Canada's CEOs are making 248 times more than the average worker, a new record.
Inflation has resulted in a net decrease to the average Canadian's wealth. Meanwhile, wealth is continuing to be accumulated in the hands of the top 0.1 per cent.
I have started structuring my reports on two levels. Section 1 is all of the information you need to know, so if you don’t want to read the full five page report, the info I believe will affect most of you is in section 1. The other sections are hyper detailed and dense, but I am trying to format this in a way that everyone can digest easily, regardless of life scenario, or reading levels! I would love to hear feedback. I am now making these reports into video and audio as well, so that every report can be absorbed in the way that each individual will best absorb it.
Full Bibliography — I fact check everything, but I’m still completely alone. Errors occur. If you see a discrepancy that doesn’t match with the data, please feel free to email me!
Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs are making 248 times more than the average worker. This is up from 2022’s record of 246.
In a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, David Macdonald explains that 2025 marks another year of smashing CEO salary records. CEO pay is up by 49 per cent versus workers, whose pay has increased by 15 per cent since 2020.
In that same period, beef has gone up 39 per cent, chicken 27 per cent, bacon 29 per cent, cheese 21 per cent, eggs 36 per cent, and pasta 47 per cent.
Narrowing the focus the past year, the results are still rather stark.
Just a note— I don’t eat meat. This has nothing to do with this report. Just thought you should know.
With the price of food going up 4.7 per cent in 2025, the pace of inflation on grocery prices increased much more than the pace of wages. Worker wages increased by an average of 3.6 per cent this year, versus an average increase of 4.7 per cent on groceries overall.
This data does not factor in the increase of rent prices across Canada.
Although average asking rents have been slightly decreasing in Ontario and BC, the average paid rent has increased by 5.25 per cent. This is because rent controlled buildings are quickly catching up to the mean.
If we do some basic number crunching, the final results are that workers have had a wage decrease. Workers have less money than they did one year ago— even if they got a raise.
(Here’s the math)
The combined inflation rate is 4.975% ((4.7%+5.25%)/2).
Real Wage Growth=((1+Nominal Wage Growth)/(1+Combined Inflation))−1
((1+0.036)/(1+0.04975))−1
1.036/1.04975−1=−0.0131*100 = -1.31
This results in a minimum real wage decrease of 1.31 per cent for renters. Average housing prices fell in Ontario and British Columbia as well, but in the other 8 provinces, housing prices are still rising. The result is that most Canadians have seen their wages go down, including the top 1 per cent (see section 2.1).
One note, this doesn’t account for utility bills increasing. Although utility prices have risen across Canada, it’s different in each province. That means that 1.31 per cent is a baseline, and most people have experienced a greater decrease in spending power than this number.
Other factors are incalculable as well— medical bills, appliances breaking, emergency trips to see a family member, etc… Those costs are all more expensive as well. Thus, the wage decrease of the average Canadian is at least 1.31 per cent, and could be inflated vastly beyond that, depending on your circumstances.
Other factors may also play a hand here. For example, I may have felt the impacts of inflation differently than you because I don’t eat meat; but housing prices are rising in Montreal faster than much of the country, which means various different calculations.
Meanwhile, someone who regularly eats beef— Albertan/Quebec families, or rural families across the country— will have felt the impact of inflation in specific ways more than me. But, for those who have a family house which they bought in the 2010s or when housing was cheaper may not feel the impacts of inflation as acutely as renters, or people who’ve bought their houses in the past 5-10 years.
Inflation since the Covid pandemic has gone up 20.12 per cent. Few people have seen their wages rise by that much.
The ultra rich, however, don’t feel any impact from inflation.
For the top 100 paid CEOs, they’re making an average wage of $7,812 an hour, or $130 a minute. Most of that is in bonuses.
Removing bonuses, their minimum wage would be $7.2 million. That is to say, in order to be on the list of top 100 CEOs, you need to make $7.2 million in salary alone. Bonuses are generally based on profits made by their companies.
Corporate profits have exceeded $600 billion in 2025.
In 2020, profit margins decreased and companies were, in some cases, losing money. Although one would think that this would, therefore, mean that CEOs would not have gotten their bonuses during the pandemic, this is not true. Many of these CEOs simply excluded quarters where they lost money from their reports, and thus received bonuses anyways, or they received government bailouts, thus negating the losses their company suffered that they should have been responsible for.
David MacDonald, in his report, points out that some companies both did not report on the quarters where they lost money, and received bailouts, thus inflating their numbers even more.
2. Wealth distribution
2.1 The Rich get slightly poorer (by sacrificing their money to the ultra rich)
The top earners (the top 0.1 per cent) have gotten richer, and the high earners (top 1 per cent) have become slightly poorer. Practically, this doesn’t mean much, but high income earners have become mildly less wealthy according to Stats Canada. The cut off to be included in the top 1 per cent of society is now $293,800. In order to be in the top 0.1 per cent have to earn $930,100 per year. This does not mean your net worth is above $930 thousand, your income must exceed that. The top 0.1 per cent, on average, earn above $3,487,600 a year.
