Apple to pay $95 million to settle lawsuit accusing Siri of eavesdropping

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit filed in California accusing the tech brand of using its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on owners of its iPhones and other devices. The lawsuit alleges that recorded conversations were shared with advertisers to better target consumers despite the company's claims of championing user privacy.


Issued on: 02/01/2025 - 
FRANCE24
By: NEWS WIRES

The Apple iPhone 16 on display at the Apple Fifth Avenue store in New York on September 20, 2024. © Pamela Smith, AP

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.

The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.

The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, “Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.

The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple's long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers — a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve “a fundamental human right.”


Apple isn't acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement, which still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Lawyers in the case have proposed scheduling a Feb. 14 court hearing in Oakland to review the terms.
Millions of consumers could file claims

If the settlement is approved, tens of millions of consumers who owned iPhones and other Apple devices from Sept. 17, 2014, through the end of last year could file claims. Each consumer could receive up to $20 per Siri-equipped device covered by the settlement, although the payment could be reduced or increased, depending on the volume of claims. Only 3% to 5% of eligible consumers are expected to file claims, according to estimates in court documents.

Eligible consumers will be limited to seeking compensation on a maximum of five devices.

The settlement represents a sliver of the $705 billion in profits that Apple has pocketed since September 2014. It's also a fraction of the roughly $1.5 billion that the lawyers representing consumers had estimated Apple could been required to pay if the company had been found of violating wiretapping and other privacy laws had the case gone to a trial.

The attorneys who filed the lawsuit may seek up to $29.6 million from the settlement fund to cover their fees and other expenses, according to court documents.

(AFP)

FDA issues another recall for oysters over norovirus risk

The recall comes amid a surge of outbreaks

Kelly Rissman
Friday 03 January 2025

Independent 

CDC seeing surge in norovirus cases


The Food and Drug Administration advised restaurants against serving or selling oysters due to a norovirus outbreak, marking the agency’s fourth warning about the shellfish in less than a month.

Oysters harvested from December 2 to December 17 by Ruco’s Shellfish from a portion of Hammersley Inlet growing area in Washington state were potentially contaminated, the FDA said in a Thursday advisory.

Norovirus is highly contagious and is the most common foodborne illness in the U.S.

Restaurants in Washington and Oregon purchased these oysters and they could have been distributed to other states. “The FDA is awaiting further information on distribution of these oysters and will continue to monitor the investigation and provide assistance to state authorities as needed,” the agency said.

Foods contaminated with norovirus may look, smell and taste normal, but can cause illness if eaten — and cause potentially severe illness in people with compromised immune systems, the federal agency said.

Common novovirus symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, and fever. Symptoms usually develop 12 to 48 hours after being exposed to the virus.

Although most people recover within a few days, the virus causes an average of 109,000 hospitalizations and 900 deaths per year, mostly among adults aged 65 and older, according to the CDC.

Anyone experiencing these symptoms should contact their healthcare provider, the agency said.

Norovirus cases have surged in recent weeks, according to CDC data. There were 91 outbreaks of the stomach bug reported during the week of December 5, the most recent period data available.

“This year, the number of reported norovirus outbreaks have exceeded the numbers that we’ve seen recently and in the years before the pandemic,” the CDC said.

It can spread from having direct contact with someone with the stomach bug, eating contaminated foods, or touching contaminated objects and then putting your unwashed fingers in your mouth.

To avoid getting sick with the virus, the CDC advised people to wash their hands well and often, cook shellfish thoroughly, wash fruits and vegetables, clean contaminated surfaces, wash laundry in hot water and stay home when sick for two days after symptoms stop.


Last year, the FDA issued 10 advisories concerning norovirus-contaminated oysters, spanning from California to Maine. Thursday’s warning marks the first of 2025, but the fourth since early December.

Darién Gap Crossings Plummet 42% as Panama Tightens Policies

THERE IS NO MIGRANT CRISIS IN U$A

ByJuan Martinez
January 3, 2025
RIO TIMES

In 2024, over 300,000 migrants crossed the Darién Gap, a treacherous jungle route between Colombia and Panama. This figure represents a 42% decline from the record of 520,000 crossings in 2023, according to Panama’s migration authorities.

Despite the decrease, the situation remains dire and highlights the persistent challenges faced by those seeking a better life. Venezuelans made up approximately 69% of the migrants in 2024.

