From last week’s Toronto Star:

The C. D. Howe Institute recently set up a Tax Competitiveness Centre to recommend far-reaching tax reforms. That spells trouble for most Canadians. Unless you’re a rich investor, hold onto your wallet. Whenever the business-funded institute starts poking around in the tax system, it finds lots of things to change – mostly for the benefit of the rich. That means the rest of us end up paying more taxes, or face cuts to social programs or benefits.

With the federal government trying to decide what to do with a surplus of $9 billion, the institute has been full of ideas. Its latest – advocated by Jack Mintz, head of its new Tax Competitiveness Centre – is strikingly similar to one favoured by the Bush administration: Lift the tax burden entirely off income from investments and place the full tax burden on income from labour. Not surprisingly, this idea is wildly popular among investors, who make up the bulk of C.D. Howe members. Of course, these investors represent only a tiny proportion of Canada’s taxpayers. But they tend to be highly effective at getting their way. They’ve been particularly effective in the last few decades, as the power of labour has declined and the power of corporations and investors has risen sharply. Rich Canadians have benefited enormously. According to calculations by McMaster University economist Michael Veall, the top-earning 1 per cent of Canadians have almost doubled their share of the national income – from 7.6% in 1980 to 13.6% in 2000.

Osgoode Hall law professor Neil Brooks says the top-earning Canadians haven’t enjoyed such a large share of Canada’s national income since the 1920s and 1930s, a time when Canada was often regarded as a plutocracy (that is, a society ruled by the wealthy). "Canada is once again at risk of becoming a plutocracy," says Brooks.

Brian Leiter (Texas) notes:

(By the way, when was the last time a major American newspaper described various right-wing think tanks, correctly, as shills for the rich and corporate interests?)  But let’s look on the bright side:  if Canada becomes more plutocratic, then Canadians and Americans will have even more in common!

For similar views, see this web site:  Too Much: A Commentary on Capping Excessive Income and Wealth, which describes itself as "America’s only newsletter dedicated to the proposition that the United States would be a considerably more democratic, prosperous, and caring nation if we narrowed the vast gap that divides our very wealthy from everybody else."