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Tuesday’s study is the first comprehensive look at net worth by Statistics Canada since 2005 and helps paint a picture of how families have weathered the recession. It found rising home prices and pension fund gains have all helped fuel higher net worth.

The middle class has become a significant political battleground in Canada. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has criticized both Liberals and the Conservatives for policies he said have led to the loss of well-paying jobs and have contributed to runaway consumer debt in the country. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said in an ad last year that the current Canadian economy tends to overwhelmingly benefit “a few” at the expense of Canada’s middle class.

This idea was not borne out in the StatsCan study which also showed the middle class sucking up a bigger portion of the country’s overall wealth.

It found that families in the bottom quintile have seen their net worth decline slightly since 1999. Back then, the bottom 20% of families had a median net worth of $1,300. That dropped to $1,100 in 2005 and remained unchanged in 2012. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 20% of families in Canada possessed 67.4% of the country’s net worth in 2012, down from 69.2% in 2005.

Consequently, the three middle quintiles — which can roughly be defined as Canada’s middle class — increased their share of the country’s $8.07-trillion personal net worth by 1.8 percentage points.

The median net worth of Canadian family units was $243,800 in 2012, up 44.5% from 2005 http://t.co/u6J2dGBYEd — Statistics Canada (@StatCan_eng) February 25, 2014

“I would say that that contradicts the idea that all the wealth in the last decade was hoarded by the 1% and the rest of us are fighting over table scraps,” said Mr. Cross.