Seventeen of top 100 CEO salaries in 2015 were in the mining industry

A study on executive compensation by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the 100 highest paid CEOs working at companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2015 earned the average annual Canadian wage before noon on Jan. 3, the first working day of that year. “Total compensation for Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs in 2015 hit a historic high, registering at $9.5 million – 193 times the average industrial wage in Canada,” Hugh Mackenzie, the study’s author writes, noting that the average earnings rate for Canadians in that year was $49,510. In addition, the average earnings of Canada’s corporate top 100 jumped by 178% between 1998 and 2015, the economist pointed out, or from $3.39 million per year in 1998 to $9.47 million in 2015. “Public outrage over the CEO pay gap hasn’t curbed corporate boards’ enthusiasm for lining the bank accounts of their executives,” Mackenzie writes. “‘Say on pay’ votes were supposed to deliver cautionary messages about pay, but those votes are simply advisory and boards are free to ignore them, and usually do.” Read the entire story at The Northern Miner.