How much do Canada’s top CEOs get paid?

By 12:18pm on the first working day of 2016, Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs had already collected an average of $48,636, which is what the average full-time worker will earn for the year.

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So finds a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The report also points out the country’s top 100 CEOs pocketed, on average, $8.96 million in 2014, which was 184 times more than the average wage in Canada.

Further, “The total pay package of the 100 highest-paid CEOs exceeds the 2014-15 budgetary deficits of [nearly] every province in Canada, except Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland,” says CCPA research associate Hugh Mackenzie.

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Additional findings

• In 2008, Canada’s top 100 CEOs made $7.3 million, on average.
• In 2013, average CEO pay hit a high of $9.2 million.
• In 2014, average pay had staying power at only 2% less than the previous year, on average, at $8.96 million.
• Share grants are replacing stock options as the preferred route to higher pay; stock options dropped from 21% of pay in 2008 to 13% in 2014, while share grants increased from 26% in 2008 to 39% in 2014.
• Only two women made the top 100 CEO pay list in 2014. Read: More women than men becoming billionaires: report
• Nearly half of the top 100 CEOs are looking forward to large pensions, with 46 of them set to receive pensions that average $961,000 per year.

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Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.