The Canadian Press

Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs pocketed an of average $7.3 million in 2008, the same year Canadians were hard hit by the emergence of the worldwide recession, according to a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Economist Hugh Mackenzie, who authored the report, said that’s 174 times more than the average Canadian wage.

And while the average compensation for the top CEOs outpaced inflation by 70% between 1998 and 2008, people earning the average income lost 6% to inflation over that period, he said.

“To put that in perspective, Canadians will work full-time throughout the year to earn the national average of $42,305,” Mackenzie said.

“The top 100 CEOs pocket that amount by 1:01 p.m. on Jan. 4 — the first working day of the year.”

Thomas Glocer of Thomson Reuters Corp. was the top earner with a total salary of $36.6 million, followed by the late Ted Rogers at $21.5 million.

Big bank executives were also on the list with healthy compensation, despite a federal government bank bailout in the form of mortgage purchasing that helped banks preserve their annual profit-making, the report said.

TD Bank CEO Edmund Clark made $11.1 million in 2008, while National Bank’s Louis Vachon pocketed nearly $5.3 million and Gordon Nixon of Royal Bank took home $9.6 million.

Richard Waugh of the Bank of Nova Scotia had total earnings of $9.2 million, William Downe of the Bank of Montreal made $6.4 million and CIBC’s Gerry McCaughey had a salary of $6.3 million.

None of the CEOs from troubled automakers GM and Chrysler, which at the height of the economic crisis received billions in government bailouts, made it onto the list since those companies are U.S.-based.

Magna International chairman Frank Stronach, however, was No. 16 with earnings of $10.8 million in 2008.

Mackenzie said in an interview he was surprised at how high the compensation was given what happened to the economy in 2008, adding that several corporations have either two or three executives who share the chief executive title — and all two or three can make the list.

“If you rolled up some of those double and triple counts you’d have some pretty stratospheric numbers for what executives are paid,” he said.

The numbers, he added, also showed quite a bit of resilience in the face not only of the downturn of the economy but also “increasing criticism of the corporate executive pay system, both from significant political leaders and from… leaders within the business academic community.”

“In a year in which we dropped into the biggest recession since the ‘30s, (you’d think) you would have seen executive compensation go down,” said Mackenzie.

“Yet we still saw the top 100 get an average of $1.6 million a year in bonuses related to stock options and much more than that in stock grants.”

Rupert Duchesne of Groupe Aeroplan Inc. was in the 100th spot with earnings of $3.2 million.

Correction

An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that Canada’s top 100 CEOs collected an average of $161,000 in bonuses related to stock options in 2008.

As well, the earlier story stated National Bank CEO Louis Vachon earned $10.5 million in 2008. But the Centre for Policy Alternatives revised the report on January 5 to show he in fact earned nearly $5.3 million that year, making him Canada’s 60th highest-paid CEO rather than the 17th.