Canada’s highest-paid CEOs made average of $14.3M in 2021, shattering records: report – National | 24CA News
Canada’s highest-paid CEOs and different prime executives shattered data for compensation in 2021, in response to a brand new report, incomes a mean of $14.3 million as hovering inflation started to take maintain.
The common calculated in the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), launched Monday, far surpasses the earlier report of $11.8 million in 2018 and is over 31 per cent larger than 2020.
It’s additionally 243 occasions the typical employee’s yearly wage of $58,800 in 2021, which marked only a three per cent enhance from the 12 months earlier than.
According to the report, Canada’s highest-paid executives can have already made a mean employee’s complete wage lower than hour into the primary working day of the brand new 12 months.
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The report compiled government pay disclosures for 2021, specializing in chief government officers in addition to presidents, founders and retired CEOs that also obtained important compensation.
Other prime executives, like chief working and monetary officers, weren’t included. All figures had been transformed to Canadian {dollars}.
At the highest of the checklist was Philip Fayer, chair and CEO of Montreal-based fee options firm Nuvei, who earned a staggering $140.7 million in 2021.
Joe Natale, former president and CEO of Rogers Communications and now the top of Telus, was the fifth-highest-paid government with over $27.3 million.
The remainder of the highest 100 consists of the heads of all of Canada’s main banks and vitality companies, in addition to prime corporations like Shopify, Shaw Communications, CN Rail, SNC-Lavalin, Maple Leaf Foods and Canadian Tire.
The ultimate title on the checklist, Cameco president and CEO Tim Gitzel, nonetheless earned $6.6 million — the highest-ever minimal compensation to make the highest 100, in response to the report.
Missing from the checklist had been the leaders of Canada’s main grocers and airways, regardless of each sectors being closely criticized over the previous 12 months for raking in report income amid hovering meals prices and journey chaos.
The report, which was authored by CCPA senior economist David Macdonald, discovered inflation performed a significant function in hovering government pay.
Although Canadians actually started feeling the squeeze of inflation in 2022, together with a number of rate of interest hikes supposed to tamp it down, inflation was already sitting at 4.7 per cent by December 2021 — greater than twice the Bank of Canada’s benchmark of two per cent.
With corporations hitting report income in 2021 on account of rising costs — a development that solely elevated final 12 months — executives earned extra performance-based bonuses that drove up their compensation.
Those bonuses might be both paid in money, shares or, more and more, inventory choices.
In 2021, these bonuses made up 83 per cent of all compensation for the highest-paid CEOs, up from 70 per cent in 2008. Base salaries, in the meantime, have remained comparatively secure throughout these years, in response to the report.
“We think of inflation as bad for everyone, but for CEOs it’s the gift that keeps on giving,” Macdonald mentioned in a press release.
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The report additionally notes solely three ladies made the top-100 checklist of highest-paid executives in Canada: Linda Hasenfratz of Linamar Group (who earned $15.3 million in 2021), Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers CEO Ann Fandozzi ($13 million) and then-Transalta chief Dawn Farrell ($7.7 million), who’s now the CEO of Trans Mountain.
The report lists 4 suggestions for reigning in government pay — particularly via taxes — which Macdonald notes helped hold compensation decrease.
“There is little point in paying outrageous amounts to CEOs if they are just going to have to pay it all back to the government in tax,” he writes within the report.
Beyond a small wealth tax of some share factors a 12 months, the report recommends setting a $1-million cap for company deductions on compensation, which means something past that may be topic to company revenue taxes.
The latter suggestion would have created a further $199 million in federal company tax {dollars} if utilized to the 100 richest CEOs in 2021, in response to the report.
The report additionally recommends elevating the capital features inclusion charge to 100 per cent — which might goal the shares that make up government bonuses — and better marginal tax brackets between 70 and 80 per cent, which had been seen within the Nineteen Fifties and 60s when there was “much lower income inequality,” Macdonald wrote.
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