Millionaires are becoming more numerous in Canada, and according Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report 2018, their ranks will more than double by 2023.

Two million by 2023

We have 1.3 million millionaires this year, but in five years that number is expected to increase by 54 per cent, to almost two million people.

Millionaires, two million of them by 2023. In Vancouver, where many current millionaires live, two men are silhouetted as they paddle board past a yacht on False Creek, in Vancouver. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Credit Suisse used financial and non-financial assets of wealth such as home ownership and economic indicators like GDP (gross domestic product) as well as inflation, from the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic outlook database to create its forecasts.

In spite of the recent cooling in Canada’s major real estate markets, in Toronto and Vancouver particularly, high property values will continue to be a key factor of household wealth, the report said.

“One of the assumptions behind the increase in the number of millionaires is that Canadians’ housing wealth will continue to rise — no collapse in that market,” Jim Davies, an author of the study and economics professor at Western University, told CBC News.

Davies said another element in the forcasted increase in millionaires in Canada, is that there are already many people with wealth just under $1 million US.

“The predicted rise in wealth over the five years would take everyone with wealth equal to more than three times the average now into the millionaire group if it happened today,” Davies said.

Meanwhile, the expected increase in interest rates, has many industry analysts concerned about the the inability of middle and lower income Canadians, to maintain their current lifestyles.