By Harinder Mahil

I recently wrote a column on income inequality and discussed a report which shows that less than 60,000 people, comprising 0.001 percent of world’s population, control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity. The report, authored by Ricardo Gomez-Carrera of Paris School of Economics, is the third edition of the World Inequality Report.

In this column I will focus on income inequality in Canada.

Last week the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) issued a report about the gap between average worker’s wages and Canada’s top-paid CEOs. According to the report the gap between the two has widened to a record in 2024. The report says that by 9:23 a.m. on January 2, 2026 Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs had already made what the average worker will make all year.

Average compensation for the top 100 Canadian chief executives hit $16.2 million in 2024, surpassing the previous record of $14.9 million in 2022.

According to the report, the average pay for those 100 CEOs was 248 times more than the average worker in Canada, surpassing the previous record of 246 times more in 2022. This gap has grown considerably more than a decade ago, when Canadian CEOs made 184 times more than the average worker. Here are some shocking numbers about CEO’s compensation:

Highest paid CEO in Canadian history: $205.5 million for Shopify’s CEO.

Highest average pay for the top 100 Canadian CEOs: $16.2 million.

Highest “minimum wage” for a CEO to get on the highest-paid list: $7.2 million.

Biggest gap between CEO pay and average workers’ pay: 248 times.

Since 2020, CEO pay is up by 49 per cent and workers’ pay is up by 15 per cent.

“The rich are living the high life while regular Canadians and workers struggle with inflation,” said CCPA senior economist David Macdonald in a statement accompanying the report.

On average, the top CEOs made $7,812 an hour in 2024, allowing them to make the $65,548 annual pay of the average worker by 9:23 a.m. on Jan. 2, by Macdonald’s calculations.

For context, today’s highest-paid CEOs are paid more than double what they were paid in the late 2000s. CEOs used to be able to make it on the highest-paid 100 list by making a “meagre” $3 million. Now it takes over $7 million. The average workers’ wages have only gone up by half that proportion over the same period.

The CCPA report says that executive compensation is increasingly tied to company profit and revenue rather than base salary, so a bumper year for corporate Canada helped lead to the record.

Canadian corporate profits stood at $630 billion in 2024, well up from pre-pandemic levels of $400 billion, said the report, though below 2022’s banner year of $668 billion.

Part of the increase is from growth in the market, but it’s also tied to higher margins as companies raised prices, said Macdonald.

“Every company says, ‘We’re just covering our costs, we’re not making anything out of this,’” he said in an interview. “But that’s straight up false. Corporate Canada has enjoyed a great boom in profits as a result of inflation.”

Macdonald said that given the widening gap between the very highest earners and average pay, Canada should consider some form of higher tax on them, either through a millionaire’s tax or a wealth tax.

A wealth tax of one per cent on anyone with $10 million in net assets, and three per cent on assets over $100 million, could raise over $20 billion a year.

Both provincial and federal governments should pay attention to the report’s recommendations if they are serious about tackling income inequality.

Harinder Mahil is a human rights activist and is secretary of Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation