If you suspect the rich are still getting richer, you’re right.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) report, “Company Men: CEO Pay in Canada, 2023,” shows the top 100 CEOs earned 210 times more than the average worker that year.
“It’s hard to conceive of income gaps that large,” noted report author and economist David Macdonald.
As everyday Canadians struggle to make ends meet, CEOs are riding a “profit-driven inflation boom,” he added.
Atop the CCPA list of the 100 top paid CEOs of 2023 were Patrick Dovigi, CEO of GFL Environmental, who earned $68 million, followed by Joshua Kobza, CEO of Restaurant Brands International, who earned $39 million, and R.M. Kruger, CEO of Suncor Energy who earned around $37 million.
Other well-known leaders in the top 10 include the CEOs of Shopify, Magna, Loblaws, and Telus.
On average, the top 100 CEOs pocketed $13.2 million in 2023, their third-largest haul on record.
The two highest years were 2021 and 2022, which were “all-time high profit-making years for corporate Canada,” the report notes.
The year-over-year the gap between the average Canadian and the country’s highest paid CEOs is widening.
In 1998 the top CEOs only made 104 times more than the average worker, a figure that doubled in the years leading up to, and including, 2023.
And while the average Canadian will work all year to make $62,661, Canada’s top CEOs will make that amount by 10:54 a.m. on Jan. 2, the first working day of the year.
The minimum wage you need to make the list is now also higher than ever at $6.9 million, or $3,255 an hour compared to Canada’s hourly minimum wage of $15.
Truly, Canada’s ‘company men …’
The report’s title ‘Company Men’ alludes to both the lack of gender equality in Canadian C-suites (only three women crack the list) and the fact that 76 of the top paid 100 CEOs had spent an average of 21 years — well over half their careers — with the same company.
There so few female CEOs because of systemic gender bias, said Renee Caron, an independent pay equity consultant who helped negotiate Canada’s Pay Equity Act launched a year ago.
“There continue to be biases about gender roles in many workplaces and these biases work against women accessing top jobs; top technology jobs are a good example,” Caron wrote in an email to the Star.
“Women generally face more skepticism than men do regarding their abilities,” she added. “They cannot just be equal to their male counterparts to get the same promotions and opportunities — often, they have to be better.”
The corporate world still has a long way to go to achieve gender equality, said Macdonald.
“You start to see discrimination almost immediately in terms of the opportunities,” said Macdonald, which, decades later, results in very few female CEOs.
Ballooning bonuses drive spike in pay
The report notes that CEO compensation is skyrocketing mainly because of ballooning bonuses which comprise four-fifths of their total pay.
“In theory, bonuses are supposed to be tied to how well the company is doing. That’s a myth,” the report says. “In practice, CEO bonuses just keep rising, regardless of performance.”
In recent years, the federal government has taken steps to control that spike as CEOs are being taxed more.
In 2021, the government addressed a tax loophole by capping the stock option deduction at $200,000 a year. Previously, profits from stock options were treated similarly to capital gains.
“The proportion that CEOs make from stock options compared to their overall pay has been cut in half since 2021,” the report notes.
Since the 2024 federal budget, the government has been treating stock profits more like working income. The budget increased the inclusion of capital gains to 66 per cent.
To make up for some of the inequities between workers and executives, the CCPA is urging the government impose a small annual tax on wealth.
“Imposing a wealth tax on those worth more than $10 million,” the report notes, “could raise $32 billion a year to help address affordability for food and housing in a very meaningful way.”