Many fled their home country due to economic collapse and political instability. They view the perilous journey through the Darién as their only option to reach the United States.

The Panamanian government, led by President José Raúl Mulino since July 2024, has taken a tougher stance on migration. His administration has implemented measures such as barbed wire fencing and increased deportations with U.S. support.

.

Darién Gap Crossings Plummet 42% as Panama Tightens Policies. (Photo Internet reproduction)

While these policies have temporarily reduced crossings, they do not address the root causes driving migration. Many migrants encounter violence and exploitation along their journey.
Darién Gap Crossings Plummet 42% as Panama Tightens Policies

Reports indicate that between January 2021 and March 2023, authorities discovered 124 bodies along the route, primarily due to drowning. However, this number likely underrepresents the true toll of this dangerous passage.

The new policies have sparked debates about their effectiveness. Analysts argue that without addressing underlying issues such as poverty and violence, these measures may merely shift migration patterns rather than resolve them.

Migrants often find themselves trapped in a cycle of danger and desperation. The humanitarian landscape in Panama has become increasingly strained. Local services struggle to meet the needs of vulnerable migrants arriving from the Darién Gap.

As conditions worsen in their home countries, many migrants feel they have no choice but to risk everything for a chance at a better future.

Jimmy Carter became craft beer ‘hero’ due to signing 1978 law

Tylor Sorensen
Thu, January 2, 2025 


ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — In 1978, there were about 100 breweries that controlled most of America’s beer output. That year, President Jimmy Carter signed a law that legalized homebrewing and paved the way for the craft beer revolution.

Prohibition ended in 1933, but homebrewing was still off-limits, allowing breweries like Yuengling, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst, and Coors to dominate the market, controlling around three-quarters of America’s beer volume.

Carter signed HR 1337, which allowed homebrewing for personal use, allowing Americans to brew up to 100 gallons per person and 200 gallons per household.

Those homebrewers eventually started small breweries that transformed the industry. Many craft brewing operations, such as Boston Brewing Co. and Sierra Nevada, began as microbrew operations.

Now, there are over 10,000 breweries nationwide, and that number is growing.

Some of those are located in the Rockford area.

In 2013, Reed Sjostrom opened Prairie Street Brewing Co., at 200 Prairie Street, a building that once housed the Rockford Brewing Company.

“I kind of kicked around some ideas and it kind of dawned on everybody that, hey, this was a brewery here in Rockford, so why not lean into that and kind of lean into the history and make it a brewery again,” Sjostrom said.

Tom Morgan started Cheezhead Brewing, at 414 Pleasant Street, in Beloit, just five years ago.

“I think the thing that draws people here is we’re about a half destination [attraction], where people come because they like to go to brew pubs and breweries. And then we’re half like Cheers, where people come in sometimes by themselves or not knowing exactly who they’re going to meet,” Morgan said. “But if they don’t know each other when they come in, they tend to know each other by the time they leave.”

The irony of Carter’s revolutionary law was that the President himself was a Southern Baptist and did not drink much alcohol at all.

“Cheers, and thank you to an American homebrew hero, President Jimmy Carter,” the American Homebrewers Association said in a statement on Sunday.

DARWIN AWARD

44-year-old zookeeper enters lion's den to ‘impress girlfriend’, accidentally films his own death

ByTrisha Sengupta
Jan 03, 2025 


A man entered into the lion’s den of a private zoo in Parkent district, where he was eaten alive by three lions. He unintentionally recorded his death.

A shocking video has captured the last moments of a man’s life before he was mauled to death by lions. Reportedly, the man who worked as a zookeeper at a private zoo in Parkent, Uzbekistan, entered the enclosure of the lions to record a video of himself to “impress" his girlfriend. His stunt, however, ended tragically, with him losing his life.

A 44-year-old man reportedly entered a lion's enclosure at 5 am to record a video (representative image). (Unsplash/pictagramar)

What did the video show?

According to the Mirror, 44-year-old F. Iriskulov approached the lion’s den at 5 am while working the night shift. The footage captured him opening the padlock and approaching the lions, who were sitting calmly.

As per the video, initially, it seemed like the big cats were not going to attack, but within moments, one of the animals suddenly approached him, and he was heard calling its name “Simba”, telling it to stay quiet. Iriskulov then went ahead to stroke the big cat's mane.