Therefore the minimum wage of the CEOs listed in David Macdonald’s report puts them two times above the base line for 0.1 per cent earners.
Sadly, for the high earners, they’re poorer than they used to be. The average wage of the top 1 per cent has gone down slightly to $606,000 in 2023, a decrease of 0.6 per cent (around 4000 less than before). The top 0.1 per cent have seen an increase in their average income by around $16,000 a year, four times more than the decrease seen for high earners.
In fact, every tax bracket has seen their wage decrease adjusted for inflation since the pandemic. The average total wage had decreased 0.3 per cent in 2023. Wages are in a recession, even if the country technically isn’t (yet).
This is a phenomenon that shows just how bad wealth concentration has become. When even the most wealthy in the country are having their wealth being transferred upward, this society is on a fairly visible decline. It is not dissimilar to what occurred before the great depression.
The class difference between earners who make $30,000 and $600,000 a year versus $600,000 and $7,743,100 is notable. $600,000 would, under current conditions, be closer in class to a labourer than they would to the truly wealthy.
2.2 Wealth Divisions
It would be plausible for someone making minimum wage to believe that they may one day make $500,000 a year, if they’re, say, studying to become a doctor or a lawyer. Meanwhile, the gap between the high earners and the top earners is so severe that it’s nearly impossible to imagine a scenario where someone could ever achieve luxurious wealth to such a degree, even if someone is among the high earner class. The multiplication of wages is exponential, and unachievable for most.
This is because the top earners make most of their wealth from investments, dividends, and “other income.” Between the months of 2016-2023, income from salaries for the top earners fell from 67.3 per cent to 50.8 per cent. Even though many of them likely have higher salaries than they did in 2016, their wealth is multiplying so quickly through their investments that they make more from passive income than active income. People in the high earner category (top 1 per cent) make most of their income from salaries (doctors, lawyers, CEOs of medium or small companies).
Note: If you’re on email, press on the chart to open it in your browser for a better experience.
20 per cent of people own 69.2 per cent of Canada’s net wealth. This does not reflect practical reality, since much of that wealth is in housing, therefore it is not liquid.
It isn’t really fair to conclude that the “top 20%” are even wealthy. On paper, many people are wealthy because they own a house. In reality, many of these people don’t have real wealth, since all house prices are inflated, and therefore perceived value of an individual family is massively inflated.
Meanwhile, more than 50 per cent of Canada’s net wealth is in the hands of the top 10 per cent, which would more likely be people with multiple homes and some level of liquidity.
There are, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, approximately 169,400 families in the top 1 percent, holding 24 per cent of Canada’s net wealth. The top 10 per cent hold 54 per cent of the wealth of the country.
The bottom 40 per cent own around 3.3 per cent of net wealth.
To be in the middle 40 per cent, a family must have a net value of at least $300,000. Net value is total value of salary+property. Because of inflated housing prices, millions of people are in the “top 20%” or the “middle 40%”, but do not have disposable income despite on paper having a modicum of wealth.
3. Taxes (it’s time for the real fun!)
3.1 No Simple Solution
Despite the fact that one quarter of all Canadian wealth is in the hands of 160,000 families, the effective tax rates for these people remain identical to those who are making a basic doctor’s salary.
The tax rate, on paper, is high for those who are earning millions of dollars. The problem is that the “on paper” understanding of tax rates is more or less useless when considering the problem.
During the 2025 election, the NDP proposed a wealth tax, which is one of the most important solutions that the government needs to take in order to increase government revenue, and pay for major program expansion/repairs. Government deficit isn’t really a concern, although the business and political class wants to convince you that it is. Most debt is owed to ourselves, and Canadian total wealth vastly outstrips the total debt of the country.
The proposed NDP wealth tax, based on the platform, would have generated $94.5 billion. It did not go far enough. During the election, they projected that their costed platform would add $48 billion to the deficit. The wealth tax could have gone further, but every party is fearful that the wealthy will leave the country in response. They won’t.
The wealthy often have massive investments in the country, to a degree where it would cost much more to leave than it would to simply pay the tax. They have liquid cash flow personally, but the real money isn’t possessed by any individual, it’s almost entirely in corporations or stocks. Moving offices, businesses, doing paperwork, hiring new employees, etc… it means that the wealthy are individually highly liquid (they can travel and live wherever) but they can’t actually simply pick up their wealth and leave.
And if they did, the government can easily nationalize their business. But I digress.
