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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says Canada’s disparity gap is above the average of its 34 member countries, although not as high as in the United States, and the chasm has been steadily widening since the 1990s. The percentage of total income attributable to the top group of earners increased to 39.2% in 2009 from 36.5% in the early 1980s. Conversely, the bottom 20% (about four million Canadians) make do on an average pre-tax income of $15,200.

According to a 2011 OECD report, Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising, the two key factors fuelling the gap in Canada are the widening disparity in labour earnings between high-and low-paid workers and less redistribution. Labour market shifts also hurt as more Canadians work part time, take on temporary jobs or become self-employed.

Everyone agrees income disparity is a growing problem, but there’s not enough agreement on how to remedy it. Unfortunately, many are distracted by the panacea that reducing CEO pay would be a meaningful step. “You cannot make a low income higher by limiting a high income any more than you can make the poor richer by making the rich poorer,” Ken Hugessen told an audience at Trinity Western University in Vancouver in January.

Hugessen, a veteran compensation expert, agrees soaring CEO pay is a “red flag,” but it’s not the main cause of income disparity. Thus, taxing CEOs at higher rates or capping their pay will not “amount to a hill of beans in the national accounts,” he said. For example, raising taxes by 50% on CEOs who make $1 million would only produce $282 million, or 0.1% of the federal government’s expenditure budget for all of last year.