are pulling away doesn't necessarily mean it's adding anything to the economy."
The gap appears to be growing. In 2000, Saskatchewan' top taxpayers claimed 5.2 per cent of all income earned in the province. By 2013, their declared income totalled 6.6 per cent. That figure has anti-poverty activist Colleen Christopherson-Cote worried.
"The general population (thinks) that the province is doing quite well and being quite prosperous, while there's a large percentage of people who don't see any of that prosperity," said Christopherson, the Community Partnership Facilitator for the Saskatoon Poverty Reduction Partnership.
As the number of people who earn more than the current threshold grows, so does the number of people living in poverty and without access to fundamental services like childcare and education, Christopherson-Cote said.
"People are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet when you live below that threshold."
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