Canada’s top executives got a nearly 20-per-cent raise last year as stock prices soared and corporate boards increasingly opted to pay their senior leaders with shares over options.

An annual review of CEO pay at Canada’s 100 largest public companies, done in partnership with consulting firm Global Governance Advisors, found median total salary, bonus, stock awards and other compensation reached $10,303,190 in 2024, up 19.6 per cent from 2023.

That marks the first time a typical Canadian CEO of a large company earned more than $10-million in one year.

How much were Canada’s top CEOs paid in 2024? Here’s the full breakdown

Strong market performance was the primary driver of the increase, with the S&P/TSX Composite Index also rising roughly 20 per cent last year. Chief executives generally beat the performance targets their boards of directors set for them by substantial margins, meaning they were eligible for generous incentive pay in the form of bonuses and share-based awards.

The average CEO in the top 100 received a short-term incentive payment that was 55 per cent above their target, according to Paul Gryglewicz, managing partner at Global Governance Advisors.

For example, if a board had set a target bonus equivalent to twice a CEO’s base salary, that CEO would have received a bonus worth more than three times their base salary. Mr. Gryglewicz said such a strong showing suggests corporate directors could more closely scrutinize the goal-setting process for next year.

“We have seen these performance multipliers play out aggressively,” he said. “The danger zone that boards need to be mindful of is when setting these performance goals for determining whether an executive earns incentive payout or not, are they setting the bar high enough, or are they being too generous?

“It is always a fine line,” he said. “We haven’t crossed it yet.”

Shareholders also remain broadly supportive of executive compensation policies, with most investors voting in favour of so-called “say on pay” resolutions. Those resolutions received an average of 93.8 per cent support at the annual general meetings of 40 members of the TSX 60 as of May 16, according to data from Laulima Consulting.

Yet the spike in CEO compensation nonetheless presents a stark contrast to the 3.4-per-cent year-over-year increase in average hourly wages Canadians saw in May, according to data from Statistics Canada.

In fact, one would have to measure across multiple decades to find a period when the average Canadian received a double-digit wage increase. For example, average hourly wages for full-time workers in Canada grew by 14 per cent over 30 years from 1981 to 2011, according to StatsCan.

Median total reported compensation for a CEO in the top 100, by comparison, was 97 per cent higher in 2024 than it was as recently as 2011, when Global Governance Advisors first started tracking the data. That growth has been driven by grants of share-based awards – generally composed of restricted stock units (RSUs) that vest over time and performance share units (PSUs) – which have grown by 277 per cent since 2011.

CEOs made about 50 times the average worker’s salary in the 1980s, according to David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Today, that ratio is closing in on 250.

“It goes up a lot more in good times, but what is interesting is that in bad times it doesn’t go down,” Mr. Macdonald said. “That is a recipe for ever-higher compensation.”

Part of the reason that occurs in Canada specifically is because Canadian CEOs tend to have their share-based compensation measured against the relative performance of their company’s stock. That means even in a period of major stock market declines, a CEO can still hit their performance targets if their company’s shares manage to trade higher than its peer group.

“That is quite a big difference versus the American design,” said Mr. Gryglewicz. “With U.S. firms, there is a strong culture around setting goals based on an absolute stock price basis.”

Total pay for Big Six bank CEOs rose last year, even with declines at TD and BMO

While the Canadian system can limit the downside for CEOs in bear markets, the American system allows for much larger payments when markets rise.

One clear example of the difference can be found in the 2024 pay package of Shopify Inc. SHOP-T CEO Tobias Lütke. The lion’s share of his compensation for last year came in the form of stock options worth $154,136,260, which is tied more directly to the absolute performance of Shopify stock.

“The application of a stock option in that circumstance, it is going to stick out by Canadian norms,” Mr. Gryglewicz said. “But how do you motivate a billionaire to generate another opportunity for another billion? You use something a little bit more on the extremes to have them create more earnings for themselves only when shareholders are benefitting in the future.”

Stock options, which give the right to buy shares at a certain price instead of – in the case of RSUs and PSUs – effectively gifting those shares, have become a less common form of executive compensation in recent years amid tax changes and criticism from institutional investors. According to GGA data, median options-based awards to CEOs in the top 100 were 31 per cent lower in 2024 than in 2011.

The pay package of GFL Environmental Inc. GFL-T CEO Patrick Dovigi is also an outlier to the 2024 data as nearly half of his total compensation – $29,124,541 – falls under the “all other compensation” category. According to GFL filings, that included nearly $11.4-million in life insurance premiums. In October, 2024, shots were fired at Mr. Dovigi’s home in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood.

Women were the biggest outlier on the top 100, accounting for only a handful of names on the list. Only one – Canadian National Railway CNR-T CEO Tracy Robinson – placed in the top 50 for pay. (She was No. 16 with total reported compensation worth $18.6-million).

Boards also appear to increasingly apply discretion on whether to revise CEO compensation either up or down relative to the pay formula established the previous year as continuing market volatility and economic uncertainty make conditions difficult to predict in advance.

According to Michelle Tan, managing partner at Hugessen Consulting, 14 members of the TSX 60 disclosed formal adjustments to their compensation practices, with nine choosing to increase CEO pay and five opting to cut.

“The fact that it is both positive and negative shows that directors are getting as close to the right decision as they can on CEO compensation,” Ms. Tan said. “But I think there are more conversations happening in the background these days than ever before.”