Is Canada a country of high taxation in international comparison? Looking through Canada's culture section on wikipedia, it's described as having: 


  Government policies such as publicly funded health care, higher taxation to redistribute wealth, the outlawing of capital punishment, strong efforts to eliminate poverty... 


However, looking into taxation in Canada their income tax of 31.6% (if single with no children) and their corporation tax seems fairly lower then, for example, the higher rate of tax in the UK (45%).

Why is Canada regarded to have policy in high taxation to redistribute wealth when their taxation actually appears to be fairly low?
Because they are high in comparison. Take a look at the data from the OECD here, for 2015. I have plotted them below:



(The red is the personal income tax set by law, and the blue is the one adding tax credits, as far as I understand).

As you can see, rates in Canada are quite high in comparison with other OECD countries like Estonia or Poland, and also higher than the UK.

Also, in international comparison, Canada is quite good in redistributing income. You can see that by comparing the Gini index before and after taxation:



Property taxes are quite high too:



The final evidence comes from this index of progressivity of both personal income tax and social security:



Conclusion

Canada is quite a progressive country in terms of taxation, redistribution quite a lot, and lowering market inequality considerably. Even more, it seems to be better than the UK in almost every comparison.

Source: OECD (2012).