3.2 A story of taxation policy (I swear it’s more interesting than you think)
Prior to leaving office, Justin Trudeau was introducing some fairly progressive tax measures that would have helped a lot in paying for programs– the 3% digital sales tax, to make big tech pay a bit more, as well as an increase to the capital gains tax. These measures would have brought in huge sums of money to pay for the (pretty good, although majorly flawed) dental care plan. Not only that, but the carbon tax was a way to force big resource companies to pay for their fair share. Of course, the first week of Carney governing the country, these were cancelled, stopping huge swathes of cash that were supposed to start funding the state.
I have built a little timeline of Trudeau’s downfall in my head.
After Covid, Canada was ‘broke’. Justin Trudeau wanted to continue increasing the Canadian neoliberal welfare state, and thus needed to look for more revenue. In 2022 he began pushing for a higher tax rate on the wealthiest Canadians. As Justin Trudeau was influenced by his partnership with the NDP, and drifted somewhat to the left around taxation, the media machine started eating him alive. Poilievre ascended to power in the CPC, with the backing of the entire business establishment (the business establishment owns most mainstream media, by the way.)
Jagmeet Singh, the NDP, and the entire left wing of the Canadian government were suddenly turned into the enemy of the working man. Not that Justin Trudeau was ever the ally of the working class.
In walked Carney, a conservative, who ascended to be the leader of the nation with a flurry of excited, happy press. “The new leader was here to fight for Canada.” “Elbows up!”
His elbows were up. On behalf of the corporate class. The corporate world, always having Canada’s best interest in mind (this is a joke), was behind Carney 100 per cent.
The timeline of leftist tax policies leading to the ousting of both Trudeau and Singh, as well as the destruction of 2015 era progressive identitarian politics is not hard to see. The solution was slowly starting to show its face, far too late— revenue was likely to increase through some new, progressive taxes… but the top earners were not happy. Lobbying was down, businesses wanted more power, and they saw two good options in Carney and Poilievre.
Carney gladly campaigned on helping the average Canadian and fighting for Canadian sovereignty, while not cutting jobs or creating an austerity government.
Within a few weeks he threw away every promise he made, and started slashing government jobs, and ending the (relative) progressive movement in the Liberal party. It was a glorious bait and switch— the banker, shockingly, cared for money first and foremost. Daddy banker wanted to do more of what Canada has already done for the past forty years. Increase wealth concentration for corporate interest.
3.3 The Carney tax era
Under Trudeau’s tax hikes, based on my calculations, for someone who makes $5 million a year, the taxable portion (before deductions) would have risen from $2.5 million to roughly $3.16 million. Carney was fast, and immediately cancelled these new tax policies. He did it while simultaneously changing the extremely unpopular consumer carbon tax rate to $0. By combining these two moves into one, Trudeau’s raised taxes were gone. Carney didn’t look like he was favouring the ultra wealthy, because no “tax cut” occurred. The consumer carbon tax had become too politically toxic, and the capital gains taxes were never raised. No tax cuts occurred because the new taxes were simply never created.
The most obvious tax cut that Carney made, but one that people won’t think much of, is Carney removing the taxation of luxury aircraft and vessels. This one is more of a bald faced pro-rich law. Their excuse for removing this tax was that the tax was “inefficient, costly to administer, and challenging for Canadian industries at a time of ongoing global economic uncertainty.”
They’re trying to pitch this as a way to help Canadian industries, which is quite a reach. “The tax has been in effect since 2022, and applied to the sales, leases, importations and certain improvements to aircraft worth more than $100,000 and vessels worth more than $250,000, according to the federal government.” (CTV) There are only a couple groups who would be importing and selling this type of aircraft and vessels– the top earners and transportation giants. Air Canada is probably importing million dollar aircraft, as well as the rich— who have private jets and yachts.
Carney, who spent the first leg of his campaigns claiming that he was not a politician, shows how skilled a politician he is once again. Tell everyone that his actions are about the cost of administration; are about efficiency– but in truth it’s about lowering taxes for an extremely specific group.
Carney is the latest, and perhaps the greatest, at doing the old Liberal adage: “campaign to the left and govern to the right.”
4. Reconstructing tax systems
4.1 Taxing Differently
Even had Trudeau stayed and these new taxes gone through, these new taxation policies misunderstood the problem— although if they would have generated significant revenue.
If Canada doesn’t start taxing the top 1 percent of wealth significantly, not just more, but differently, we will never be able to maintain the relatively stable country that’s been around for the past one hundred and fifty years. When looking at history and crunching the numbers, there are simple solutions that present themselves.
The biggest problem with current tax rates, which Carney and Poilievre are inclined to cut, is that it’s easy to avoid taxes. Corporations have significantly lower taxes than individuals, so without even needing to find tax havens, the top earners can simply keep most of their income stored away in corporations, in stocks, in bonds, etc. The greatest tax haven is a corporation!
