OTTAWA – The richest of the rich have gained more ground in Canada, and are now making 189 times the average Canadian wage, according to a new report.
The 100 highest paid chief executives whose companies are listed on the S&P/TSX composite index made an average of $8.38 million in 2010, according to figures pulled from circulars by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think-tank.
That’s 189 times higher than the $44,366 an average Canadian made working full time in 2010, the report says.
And it’s a 27 per cent raise from the $6.6 million average compensation for the top 100 CEOs in 2009, the report says.
Regular Canadians, on the other hand, have seen their wages stagnate over the past few years. In 2010, after adjusting for inflation, average wages actually fell.
“The gap between Canada’s CEO elite 100 and the rest of us is growing at a fast and steady pace, with no signs of letting up,” says economist Hugh Mackenzie, who authored the report.
“The extraordinarily high pay of chief executive officers is more than a curiosity. It actually is a reflection of a troubling redistribution of society’s resources in Canada and the United States, and in most of Western Europe,” he said in an interview.
He points out that in 1998, the top 100 CEOs were paid 105 times the average wage. Since then, the ratio has generally climbed up.
In 2008, it was 174, dropping back to 155 during the recession in 2009. The high-water mark was 2007, when it peaked over 190.
It means that by noon on Jan. 3, the average top executive will have already made as much money as the average Canadian worker makes in a year.
