Fastest growing rate of euthanasia deaths, highest carbon taxes outside France, second only to U.S. in drug deaths
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The Trudeau government’s hike to the capital gains tax has proved to be the most controversial measure of the 2024 federal budget. Defenders argue that it merely brings capital gains taxes in line with the taxes levied on income. But it’s also unleashed a cascade of unintended consequences, from family doctors saying it kills their business model, to entrepreneurs warning that it will spur a plunge in economic growth as investment capital stampedes out of the country.
But largely unmentioned in the debate is the fact that Canada is suddenly home to one of the highest capital tax rates in the world. University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe pulled figures from the U.S.-based Tax Foundation and determined that Canadians will henceforth be paying the world’s third-highest rate of top marginal capital gains taxes, behind only Chile and Denmark.
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Some potentially relevant global perspective on the capital tax change in Budget 2024. #cdnecon #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/Mc9gSdqZOp
And before Budget 2024, this was a list on which Canada ranked in a distant 14th place; Norway, France, Ireland, Israel and the United States all ranked higher.
But these taxes are not the only global ranking in which Canada has suddenly become a world leader. Below, a cursory guide to other charts we’ve begun to top, most of them as a direct result of Trudeau government policy.
Top 10 for population growth
Canada doesn’t rank high on any official lists for population growth (such as the CIA World Factbook), since these usually only tally up the growth in Canadian citizens. But it’s a completely different story when factoring in Canada’s recent turn towards record-breaking intakes of temporary migrants, such as refugee claimants, international students and temporary foreign workers.
As per Bloomberg, Canada’s raw population growth for 2023 hit 3.2 per cent, which they pegged as “one of the fastest rates in the world.” Canada “is expanding much faster than any Group of Seven nation, China or India,” they wrote.
Given the most recent estimates for population growth, Canada now ranks at around ninth place. And the other contenders on that list are telling; with the exception of Syria and Equatorial Guinea, they’re all developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa with high birth rates.
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Second in the world for carbon taxes
Not a lot of countries charge a national carbon tax in the way Canada knows it. Much of Europe, for instance, has gone the route of cap and trade.
But in 2022, the World Bank tracked every country with carbon tax revenues on their books. France brought in the highest overall revenue from the carbon tax at US$8.4 billion, but Canada was close behind at US$5.9 billion.
No other country came close: The third-place finisher, Sweden, brought in just US$2.3 billion in carbon tax revenue. Although, given that Sweden is one-fourth the size of Canada, the Swedes are continuing to beat us on per-capita carbon taxes.
Fastest-growing rate of assisted suicide deaths
For now, the Netherlands narrowly beats Canada in terms of the share of annual deaths that can be attributed to assisted suicide. In 2022, 5.1 per cent of all deaths in the Netherlands were due to euthanasia. That same year, the rate for Canada was 4.1 per cent.
But it took 20 years for the Dutch to get to 5.1 per cent; they first legalized “termination of life on request” in 2002. Canada, by contrast, has only been at it since 2016.
And with the Canadian rate rising precipitously each year, it should only be a year or two until Canada eclipses the Dutch numbers. Canada’s rate of assisted suicide deaths has risen by roughly 30 per cent each year since its introduction. And a new study in the journal Mortality forecasts that this likely won’t stop until Canada reaches a threshold of 10.5 per cent of all deaths being attributed to medical assistance in dying.
And MAID has risen faster in some Canadian regions than others. Vancouver Island and parts of Quebec have already reached rates of assisted suicide well past that of the Netherlands.
Second only to the U.S. for drug deaths
The U.S.-based Commonwealth Fund released a 2023 report tracking overdose deaths in “high-income countries,” which have generally been hit hardest by recent spikes in opioid addiction. The clear leader in overdose mortality rates were the U.S. and Canada, with nobody else coming particularly close (although Scotland ranks second if you consider it in isolation from the rest of the U.K.).
The U.S. posted 277 overdose deaths for every million people, while Canada saw 171 overdose deaths per million. In third place was Sweden, with 79 overdose deaths per million – less than half of the Canadian total.
Similar results were returned by a 2022 Australian study. While Australia led in some categories – such as prescription drug overdoses – the scale of Canadian and U.S. opioid deaths was more than enough to put both countries in their own category. “Various nations have been experiencing overdose crises, the US and Canada much worse than others,” it concluded.
Worst housing affordability in the developed world (except maybe Portugal)
For nearly two decades, Vancouver and Toronto have perennially ranked as two of the most unaffordable real-estate markets on Earth. But in just the last few years, dramatic price spikes in secondary housing markets such as Kelowna or Brampton have pushed Canada to the point where it is a global contender for overall housing unaffordability.
The OECD, a group roughly comprising the world’s developed nations, maintains a running tally of home prices as compared to income. Its most recent list had Canada in the lead, topped only by Portugal. However, the Portuguese experience with unbelievably expensive housing is relatively new, and their bubble is already poised to taper off.
It’s been quite a while since a Canadian government has tightened a drug policy, rather than the other way around. But slightly more than a year after B.C. got a federal exemption to decriminalize personal-use amounts of illicit drugs, the province is now sending an “urgent” request to Health Canada to dial back the original exemption. They’re not looking to end decriminalization outright, they just want to make it so police can once again arrest people for doing drugs in playgrounds and hospitals. “Now, clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, police needed those authorities,” said B.C. Premier David Eby.
Mark Carney, the Canadian-born former Governor of the Bank of England, recently slammed Budget 2024, saying in a Toronto speech earlier this week that its creators didn’t really seem to be focused on fostering economic growth. He also said the current government has a “constant spending” problem. Carney, who also headed the Bank of Canada, is being put forward as a potential successor to Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal party, so it’s potentially with this in mind that he levelled the critique. But he’s not the first central banker with this opinion. Another retired Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, similarly called it an anti-growth budget that will scare away investment.
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