After a few moments, he flipped his camera to show his face and stroked one of the animals that came near him. However, things took a horrifying turn once the lion attacked him, and he kept on shouting, "Be quiet, be quiet.” He unintentionally captured his last moments on camera.

Police statement

Dailystar reported that the police released a statement to the local media about the incident. “Today, December 17, three lions kept in a single cage at the Lion Park private zoo, located in Parkent district of Tashkent Region, escaped into the zoo’s courtyard," the department said.

The lions entered the courtyard, attacking and injuring a 44-year-old keeper born in 1980. Unfortunately, the keeper later died from his injuries,” it added.

Bereaved Orca spotted pushing another dead calf

Jack Burgess
BBC News

Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Research
Whale J35 (known as Tahlequah) seen supporting the dead calf in 2018

A killer whale, which captured the world's attention in 2018 when it was spotted pushing the dead body of its newborn calf for 17 days, appears to be grieving again.

The whale, known as Tahlequah, has lost another calf and is again pushing the body, according to the Center for Whale Research.

Tahlequah has this time been spotted off the coast of the US state of Seattle.

Killer whales have been known to carry dead calves for a week but scientists in 2018 said Tahlequah had set a "record".

The Center for Whale Research said the death of any calf was a "tremendous loss" but added that the death of Tahlequah's newborn was "particularly devastating" given its history.

The centre, which studies the Southern Resident killer whale and works on its conservation, said Tahlequah had now lost two out of four documented calves - both of which were female.

Both Canada and the US list Southern Resident killer whales as endangered.

The whales depend on Chinook salmon - which have been in dramatic decline in recent years - for food.

Failures to reproduce are linked to nutrition and access to these salmon, according to research from the University of Washington.

Whales can travel an average of 120km (75 miles) a day.

The 2018 sighting of Tahlequah pushing a dead calf happened when it was off the shores of Victoria, British Columbia.

Musk likely to host German far-right leader for online chat on X


Musk, the world’s richest man, has become vocal in his support for far right and anti-establishment parties in Europe since spending a quarter of a billion dollars to help secure Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and faction co-chairwoman and top candidate for the federal election Alice Weidel looks on during a press conference of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Berlin, Germany, 7 December 2024. [EPA-EFE/CLEMENS BILAN]

Euractiv.com with Reuters 

 Jan 3, 2025 

Elon Musk looks likely to host the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party ahead of Germany's 23 February national election in a live interview on X, his social media platform.

In December, the Tesla mogul endorsed the AfD, an anti-immigration, anti-Islamic party labelled as right-wing-extremist by German security services, causing consternation in Berlin, where all other parties have ruled out working with a party they regard as dangerous and undemocratic.


Elon Musk backs AfD party in German newspaper opinion piece

Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, wrote on X that she had submitted her resignation.

A spokesperson for the AfD said on Thursday (2 January) that party leader Alice Weidel was in touch with Musk's office, but said he could give no further details at present. Earlier, newswire dpa reported the two would talk on X, Musk's social media platform, on 10 January.

Musk, the world's richest man, has become vocal in his support for far right and anti-establishment parties in Europe since spending a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump get elected, and has been tasked by him to prune the federal budget as a special adviser.

He called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an "incompetent fool" and said he should resign after a deadly car attack on a German Christmas market. Musk also described German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier as a "tyrant" for criticising the AfD in a speech.

Now frequently seen with Trump, Musk has posted in support of Britain's anti-establishment Reform party as well as the AfD. Both parties are loosely influenced by economic libertarian and anti-immigration ideas.

In December, Musk hinted that an online encounter between him and the AfD's Weidel was in the works, posting that "when I and Alice do an X Spaces conversation" critics would "lose their minds".

Leaders of other parties have condemned Musk's intervention in German politics. Scholz told voters in a New Year's address that the 23 February election would be decided not by billionaires but by German voters.



German politicians decry Elon Musk's AfD support as 'intrusive' election meddling

The support of the AfD from Musk, who is set to serve US President-elect Donald Trump's administration as an outside adviser, comes as Germans are set to vote on 23 February.

Musk's support AfD is a "logical and systematic" play for a weak Europe that will not be able to regulate as strongly, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in his New Year's address.

The calls by Musk are not made out of ignorance, said Habeck, who is the chancellor candidate for the Greens party in German national elections due in February.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)

Prehistoric fossil in museum found to be new species of large carnivorous turtle

By Oliver Chaseling, ABC

Adam Yates said he always had his suspicions the turtle might be a new species.

