The Rich Get Richer

While the rest of us are told we must suffer roll backs, wage freezes, and other austerity measures the result of the capitalist state bailing out Wall Street and Big Business......

Executive compensation

The $1,700,000,000 golden handshake

Inside the best deal Frank Stronach ever made.

Bank of Montreal CEO pay jumps 28 percent to C$9.5 million

Average annual pay of a top Canadian CEO: $7 million

The total average compensation for Canada’s 100 best-paid CEOs was $6.64 million in 2009, compared to the average Canadian income of $42,988 and the average minimum wage worker’s income of $19,877.

The biggest pay package went to Aaron Regent at Barrick Gold Corp., who made $24.2 million in 2009, according to Mackenzie’s calculations. In second place was Hunter Harrison at Canadian National Railway Co., at $17.3 million, followed by Gerald Schwartz at Onex Corp., at $16.7 million.

A Globe and Mail review of pay for CEOs at Canada’s 100 largest public companies in 2009 shows top executives across Canada received, The cash portion of pay packages – salary and cash bonuses – did show substantial growth, with a combined median increase of 7.6 per cent. (Medians reflect the experience of the middle-of-the-pack CEO, while averages can be skewed by CEOs with particularly large or small compensation amounts.)

A list of the Top 50 Canadian CEOs and their astronomical take-home pay increases

In the past 12 years, there’s been a 444 per cent salary increase for Canada’s top CEOs. The top 10 earners collected a total of $60.7 million in 1995—by 2007, that number had jumped to $330.3 million. For example, Paul Desmarais, CEO of Power Corp, made more than $5 million in 1995; in 2007, his take-home was more than $29 million.

Canada’s richest CEOs pocket the average Canadian wage of $40,237 by 9:04 a.m. January 2nd – before most Canadians have booted up their computer for another year of work,” says Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Research Associate Hugh Mackenzie.

The CCPA released a report on January 2, 2009 showing that the 100 highest paid CEO's at publicly traded corporations in Canada earned an average of $10.4 million in total compensation in 2007, which was an average increase of 22%, from its $8.5 million average in 2006.

This compared with an average pay hike of only 3.2% to $40,237 for the average Canadian worker during 2007.
"Compared with ordinary Canadians, whose wages have been stagnant for 30 years, Canada's economic downturn promises to hit the masses far harder than the best paid 100 CEOs," Mackenzie said. "They have enjoyed a decade of record pay hikes and will land on a softer cushion if they stumble from their lofty heights in the New Year."

The wage gap between the average Canadian worker and CEOs has been growing steadily over the past decade. In 2007, Canada's top 50 CEOs earned 398 times more than the average worker, compared with 85 times in 1995.

MacKenzie said that between 1998 and 2007 the average compensation of top CEOs increased by 147%, adjusted for inflation. This compared with a 3% decline in inflation-adjusted weekly wages for average Canadians and a 6% rise for those on the minimum wage.