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Since the 1990s, fewer people have met the standard for low-income measures.

They’ve been brought in for political reasons; the child fitness tax credit, for one. There’s one for art now

“What really seems to be driving that is the expansion of refundable tax credits,” Mr. Milligan said. “There are a huge basket of these types of tax credits available for families with children, especially, and for low- and modest-income families. There’s a ton of these things and they vary by province.”

When after-tax incomes are factored in, perks like the GST credit and the Working Income Tax Benefit are pulling up those at the poorest edge of the income distribution.

But Jim Davies, a professor in the economics department at the University of Western Ontario, points out that while refundable tax credits may have helped the poorest Canadians, this government’s latest round of boutique tax credits do very little.

“They’ve been brought in for political reasons; the child fitness tax credit, for one. There’s one for art now. There’s a tax credit for using public transit and a volunteer firefighters tax credit. All of these things bleed revenue. We’ve never had them before. They’re not necessary,” he said.

While the news is good for Canada’s poorest, it’s even better for the country’s wealthiest. Mr. Milligan said there is a growing concentration of wealth at the very top of the chain.

Here, too, matters are not quite as nefarious as activists might expect.

“You certainly see that the income concentration is quite a bit less in Canada [than in the U.S.], but the trend is going in the same direction,” Mr. Milligan said.