CEOs Breeze Through Recession With Top Salaries

Canada’s 100 best-paid CEOs earned 155 times the income of the average Canadian worker in 2009.

1/6/2011|Updated: 10/1/2015

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A recent study found that Canada's 100 best-paid CEOs earned 155 times the income of the average Canadian worker in 2009. (Photos.com)

Canada’s 100 best-paid CEOs earned 155 times the income of the average Canadian worker in 2009, according to a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

The report, titled “Recession-proof,” focused on the earnings of the 100 best-paid public company CEOs in 2009, the darkest year of the economic downturn in Canada.

It found that the average pay for the top CEOs was $6,643,895 in 2009, compared to $42,988 for the average Canadian income earner and $19,877 for minimum-wage workers.

“At the rate they earned in 2009, by about 2:30 [p.m.] on January 3, the average of the 100 best-paid public company CEOs in Canada already pocketed what it would take a Canadian working full-time all year to earn,” wrote Hugh Mackenzie, CCPA Research Associate and author of the report.

In 1995, Canada’s 50 highest-paid CEOs received an average pay of $2.66 million, 85 times that of the average worker, and in 2009 their pay soared to 219 times that of the average worker, according to the report.