New report finds Canada’s richest billionaires have more wealth than the GDP of some countries

The windows of the Congress Center, centre top, where the Annual Meeting of the World Economy Forum take place are illuminated in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Billionaire wealth reached a record high in 2025 in Canada and around the world, according to a new report from Oxfam.

In 2025, their wealth surged by US$2.5 trillion to reach US$18.3 trillion, an increase of 16 per cent, according to the report. Oxfam claims that increase would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.

The number of billionaires around the world last year also grew to more than 3,000 people for the first time ever. The combined wealth of the 12 richest billionaires is now greater than the total wealth held by the poorer half of the world’s population, or 4.1 billion people.

Oxfam’s report says billionaires are also more than 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than others.

The report was released Monday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Titled “Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power,” the report analyzes how some of the wealthiest people in the world are securing political power to shape policies for their own gain.

“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable,” Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar said in a news release.

“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger as their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable.”

Billionaire wealth in Canada

In Canada, there are at least 89 billionaires according to a sister report from Oxfam Canada. Titled “The Rise of the Super-Rich: The State of Inequality in Canada,” the report says the wealth of Canada’s 40 richest people grew by more than 20 per cent in 2025 to reach nearly C$550 billion, which is more than the GDPs of countries like Chile, South Africa and Finland.

Oxfam Canada says Canada’s richest one per cent, those with a net worth of C$7 million or more, now hold almost C$1.25 trillion in wealth, which is nearly as much as the bottom 80 per cent combined. Meanwhile poverty has been rising steadily in Canada since 2020 and approximately one quarter of Canadians now live in food-insecure households and regularly have to skip meals, according to the new report.

“That isn’t a narrow wealth gap but a wide, expansive, echoing wealth chasm,” Oxfam Canada said in the report. “When one small group of individuals is able to capture the majority of wealth in a society the negative implications are not just economic, they’re political and social too, and impact all of society.”

To tackle these issues, Oxfam Canada is calling on the Canadian government to establish a wealth tax that targets the ultra-rich and curb the use of offshore tax havens to bring tax dollars back to Canada.

“No country can afford to be complacent,” Behar said. “The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast.”

Based in Oxford, U.K., Oxfam is a confederation of 21 non-governmental organizations that are focused on alleviating global poverty. Those 21 NGOs include the registered charity Oxfam Canada. The two new reports were based in part on data from Forbes, Maclean’s, the United Nations and the World Bank.

“The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty,” Behar added. “Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality health care, action on climate change and tax fairness.”

The Trump effect

According to Oxfam, this surge in billionaires’ fortunes coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s second administration, which has slashed taxes for its wealthiest citizens while also championing deregulation.

“Billionaire fortunes have grown at a rate three times faster than the average annual rate in the previous five years since the election of [U.S. President] Donald Trump in November 2024,” the Oxfam report explained.

“Whilst U.S. billionaires have seen the sharpest growth in their fortunes, billionaires in the rest of the world have also seen double digit increases.”

Since 2020, Oxfam notes that billionaire wealth worldwide has increased by a staggering 81 per cent while poverty reduction has largely ground to a halt in the same period. As the ultra-rich leverage their fortunes to exert influence over politics, Oxfam says the world is also experiencing an erosion of civil and political rights.

“Being economically poor creates hunger,” Behar said. “Being politically poor creates anger.”