Mark Carney's Tax Plan Just BACKFIRED — Canadian Billionaires Officially FLEE To Miami

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]This week, Henley & Partners published the number Ottawa was hoping would stay buried in a spreadsheet. In 2025, Canada's on track to attract about a thousand net new wealthy residents. A thousand, the lowest figure ever recorded for this country. And the firm did something it's never done with Canada before. It filed us in the same column as China and the United Kingdom, the countries the richer leaving, not the ones they're running to. For a generation, Canada sold itself as the safe harbor, stable, clean, the place money came to sit still. That reputation just quietly expired, and you're going to feel the gap in the one place that always gets handed the bill, your taxes.

[00:00:38]And there's one number buried in a Globe and Mail column from October that reframes all of this. Because it turns out the millionaires leaving are the smallest part of what Canada's losing.

[00:00:48]Start with who's already packing. Late in April, a Montreal investor migration firm called Arton Capital quietly released a survey of Canadians worth a million dollars or more. And the result landed like a slow leak nobody wanted to report. 28% more of them said they were now more likely to leave the country than at the last federal election. When they were asked why, 56% pointed to a falling quality of life. And 45% pointed to where they think the economy's headed. These are the people with accountants, the ones who watch the numbers for a living. And they're the ones reaching for the exit. But the survey was only counting the people rich enough to already register on a wealth report. And the bigger leak was happening to people who hadn't gotten rich yet. Hold that thought. Here's what makes this different from the usual grumbling. The Globe and Mail went to the people who handle these departures.

[00:01:39]And the answers were not partisan talking points. Brandon Davies, a cross-border financial planner, said the single most persistent driver is tax, that wealthy Canadians feel genuinely disadvantaged. Because in Ontario, the surtax on personal income can climb to 56% and here's the part that should stop you because it cuts across politics entirely. Of the millionaires saying they want out, 34% of them voted conservative and 23% voted liberal. This isn't one tribe sulking after an election. This is the people who fund the system looking at the system and deciding it isn't worth it anymore. And where are they going? Australia, the United States, Portugal, Singapore. The places that built their tax codes specifically to catch the money Canada is letting walk out the door. That's the polite version of the story, but the lawyer the Globe quoted said the people he's actually alarmed about aren't the millionaires at all. And once you hear who they are, the thousand person number stops being the scary part. Remember the number I said reframes everything? It ran in a Globe and Mail column in October written by a business historian named Laurence Muscio and it isn't about millionaires, it's about everyone underneath them who was supposed to become one. For years, the comforting story was that the wealthy leaving is a rounding error. A few hundred people, a few yacht jokes, nothing that touches your life. The official forecasts treated it as a trickle. So you'd brace for a number in the hundreds of millions, maybe a couple billion in lost investment. It wasn't a couple billion.

[00:03:09]By the end of 2024, the money Canadians were investing outside the country outran all the foreign money coming in by almost one trillion dollars. That's not a typo, a trillion. The capital that's supposed to build plants and hire people here is being deployed somewhere else. And the gap is now nearly the size of a small national economy. So what does a trillion in exported capital actually do to a household? Before we get to that, look at who's leaving with it because the money is the half of this Ottawa would rather you focused on. In the first three months of 2025 alone, a record 29,186 Canadians permanently emigrated and the talent number is the one that should genuinely scare you. Of the elite software engineering graduates coming out of the University of Waterloo, the program that's supposed to be Canada's answer to Silicon Valley, more than 70% recently left for the United States chasing paychecks often more than double what they'd earn at home. So, it's not just the rich cashing out, it's the capital that hires you and the young builders who were supposed to create the next generation of jobs, both leaving at the same time. Canada is quietly turning from a country that makes wealth into one that just manages what's left. And the math on what that does to your wallet is worse than the trillion makes it sound. So, put it together. On one side, the wealthy leaving at the highest rate ever recorded. On the other, a trillion dollars in capital and a record wave of young talent walking out behind them. Now, look at what that means when the bill comes due. Because somebody has to cover what they were paying. Here's the math the Financial Post laid out, and it's the part nobody in Ottawa wants you to do on a napkin. Take one wealthy Ontarian worth a hundred million dollars living off investment income taxed at roughly 54%. When that one person leaves, the revenue they were handing the government every year takes about 270 average Canadians, people earning $50,000 to replace. 270 of you to backfill one of them. Now, multiply that by a record exodus.

[00:05:08]The hospital wait that gets longer, the school program that gets cut, the tax bracket that quietly creeps down to catch more of your paycheck. That's not bad luck, that's arithmetic. When the people at the top stop paying in, the government doesn't shrink to match. It turns around and leans harder on the people who can't afford a one-way ticket to Lisbon. And there's one more leak no headline has priced in yet. It's coming and it's the slowest and most expensive of all. The millionaires who leave take a year of tax with them, but the Waterloo engineers who never come back take 40 years of it. A whole working life of income, invention, and the companies they would have started here all booked to another country's ledger.

[00:05:47]So, when you line it all up, the record outflow, the trillion in exiled capital, the talent that boards a plane and never files a Canadian return again, the picture that starts to form is not a country going broke. It's something quieter and harder to reverse. It's a country slowly agreeing to become a place you grow up in and leave. A nursery, not a home. The wealth gets conceived here and perfected somewhere with better weather and a friendlier tax code. And the people who stay are handed the maintenance bill for a house everyone with options is moving out of.

[00:06:18]That's what I meant at the top about a thousand new wealthy residents being the smallest part of the story. The thousand is just the part Henley can measure. The trillion, the 29,186, the 70% of Waterloo, that's the part the headlines rounded off. Here's the uncomfortable truth none of the polished press releases will say out loud. A middle-class tax cut doesn't matter if the people who fund the country are quietly deciding it's no longer worth funding. Lower the rate all you want.

[00:06:45]They're not leaving over a single percentage point. They're leaving over the answer to one question. Is this still a place where building something pays off? Right now, a record number of them have looked at Canada and answered, "No." And every one of them who leaves doesn't take their tax bill with them.

[00:07:01]They hand it to you.