How high can CEO pay climb before shareholders push back?
Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs earned an average of $16.2m in 2024, a record and about 248 times the average worker’s pay, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Shopify’s Tobias Lütke topped the list at $205.5m, the largest single-year package the centre has recorded.
“The top CEOs make $7,812 an hour, so it only takes a little over eight hours to make the $65,548 annual pay of the average worker,” senior economist David Macdonald said, as reported by Lethbridge News Now.
The centre has called for higher taxes on top earners, though the most recent federal move on high-income taxation was reversed when Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled a planned capital gains change last March.
The AFL-CIO warned in the report that outsized pay can push executives toward short-term decisions “even if it hurts the company’s long-term health.”