 Photo: ABC News: Xavier Martin

Scientists have discovered a new species of prehistoric turtle from what was once a lush forest in Central Australia, after re-examining an unidentified fossil on display in the Northern Territory's largest museum.

For years, the fossilised turtle shell sat alongside stuffed birds, insects, lizards and marsupials at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT).

Ever since senior curator and palaeontologist Adam Yates had started at the museum it had caught his eye, as he suspected it was unique.

"I'd had my eye on this particular fossil, but it was on display and I had many other jobs to be getting on with," he said.

In early 2023, Yates was encouraged to re-examine the specimen by an interested turtle expert from the US, herpetologist Mehdi Joseph-Ouni.

To do that, he had to spend months painstakingly extracting the fossil from its plaster display.

"I had lots of other projects on the go, so it's one that I would come back to every now and then when I had a spare moment," he said.

"I would go and work in the prep lab in removing a little bit more plaster."

When the process was finished, the pair were able to study an unusual protrusion on the underside of the fossil's shell.

That led to them discovering the specimen was a completely new species of snapping turtle - a large carnivorous turtle, long extinct, that they named Elseya mudburra.

"[The carapace] is made up of multiple bones that are joined together. Of particular interest is the first costal, which is actually a modified rib," Yates said.

"The way the lower part of the shell joins to the first costal … is really significant and varies a lot in different turtles.

"In our one, it had a peculiar thick shape with an extra little process sticking down, that told us that it wasn't like anything that had been found before."

Yates said Elseya mudburra was alive during the Miocene period of 13 to 14 million years ago and lived in rivers surrounded by lush forests in what is now the savannah country of the northern Tanami Desert.

The fossil was originally unearthed at a limestone deposit called Bullock Creek, near the remote community of Kalkarindji, which has previously yielded unique fossils of an ancient cassowary, a crocodile and possibly a giant snake.

Bullock Creek's Elseya mudburra predates megafauna found at another Miocene-period fossil deposit in the Northern Territory, the Alcoota fossil beds, by about 5 million years.

Located much further south, bordering the Simpson Desert, the Alcoota fossil beds have yielded what has been labelled a "gold mine" of unique fossil specimens.
Possibility of more undiscovered species in museum collection

Below MAGNT's natural history exhibits are the museum's archives, where there are rows upon rows of labelled boxes and drawers housing taxidermied insects, birds, reptiles and marsupials.

According to MAGNT's head of science and ecologist Kirsti Abbott, the exact number of individual specimens in the collection is unknown, with hundreds of thousands of "lots" in the collection containing multiple specimens, similar to samples extracted from Bullock Creek.

"At MAGNT, we've got just over 830,000 lots. In terms of individual animals, that's millions, probably, when you're thinking about insects," Abbott said.

"For those things that've been there for decades, or we haven't looked at, or we don't know much about that type of animal, there could be hundreds of undiscovered species in museums around the world, including ours."

With there being only a small number of experts for any given type of animal, Dr Abbott said that like the case of Elseya mudburra, discoveries of new species often occurred by chance within large collections.

"You might be casually looking through a drawer or showing somebody around and you notice something that you haven't noticed before," Abbott said.

"[If] you travel down that investigative path, you might find a new species where you might not have looked before."

- ABC

Jurassic highway: Hundreds of dinosaur footprints found in UK quarry


Members of the excavation team working on the footprints at the Dewars Farm Quarry, north of Oxford. Photo: EMMA NICHOLLS/Oxford University Museum of Natural History / AFP

Researchers have uncovered hundreds of dinosaur footprints dating back to the middle Jurassic era in a quarry in Oxfordshire, southern England, showing that reptiles such as the nine-metre predator Megalosaurus moved along enormous tracks.

The dig at Dewars Farm Quarry found five extensive trackways, one of which measured more than 150 metres in length, researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham said on Thursday.

Four of the tracks were made by gigantic, long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs called sauropods, most likely to be Cetiosaurus, an up to 18-metre-long cousin of the well-known Diplodocus, they said.

The fifth trackway was made by the carnivorous theropod dinosaur Megalosaurus, which had distinctive three-toed feet with claws.

The carnivore and herbivore tracks, which are about 166 million years old, cross over at one point, raising questions about whether and how the two types of dinosaur were interacting, the researchers said.

Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named and described in 1824, kick-starting the last 200 years of dinosaur science and public interest.

