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More and more successful Canadians are continuing to leave this country.

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Many tax practitioners have long been aware of this phenomenon. For example, in the first 23 years of my career, I worked on about a dozen tax cases involving Canadians leaving this country. But the number of files that my colleagues and I have worked on in the past 10 years has skyrocketed to almost one thousand.

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In 2015, 68,945 people permanently left Canada, according to Statistics Canada estimates. The next year (the first of the new Liberal government), it was 97,473 — a staggering increase. In 2017, it increased again to 104,013. Departures dropped to a low of 60,407 in the COVID-19 year of 2020, but it has been increasing ever since. For 2024, departures were at a 10-year high of 106,134, and 27,086 left in the first quarter of 2025.

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The problem with these statistics, however, is they are simply blunt numbers. They are estimates based upon statistical modelling and administrative proxies such as inactive tax filings and health-care deregistrations.

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The statistics also don’t come with other useful information, like how much wealth and recurring income has left Canada as a result of such departures. They also don’t track any private businesses that might be attached to such individuals that may have also left. Any loss of businesses usually comes with related Canadian job losses and that would be a useful statistic to track as well.

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Why would I like to see those statistics? The first reason is that I’d like to better correlate such statistics to what I’m seeing in practice. The amount of wealth leaving Canada that I’m witnessing would be eye-opening for many Canadians, even to those who seem to love bashing the so-called rich and are not shy about telling them to not let the door hit them on the way out.

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The second reason is to track how much long-term federal and related provincial income tax loss there is as a result of these departures. Such cumulative revenue loss to the government can only be recovered by massive immigration (something we have experienced as a country in recent years), increased tax measures (we’ve experienced that, too) or increased economic activity (no, it’s well known that Canada’s economic performance has significantly lagged for quite some time).

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The third reason is to estimate what opportunities Canada is losing. If the successful people had stayed, would they have started new businesses that would employ more Canadians or used their wealth to attract more taxation revenues for Canada? My guess is an obvious yes, but I’d like to put some precision around it.

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To illustrate, let’s use an overly simplistic example. Let’s say Bob, a resident of Ontario (where the highest marginal tax rate is 53.53 per cent so let’s round that to 54 per cent), leaves Canada on Jan. 1, 2026. His entire net worth — say $100 million — is invested in guaranteed investment certificates (GICs). The GICs earn annual interest of 5 per cent (his sole income source). Ignoring graduated personal tax rates, Bob will pay 54 per cent of his $5 million in interest income in tax, which works out to $2.7 million.