Salary accounted for only 11 percent of their pay, compared to 14 percent in 2008, due to the rising share of bonuses and stocks in executive compensation. By 11:00 am (1600 GMT) Tuesday, the best paid CEOs already had made more than the country's Can$49,738 average annual salary.
"The average worker will have to work full-time all year to earn that amount," it said. The average annual pay of the top 100 earners was 209 times the national average, and more than 315 times a new minimum wage of Can$15 in some provinces.
"Canada's corporate executives were among the loudest critics of a new Can$15 minimum wage in provinces like Ontario and Alberta, meanwhile the highest paid among them were raking in record-breaking earnings," said the report's author, David Macdonald. Valeant Pharmaceuticals' CEO Joseph Papa was the best paid in 2016, making Can$83.1 million in eight months on the job, according to the report.
He took over in May 2016 amid a crisis that took the company's stock from $257 in mid-2015 to less than $10 a share by early 2017.