Telecom executives among highest paid CEOs in Canada

Life at the top of a large corporation is more financially rewarding than ever, a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has found. Telecom moguls take their place among the handsomely-compensated. The study, Living the High Life, was released on Jan. 2. It found that between 2020 and 2024 (the last year for which statistics were available) CEO pay has gone up 49 per cent while worker salaries have increased by 15 per cent. The list of the 100 top paid executives in the nation set several records. The highest paid CEO took home $205 million. The average compensation for the top 100 was $16.2 million. The lowest, or “minimum wage,” on the list was $7.2 million. Those large numbers surprised the author of the report. “I wasn't expecting a new all-time high in terms of either the average or the minimum wage to get on the list,” said CCPA senior economist David Macdonald in an interview with The Wire Report. While corporate profits have been good for the past few years, “which is driving this CEO pay level,” they were not record-breaking, he explained. Net pre-tax corporate profits in 2024 were $630 billion, compared to $620 billion in 2023, and an all-time peak of $668 billion in 2022. The report notes that 2024 was the last full year of corporate profit data, but the first three quarters of 2025 were the best so far in Canadian history. “So I expected that we’d be close to the all-time high but not breaking it,” Macdonald said of the 2024 numbers. Surprised though he was, the economist points the finger at rising inflation for contributing to the record compensation. Corporate revenues and their stock prices often rise during inflationary cycles. These are the basis for executive bonuses, which now make up 84 per cent of CEO pay, according to the CCPA’s report. Actual salaries, on the other hand, have remained stagnant over the past 20 years, Macdonald continued. “So the real action isn’t on the salary line,” he stated. “It hasn’t been on the salary line for decades. The real action is on the bonuses line.” Tobias Lϋtke of Shopify Inc. more than illustrates the point. His salary from the multinational e-commerce company was a token one dollar. But he pocketed $51.3 million in share-based awards and a whopping $154 million in option-based awards. He topped the list with $205 million in total compensation. Macdonald was not fazed by the minuscule salary. “It’s actually not unusual to have these CEOs to have salaries of a dollar,” he reports. “Salaries have become increasingly irrelevant for the top CEOs in Canada over the last several decades.” The highest-paid telecom executive in Canada for 2024 was Darren Entwistle of Telus Corp. He placed 12th on the top 100 list with total earnings of $20.6 million. He received a salary of $1.6 million, share-based awards of $16 million and non-equity incentive plan compensation of $1.18 million. Non-salary compensation is taxed at a lower rate than basic salary. Entwistle announced in May 2024 that he would be taking his salary in shares of the company. Coming in 15th on the list is Quebecor Inc. president Pierre Karl Péladeau at $20.4 million. He received a salary of $685,577, option awards of $18.5 million and non-equity compensation of $1.18 million. Tony Staffieri of Rogers Communications Inc. drew $14 million in compensation. His base salary was $1.48 million, his share-based awards totaled $10 million while non-equity awards were $1.48 million. He ranked 35th on the list. Rounding out the telecom hierarchy was BCE Inc. head honcho Mirko Bibic. His $12.8 million pay was made up of $1.4 million in salary, $8 million in share options and $2.38 million in non equity compensation. The Bell executive was 44th on the list. The report found that the 100 highest-paid CEOs had made what the average worker earns annually by 9:23 a.m. on Jan. 2. The CCPA makes several recommendations to close the gap between CEO remuneration and employee compensation, which stands at 248 times as of 2024. It wishes the Liberal government had stuck to its initial plans to increase the capital gains tax. In 2024, the administration of Justin Trudeau said it would hike the rate on those making more than $250,000 in a year. After Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) became prime minister, that decision was rescinded. The CCPA is also urging a millionaire’s tax, which would see an increase in the tax rate for every dollar above one million. The group similarly wants a wealth tax to apply to those people with a minimum of $10 million in net assets. On Jan. 19, Oxfam released a report to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It discovered that billionaire wealth increased by more than 16 per cent in 2025 to $25.4 trillion. That is three times faster than the past five-year average. Oxfam Canada issued a companion study on the state of inequality in Canada the same day. “In Canada, there are at least 89 billionaires and the wealth of our 40 richest grew more than 20 per cent in the last year and now totals almost $550 billion–more than the GDPs of countries like Chile, Finland, Colombia, and South Africa,” a news release from the NGO stated. “Canada’s richest one per cent hold nearly $1.25 trillion in wealth–almost as much as the bottom 80 per cent combined.” Oxfam Canada, too, is calling for a wealth tax. It is also seeking a curb on offshore tax havens and the establishment of an international panel on inequality. ppark@thewirereport.ca

Telecom executives among highest paid CEOs in Canada

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By Paul Park
|January 20, 2026

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