The rising tide leaves most boats at the bottom

The study looked at what has happened in the generally strong Canadian economy between 1975 and 2005, with the aim of tracking who benefited.

The think tank, which has written extensively about Canada's income gap, found the economy grew in those 30 years by 72 per cent and labour productivity – measured as gross domestic product per hour worked – increased by 51 per cent.

But when the researchers looked at wages, they found that after registering strong increases in the early and mid-1970s, real wages adjusted for inflation have remained virtually unchanged for the remainder of the last three decades even though productivity continued to increase.

"The stagnation of workers' real average wages despite their rising productivity is a powerful indictment of the promise that a growing economy – and increased productivity – will produce benefits widely shared by the majority of Canadian workers. It simply isn't happening," the report says.