Here are the pay perks you’d enjoy if you were a CEO in Canada

The typical Canadian CEO makes $8 million a year, 140 times the average private-sector salary, according to new research by the Montreal-based Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations (IGOPP). In the banking sector, that ratio is even higher, with the median CEO compensation at $10.5 million.

Things, though, weren’t always so. In 1998, Canada’s CEOs were making 62 times the average Canadian salary — still a big gap, but one less than half the size what it is today.

The trend toward higher and higher CEO compensation has drawn sharp criticism over the past 20 years, and much of it justified, according to Yvan Allaire, executive chair of IGOPP and author of the report.

But the public outcry seems to have done little to curb exorbitant executive pay. Instead, it has largely led companies to adopt a highly complex system for justifying such compensation levels, the research suggests.

That system, designed by compensation consultants, “has now become the standard and the norm” across very different businesses and industries, according to the report.

In 2000, companies would take six pages on average to describe their CEO’s compensation. Today, that number has ballooned to 34 pages.

But all the additional ink has hardly translated into a better pay model, Allaire told Global News.

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