While most Canadians were hit hard by the pandemic over the last couple of years thanks to layoffs, reduced hours and dangerous working conditions, a new report has found that the nation’s top 100 CEOs had quite the payday. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that company leaders had their second-best year for earnings in the country’s history, raking in an average of $10.9 million dollars in 2020.
The CCPA released a report on Jan. 4 that found despite COVID-19, the 100 highest-paid CEOs earned $95,000 more than they made in 2019. To put that number into context, they made a whopping 191 times more than what the average worker makes. For workers who were paid $17 an hour or less, half of them either lost their jobs or working hours during the first few months of the pandemic, which in turn saw average wages go up.
“Before lunch hour on the first working day of 2022, January 4, Canada’s highest-paid CEOs will have already racked up the same amount of pay that will take the average worker the entire year to accrue,” the report says.
Some of the CEOs on the list include Calin Rovinescu, president and CEO of Air Canada, Stephen Wetmore, former president and CEO of Canadian Tire Corporation, and Galen G. Weston, chairman and CEO of George Weston Limited—the company that owns Loblaws. Weston made $3.55 million in 2020, the same year he scrapped the $2 an hour pandemic pay increase.
Many people reacted to the news that CEOs had profited during the pandemic on Twitter:
Luckily, the report has some recommendations to lessen the income inequality going forward, including introducing a wealth tax, implementing higher top marginal tax brackets, and capping the corporate deductibility at $1 million total compensation per employee, which the United States already does when it comes to executive pay.
