It was another record-breaking year for Canada’s richest CEOs.
In one work day, and less than a half hour into the new year — 27 minutes to be exact — Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs will have already earned the average worker’s annual salary, according to a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
It translates to roughly $60,600 by 9:27 a.m. on Jan. 2, if you include Monday as a paid holiday, according to the report.
The CCPA, an Ottawa-based think-tank that focuses on social, economic and environmental issues, found that the 100 best-paid CEOs in Canada now make 246 times what the typical worker earns. That number breaks last year’s record of 243 times the average worker’s pay.
“The 100 CEOs, who are overwhelmingly male, got paid an average of $14.9 million in 2022. This amount surpasses their previously record-breaking pay of $14.3 million in 2021 and sets a new all-time high in our data series,” said David Macdonald, a senior economist at the CCPA and the report’s author.
Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, calls the report “enraging.”
“We’ve seen CEO pay increase consistently over the last number of years to a point now where it’s the highest it’s been … And at the same time we have these CEOs and the employer clubs that they’re part of lobbying every single day and fighting tooth and nail to make sure that we don’t have better labour laws in this country,” she said.
How one CEO tries to keep things on an ‘even scale’
Not all CEOs, however, are paid such large amounts of money. Hosni Zaouali, the CEO of ConnectED Labs, a Toronto-based technology company, has a specific formula that he said he follows to ensure his pay and his employees’ pay are on an “even scale.”
He said the highest salary at his company is “never 10 times higher than the lowest salary.”
Hosni Zaouali, the CEO of ConnectED Labs, says the highest salary at his company is never more than ’10 times higher than the lowest salary.’ (CBC News)
“It means that if the company shows success, operational success and financial success, it’s not only thanks to the CEO, it’s also thanks to everybody, including the lowest salary in the company. So we make sure that everybody gets compensated accordingly,” he said.
Zaouali said it’s “very important that the lowest salary is not too far from the highest salary in our company to keep everybody energized and everybody motivated.”
While base salary is an important factor when considering CEO wealth, it doesn’t provide a full picture of their total compensation, according to the CCPA report.
A ‘story about inflation’
Like last year’s report, which CBC News also covered, part of the explanation for the large increases in CEO pay is linked to inflation, Macdonald said.
“This is largely a story about inflation … CEOs are paid primarily through bonuses, and those bonuses are based on things like revenue and profits. When revenue and profit goes through the roof due to inflation, bonuses go through the roof.”
Macdonald said despite this, salaries for average workers are often not keeping up with inflation.
“In 2022, the average worker in Canada got an average pay raise of $1,800, or three per cent. But prices went up by 6.8 per cent in 2022, meaning workers took a real pay cut of almost four per cent compared to 2021.”
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In comparison, the top 100 CEOs saw an average pay raise of $623,000, or 4.4 per cent in 2022, according to the report.
One economist said studies like the one presented by the CCPA are “flawed.”
“The only way you can arrive at this conclusion is that you’re comparing oranges with apples,” said Vincent Geloso, an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia.
Geloso said reports like this fail to include other forms of employee compensation like benefits.
“People get more fringe benefits in the form of insurance, in the form of flexible hours. Things that employers pay for but aren’t considered compensation. When you include them, and you include that instead of wages alone, you’re getting a completely different portrait.”
In a 2020 report for the Fraser Insitute, a Canadian think-tank promoting private sector solutions, Geloso also argues that CEOs are paid for possessing unique skill sets that are increasingly in demand.
“Today you find CEOs who have a larger share of PhDs and MAs and MSCs and STEMs. So they’re in harder sciences and harder domains, so there’s greater levels of skill in terms of pure knowledge.”
Addressing the gap
Lana Payne, the union leader, thinks governments can help reduce growing inequality. She supports measures such as improving and expanding access to collective bargaining rights for workers, raising the minimum wage and ensuring people have guaranteed hours of work.
“I think the challenge is that more work needs to be done on a number of fronts to make sure that workers are not falling behind,” said Payne, who believes these measures could reduce what she calls the “inequality gap.”
Improving and expanding access to collective bargaining rights for workers, improving minimum wages, and making sure people have guaranteed hours of work are some of the things Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, says could contain what she calls the ‘inequality gap.’ (CBC News)
The CCPA report also makes several suggestions for reducing the pay gap. The group suggests: introducing higher top marginal tax brackets, removing corporate tax deductability for compensation over $1 million, introducing a wealth tax on the rich and increasing the capital gains inclusion rate (making CEOs pay more taxes on the money they make selling stocks).
“We’ve seen the active closure of the stock option deduction in 2021 as well as new higher income tax brackets in 2016. So this is something where we’ve seen a lot of debate particularly in other areas like a new wealth tax,” said Macdonald.
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