In both Ontario and Quebec, small business income is taxed at 12.2 per cent. Meanwhile, personal tax rates can climb up to 53 per cent. 98 per cent of all businesses in Canada are considered small businesses. Small businesses are those with up to 99 employees. Medium sized businesses can have up to 500. All with extravagantly low tax rates.
Most wealthy business owners will keep any extra money in their business, and reinvest it to multiply their money faster. Since the tax rate is so low on businesses, it means that the government services in desperate need of financing are unfunded. Meanwhile, as millionaires and billionaires are making hand over fist in passive income, a single mother of three has to pay taxes on her $70,000 income.
4.2 Regressive taxation
This didn’t used to be the case. Prior to the 1980s, Canada had a much more robust taxation system. The regressive policies of the 1984-1993 conservative government were in line with Regan/Thatcher era politics. Prior to Mulroney’s government, GST didn’t exist. We had what was known as the Manufacturers Sales Tax, a hidden tax that consumers never saw.
It was simply the cost of doing business in Canada, and kept wealth disparity fairly low, funding many of our services.
Then, in 1990, Mulroney introduced the GST. The GST was the tax system that corporations wanted, and Mulroney was a corporation’s best friend. The MST was paid by businesses. The GST, the little 15 per cent on your bill at a restaurant, or in a store, places the whole burden on the consumer. The Liberals and NDP fought it tooth and nail, and it likely lost the Conservatives their popularity– even more than Mulroney’s bribery scandal (a story for another day.)
When Jean Chrétien took power in 1993, he immediately removed the GST and put and end to Mulroney’s regressive policies just like the Liberals had said they would do since 1984.
No, I’m kidding.
The GST is still around, and it’s the federal whipping boy. Any time a leader needs to pretend they care about individuals, they say they’re going to lower the GST. Because every leader knows that the GST is a regressive tax that hurts individuals, and it’s an easy way to look like a populist.
Carney is another cheerleader for regressive tax policies, and this does not seem poised to change.
Our structures for taxing individuals in this country are a result of 250 years of American global dominance. Rugged individualism is the dominant force in our society, and Canada is becoming ever more splintered through the attractive rhetoric of the self made man. The right wing wants more individualism, but Canada was not founded on the principle of the individual like the United States. Our systems were built to be boring, stable, and to work for the people. Whether they have or haven’t is a historical discussion, and not within the scope of this report.
Our founding myth is that of “Peace, Order, and good governance.” This belief, which has driven much of Canadian history, will be hard to maintain unless there is change. When the burden of sustaining the state, of sustaining social systems is placed on individuals while the rich can ignore society’s ills, society will tend towards a worsening state. Societal structures need to be completely redone, so as to place the burden on corporations and top earners, who will persist as the richest regardless of how much they are taxed.
We will be back on this subject in a few weeks, looking at the math behind the domination of corporations in Canada’s tax system and politics.
Great article as usual. Totally depressing how it's the same story every year.
A small point of clarification regarding corporation tax rates.
Technically the federal corporate tax rate is 20% + provincial corp tax (around 40% depending on province), and only goes down to 12% for corps that qualify for the small business deduction, which is only applicable to corporations with less than 500k in revenue. So it's less taxes yes, but people who leave money in the corporation *technically* can't touch it. If they do, then they need to declare it as income on their tax return, so that money would be taxed then, and then there wouldn't be any savings because it would be taxed at their normal marginal rate. There are actually quite a few mechanisms in place to prevent tax arbitrage through a corporation, including one for corporations that earn majority of their income from capital gains (they lose their small business deduction if majority of income is from capital gains). I say this as someone who works as a tax preparer, because so many people come to me asking about corporation taxes thinking it can help them save money but in reality it doesn't. I mean, assuming they are following all the rules lol.
Where big corporations come out ahead is through their really "creative" accounting practices (allowing them to report lower taxable income while reporting record profits for shareholders), cutthroat monopoly business practices, lobbying, gov tax incentives, and for multinationals offshoring income to tax havens, things that small business corps don't have access to.
To lump those making upward of $600,000 into being more similar to the working class in terms of wealth seems too simplistic, even if it is mathematically true. The quality of life and living condition disparity between those making $30,000 and those making $600,000 shouldn’t be down played—it is a world and lifetimes of difference. Too, much of the wealth of someone making $600,000 would be on the backs of those making $30,000 to say the least.Isn’t increased wealth concentration into the increasingly smaller top
percentage a stratified system that is recreated at every echelon? those making the least literally pay the consequences first in terms of poverty and decreased access to adequate food, shelter, etc. So while mathematically the wealth difference is smaller between the top 1% and the bottom vs top 0.1%, I think it shouldn’t be ignored that there is still major and staggering inequality at those lower tiers (e.g. families owning multiple homes and generating income as landlords while renting to the usually working class who don’t own any property). Obviously I do not think this is news to the author, and maybe not the focus of this article, but just a thought.