Emma Nicholls, vertebrate palaeontologist ay the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said: "Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found."

The buried prints came to light when quarry worker Gary Johnson felt "unusual bumps" as he was stripping the clay back with his vehicle in order to expose the quarry floor.

More than one hundred researchers then excavated in the site in June, where they found around 200 footprints, the universities said in a statement.

- Reuters

Canada’s Crypto Industry Is Taking Lessons From US Election Wins

By Monique Mulima, 

Bloomberg News

January 02, 2025

(Bloomberg) -- Following the high-profile successes of the crypto industry in last year’s US elections, digital-asset companies in Canada are already applying what they’ve learned.

In November, Donald Trump, a crypto skeptic turned supporter, won the US presidential election and pro-crypto candidates won the majority of their races. Since then, Trump has nominated digital-asset supporters to his administration and Bitcoin’s price has surged more than 40%, rising above $100,000 for the first time.

Crypto became a large topic in the US election due in part to the roughly $135 million the industry spent backing candidates. Crypto’s Fairshake political action committee and its affiliated super-PACs were funded by industry heavyweights such as Coinbase, Ripple Labs and Andreessen Horowitz.

North of the border, crypto hasn’t been as big of a topic among politicians, but the industry hopes that will change.

In Canada’s political system, companies can’t donate to election campaigns and individual donations for 2025 are capped at C$1,750 ($1,213) to each political party and C$1,750 in total for all candidates of each party. Even with these restrictions, the Canadian industry is still making progress since November.


“Conversations are easier to start today than they were over a month ago, and I think that trend will likely continue regardless of the donations,” said Dean Skurka, chief executive officer of Toronto-based WonderFi Technologies Inc.

Advocacy organization Stand With Crypto also helped make the topic a prominent US election issue, with industry partners like Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini. The campaign launched in 2023 and endorsed candidates in the US election with the aim of getting its 1.9 million supporters to advocate for pro-crypto policies.

Stand With Crypto expanded to Canada in July, but the Canadian branch isn’t looking to endorse candidates in the upcoming election. Instead it aims “to galvanize communities of crypto advocates” and create a grassroots movement of supporters who can speak with other Canadians and their members of parliament.

The next Canadian federal election is due by October 2025, but could happen earlier under Canada’s parliamentary system. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party holds a minority government and opposition parties are expected to put forward and support a non-confidence motion this year, which would topple the government.

Canada’s crypto industry would like to see digital assets become a bigger focus in that election, similar to how it was in the US.

“We’re hopeful, but it hasn’t quite played out that way in Canada historically, and obviously in the US this is the first time that it’s really become an election issue,” Skurka said. “Hopefully the positive response that it has seen the start of will be a signal to Canadian politicians to take it seriously.”

Canadian Crypto Regulation

While crypto may not be a political focus in Canada, the country has played an important role in the industry. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was started in the country and Canada was home to the first Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the world.

“For a long time, Canada was quite ahead when it came to crypto regulation,” said Sophia Cote, head of public policy at Montreal-based crypto trading platform Shakepay Inc. “But I think we’ve now reached a very interesting critical juncture where there are still some areas where we have not yet decided how we want to proceed.”

Canadian Securities Administrators announced new rules for crypto asset trading platforms in 2023. The guidelines, which took effect on Dec. 31, limit trading platforms’ ability to list stablecoins and require platforms to file a pre-registration undertaking. The requirements contributed to an exodus of crypto platforms from the country; Gemini was set to leave at the end of 2024 and Binance, Bybit and OKX left in 2023.

“In Canada right now we’re still having conversations around how do we regulate stablecoins within our securities framework versus actually having a conversation around the fact that stablecoins around the world are used for payments,” Cote said.


Some of the other issues that are the focus of crypto-industry lobbying in Canada include allowing exposure to Bitcoin in retirement savings plans and tax-free savings accounts and including crypto in open banking laws. So far no political party in the country has come out in support of the industry, but digital-asset companies have been trying to position crypto as a way to improve affordability — a key focus in Canadian politics.

Coinbase Canada CEO Lucas Matheson sees it as imperative for the nation to be competitive with crypto, especially with a Trump administration expected to increase its prominence.

“There are significant changes coming in how the US government and citizens in the US take advantage of the digital economy,” Matheson said. “And it’s incredibly important that Canadians don’t miss out on this and sit on the sidelines and wait until the rest of the world has figured out how to take advantage of digital assets.”

