Top paid CEO list creates 'flawed perspective': Montreal Economic Institute

Top paid CEOs are company men who worked way up CCPA study author David Macdonald said the majority of highest paid CEOs in Canada are company men who have worked their way up the chain.

The annual list of Canada’s highest paid CEO’s has drawn criticism from a Montreal economic thinktank which suggests there is selective data being used to make a “big splash.”

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows the top CEOs earning an average of $13.2 million per year, 210 times what an average Canadian worker makes.

The Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) does not dispute the salary figure, but suggests it doesn’t help paint a proper picture of worker-management relations.

Flawed perspective

The MEI said the CCPA’s report presents a “flawed perspective through selective use of data.”

The list includes, the MEI says, 0.008 per cent of Canadian companies and that they are among the most productive firms with the best compensated workers in the country.

“As with every other edition, this report makes a big splash but gives little substance to help guide good policy decisions,” said MEI vice-president Renaud Brossard. “By taking such a small sample, and only from the best-performing firms, the CCPA basically cherry-picks the data to suit the conclusions it wants.”

The MEI points out that workers at businesses with over 500 workers, like many of the firms on the list, tend to earn about 15.5 per cent more than those in firms with fewer than five workers.

Many of the companies on the CCPA list are big banks, insurance, telecommunications and finance sector firms, which pay higher salaries to employees.

The better number, the MEI said, would be a comparison between the average income of full-time workers ($72,758) and the average full-time senior manager ($195,775).

That pay ration would be 2.7 times more for the manager than the worker, a far cry from the 210 times more cited by the CCPA.

“Unlike what the CCPA likes to trot out, there has been ample research that shows the compensation of executives such as CEOs to be largely linked to performance,” said Brossard. “Things like stock options, for instance, gain their value purely from the performance of the company and its outlook for the coming years.”

21 Quebec CEOs on the list

Of the top 100 CEOs on the list, 21 are from Quebec, with Bausch Health Companies Inc.’s CEO Thomas J. Appio highest on the list at eight.

Only three women are on the CCPA list with CN Railway CEO Tracy Robinson the Quebec representative.

The Quebec average for top-paid CEOs is just over $12 million, which is slightly less than the Canadian average, which is $13.2 million, according to the CCPA.

Report author David Macdonald said that higher taxes do not affect where the top companies operate out of and the vast majority of the CEOs on the list are company men who have worked at the same company for over 20 years.

“The problem is that our story about how CEOs get to the CEO desk is all wrong,” he said. “The mythology is that there is some big international competition and that we have to get the best CEO and if we don’t, the company fails. That’s an interesting fable. In reality, it’s a much more mundane situation.”

Three-quarters of the top CEOs, Macdonald said, were hired into a subordinate position and worked their way up.

Bausch Health CEO, for example, was the company's president and co-head, executive vice-president and company group chairman before being appointed CEO in 2022.

Top paid CEOs in Quebec