Data from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shows the country’s top CEOs bring in $60,600 a day, equivalent to the average Canadian’s yearly income.
The report, released January 2, compares the earnings of 100 of Canada’s top CEOs and found they make about 246 times that of the average person. This number has increased from 100 times in the 1990s and 50 times in the 1980s, CCPA Senior Economist and author of the report David Macdonald told Global News.
Assuming both CEOs and workers got paid vacations on New Year’s Day, “by 9:27 a.m. on January 2 2024, Canada’s top CEOs would have already made $60,600 while the average Canadian worker will toil all year long to earn that amount of pay,” CCPA wrote on its website.
These executives “broke every record in the book” in 2022 with the top CEO earning on average $14.9 million, compared to $7.4 million in 2008, when the CCPA think tank started the survey.
CCPA noted the yearly salary of top executives has remained fairly steady at $1 million a year, but bonuses have been moving the mark higher.
“It’s inflation that’s been ultimately driving these bonuses, due to historic profits in the corporate sector,” the report states, adding “as bonuses keep rising, the million-dollar salary becomes increasingly irrelevant.”
Though average salary increased in every tax bracket in 2022, the discrepancy between the top CEOs and the average worker is glaring. The top CEOs' pay increased 4.4% or $623,000, while the average Canadian saw a 3% increase, or $1,800.
Neither category could meet the demand of inflation though, as CCPA found cost of living increased 6.8% in 2022.
Macdonald told Global News there is another factor in escalating salaries for CEOs.
Many Canadian corporations aim to pay their CEO in the top quarter of all CEOs and therefore CEOs “think they’re in a hockey draft,” he said. “They’re hockey players and they’re going to hustle the puck.”
Canada’s top three CEOs are: J. Patrick Doyle, CEO of Restaurant Brands International, which owns Tim Hortons, Burger King, Popeyes and other fast-food chains, earning nearly $152 million in 2022; Matthew Proud, CEO of software company Dye & Durham Limited, at nearly $99 million in 2022; and Seetarama S. Kotagiri, CEO of Magna International Inc., earning nearly $36.5 million, followed closely behind by Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri, Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke, Galen G. Weston, the CEO of the group that controls Loblaw and Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau.