Since the US election, crypto prices and trading volumes have risen in the US and Canada. WonderFi’s platform has seen more customer transactions and Coinbase Canada has seen increased customer sign-ups since November. Matheson expects the interest in crypto to continue to grow in Canada.

“Crypto is here to stay and the US elections cemented crypto in the history books and paved a path for every country around the world to start thinking deeply about how they will advance their own personal strategies,” Matheson said.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Canada's 100 highest-paid CEOs earned $13.2 million on average in 2023: report

By The Canadian Press

January 02, 2025 


Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs earned $13.2 million on average in 2023 from salaries, bonuses and other compensation, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

It was the third biggest year for CEO pay since the CCPA began tracking the data in 2007, but a decline after 2021 and 2022 broke records.

“It's still well up from where it has stood historically,” said David Macdonald, report author and senior economist at the CCPA.

Factors leading to the decline included lower profits in 2023 and workers making wage gains after the most recent bout of inflation, he said.

The CCPA calculates that by 10:54 a.m. on Jan. 2, the average CEO on the list had made $62,661 — the average annual income for a Canadian worker.

The gap between CEOs and regular workers has grown significantly, the report found. The 100 top-paid CEOs earned on average 210 times more than the average worker did in 2023, while in 1998, they earned 104 times more.

The highest-paid Canadian CEO in 2023 was Patrick Dovigi of GFL Environmental Inc., whose total compensation was $68.5 million.

He was followed by Joshua Kobza of Restaurant Brands International Inc. at $39.1 million, then R.M. Kruger of Suncor Energy Inc. at $36.8 million.

Salaries were generally not the main source of CEOs’ total compensation, with most of it coming instead from other forms of compensation like share-based awards and option-based awards.

“Salaries make up an ever smaller proportion of their overall compensation,” said Macdonald, adding that sometimes an executive will even take a salary of just a dollar — including Tobi Lütke of Shopify and Murray Edwards of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., both on 2023's list.

The average cash bonus for these CEOs was $2.3 million in 2023, the CCPA said, adding that though in theory bonuses are meant to be tied to the company’s performance, in reality bonuses tend to rise regardless of whether the company is having a good year.

The three main types of non-salary compensation are direct share awards — where a person is paid in shares instead of dollars — cash bonuses, and stock options, said Macdonald.

Most of the CEOs on the list are men, with just three women making the list — outnumbered by both CEOs named Scott (five) and Michael (four).

But the report isn’t all bad news, noted Macdonald — for example, workers’ pay went up substantially in 2023 as it caught up to inflation, he said. As well, those three women on the list made on average more than the Scotts and Michaels.

Since the CCPA has been tracking CEO pay, it’s also been tracking policy changes that could help narrow the gap between executives and regular workers.

One such change happened in 2024, when the inclusion rate for taxing capital gains was increased to more than 66 per cent (compared with 100 per cent for employment income) for gains above $250,000 for individuals, though this of course didn’t affect CEOs in 2023.

However, capital gains don't apply until stocks are actually sold, noted Macdonald, meaning the tax revenue from the change is potential — some people might hold on to those stocks in the hopes the policy will change in the future.

Another such change happened in 2021, when the federal government capped the stock option tax deduction at $200,000 a year.

“We are seeing the impact on CEO pay” from that change, said Macdonald. “Stock options as a means of being paid have been cut in half for CEOs since 2021.”

Instead, there’s a “pretty decisive shift” toward direct share awards, he said.

“It used to be that the stock options ... were, from a tax perspective, a better way to be paid.”

This year’s report also investigated the idea that companies need to offer high compensation to attract top CEOs.

“In the real world, it’s a much more mundane explanation,” said Macdonald.

He said in fact, more than three-quarters of the CEOs on the list got the job from within the company, working at their firms for an average of 21 years.

This “really reveals the bankruptcy of this idea that these insane pay levels are about competition,” said Macdonald.

The report recommends a “wealth tax” on Canadians worth more than $10 million, which it says could raise $32 billion a year. This is a much more direct approach than addressing stock options or capital gains, said Macdonald.

The report also recommends higher top marginal tax brackets.

“Historically speaking, Canada’s marginal tax rate for the richest is low,” the report said, with the top brackets within the 70 per cent range in the postwar years, compared with roughly 50 per cent now.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 2, 2025.

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press