Eat the rich

Ranks of Canadian billionaires blossom
Last Updated: Monday, December 4, 2006 | 1:46 PM ET
CBC News
Canada has a record 46 billionaires, an annual survey by Canadian Business magazine says.

Its survey is in the issue that hit newsstands Monday.The richest entry on the list, is the perennial front-runner — the Thomson family — worth $24.41 billion. The death of patriarch Ken Thomson in June 2006 did not stop the Thomson media empire from generating another $2.2 billion in the last year to add to the family's fortune.

Ted Rogers vaulted from seventh to fourth place in the ranking of richest Canadians, according to Canadian Business magazine. His Rogers Communications stock gained 50 per cent in the last year.
(Canadian Press/Nathan Denette) The magazine says 46 of the richest 100 Canadians in its new list are worth at least $1 billion — up from 40 in its 2005 survey.

New billionaires on the list include the power couple Gerry Schwartz (Onex Corp.) and Heather Reisman (Chapters-Indigo), the Reichmann family, mining magnate Seymour Schulich, and computer whiz David Cheriton, who founded companies that were later acquired by Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems.

Collectively, the top 100 are worth $153.7 billion, up nine per cent from the $141.6 billion the top 100 were worth last year.

"It has been a prosperous year for the members of our exclusive listing of the most affluent Canadians," said Alex Mlynek, the senior associate editor of Canadian Business.

Canadian Business said it looked at proxy statements, insider-trading reports and other sources to arrive at its estimates.

Here is the top 10 list of Canada's richest, according to Canadian Business:

Thomson family – $24.41 billion
Galen Weston - $7.1 billion
Irving family - $5.45 billion
Ted Rogers - $4.54 billion
Paul Desmarais Sr. - $4.41 billion
Jimmy Pattison - $4.35 billion
Jeff Skoll - $3.93 billion
Barry Sherman - $3.23 billion
David Azrieli - $2.44 billion
Fred and Ron Mannix - $2.38 billion

Doug, like the Vietnamese soup analogy, children are dying in Africa because these people figure that unimaginable wealth can only be put into perspective by accumulating even more unimaginable wealth.