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And here’s the kicker. Being in the top 10% of earners in Canada doesn’t mean you are wealthy. In fact, in 2017, any Canadian making $96,000 (or more) was in that group, Cross says.

“Many Canadians, including those advocating for higher taxes, might be surprised to learn what our top 10 per cent of income-earners looks like — many of them consider themselves middle class,” Cross said.

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If you had any doubts about the struggle of the oil and gas industry over the past few years, a new study by Dallas law firm Haynes and Boone offers some grim statistics.

The number of oil and gas company bankruptcies in the U.S. and Canada rose 50% in 2019 from the year before and Haynes and Boone expects that trend will continue, Reuters reports.

Forty-two U.S. and Canadian oil and natural gas exploration and production companies went bankrupt in 2019, up from 28 in 2018.

The rate of bankruptcies has been increasing since the oil crash of 2015. Between then and 2019, a total of 208 producers have filed for bankruptcy, showing the industry has yet to recover.

“This increase in year-over-year filings indicates that the reverberations of the 2015 oil price crash will continue to be felt in the industry through at least the first half of 2020,” Haynes and Boone said in the report.

Here’s what you need to know this morning: