Canadian CEO's 'Gilded Age.' Top 100 executives saw their pay packages skyrocket in 2022

Canada’s highest paid CEOs earned $14.9 million, on average, in 2022, beating the , as company profits soared with inflation, according to a report released Tuesday. ‘Canada’s New Gilded Age,’ report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, revealed that the top 100 CEOs, who are predominantly male, got paid 246 times .

The list includes named executive officers of 234 companies listed on the S&P/TSX Composite index as of June 2022. Assuming the year has 260 working days, the average CEO brought home $7,162 an hour. This means that it took them just over eight hours to earn the average annual income in Canada of $60,606.

When inflation hit record highs in 2021 and 2022, , which led to record breaking CEO pay. CEOs saw their pay rise by an average of 4.4 per cent in 2022, while Canadian workers got a raise of three per cent, on average. But while higher basic costs have little impact on top executives, Canadian workers took a real pay cut of almost four per cent compared to 2021.

Overall, . But in 2020, when the outbreak of the pandemic posed unprecedented financial challenges to businesses, CEOs continued to see pay gains compared to 2019. “The last couple of years illustrated it fairly well: bonuses go through the roof when times are good, irrespective of whether a CEO was particularly responsible for it or not.

And when times are bad, (companies) change the bonus formula to insulate CEOs from the potential downward impact of bad company performance,” said David Macdonald, senior economist at the CCPA and author of the report. Top executive pay has more than doubled since the CCPA began tracking it in 2008.

Back then, the average CEO earned $7.4 million. he steady rise in compensation is mainly because of the way executive pay packages are structured, the report said. While the salary portion of their income has stagnated at around $1 million, a larger chunk of their pay has been driven by performance based bonuses in the forms of cash, stock options and direct share awards.

One might think that these are designed based on merit. But the report shows that there is no correlation between CEO pay and stock performance, meaning that most senior executives are getting rewarded even when companies are going through difficult periods. "These bonuses are going to be paid either way," said Macdonald, "Whether profits are good or whether profits are bad.

They'll be better if profits are good, but they're not going to be zero if profits are bad." In Ontario, where most Canadian companies are headquartered, the average CEO earned $18.5 million, making 298 times more than the average worker in the province. Next came Quebec with an average compensation of $13.1 million.

The report also highlights the persistent gender inequality at the top of corporate Canada with just four women on the list earning an average of $11.7 million. By stark contrast, Macdonald points out, there are four CEOs named 'Mark' on the list earning an average of $18.5 million. The average payday in 2022 for all 96 men on the list was just over $15 million.

“Nothing's changing,” said Macdonald, “despite the huge change in the labour market in terms of female labour force participation, that has yet to leak into the C suite.” The top five executives on the list are: J. Patrick Doyle, executive chairman of Restaurant Brands International, whose total compensation in 2022 was around $152 million; Matthew Proud, CEO and director of Dye & Durham, earned $99 million; Seetarama S.

Kotagiri, CEO of Magna International, earned $36 million; Tony Staffieri, CEO and president of Rogers Communications, earned $32 million; and Mark J. Barrenechea, CEO and vice chair of Open Text, earned $30 million. In the report, Macdonald calls for several tax measures to address Canada’s growing wealth inequality, including introducing a bracketed wealth tax and creating new top income tax brackets..