Two Manitoba CEOs on Canada’s highest-paid list in 2023

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This article was published 03/01/2025 (271 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There were only two Manitoba entries on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ list of Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs in 2023 — Paul Mahon of Great-West Lifeco Inc. and James O’Sullivan of IGM Financial Inc. — perhaps not surprising considering the concentration of corporate power in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

As the CCPA notes in its annual report, publicly traded companies undertake elaborate formulae to come up with total compensation packages for CEOs that’s not totally dependent on the size or success of the entity.

There are a little more than a dozen publicly traded companies based in Winnipeg, with the CEOs of about one-third of them based elsewhere. Their total compensation — modest compared to the top 100 — may be a reflection of the relative size of the companies they run, yet still dwarfing what average Canadian workers make.

(According to the CCPA, the gap between has grown significantly, with the 100 top-paid CEOs in the country earning on average 210 times more than a regular worker did in 2023. In 1998, they earned 104 times more.)

A list of total compensation for CEOs of publicly traded companies based in Manitoba does not include some of the largest employers like Bell MTS, Maple Leaf Foods, HudBay Minerals or CN Rail, whose provincial operations are divisions of companies headquartered elsewhere.

The list also does not include the CEOs of large privately held Manitoba-based companies like IntouchCX, James Richardson & Sons Ltd., Bison Transport (owned by JRSL), Loewen Windows, Parrish & Heimbecker Ltd. or Price Industries. (Because they are not publicly traded, those companies do not have any regulatory compulsion to disclose such information.)

The province has long had a reputation for lower-than-average labour costs and generally lower-than-average executive compensation, which some might say is the market’s way of balancing off housing and other costs that are typically lower than the national average.

To some extent, that sort of theme holds true for the CEO compensation of Manitoba-based companies.

The two who made it onto the list of the Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs in 2023 both fell below the $13.2 million average total compensation package, according to the CCPA.

Some compensation levels take into account the equity balance of the companies involved.

Ag Growth International Inc., Boyd Group Services Inc., Exchange Income Corp., NFI Group and North West Company Inc. are classic “widely-held” companies. Both Great-West Lifeco and IGM Financial are controlled by Power Corp. out of Montreal. Finnish company Wihuri International Oy owns more than 50 per cent of Winpak Ltd.

The Pollard family owns more than half of the shares of Pollard Banknote. Albert Friesen owns about 25 per cent of Medicure Inc.

In the past, there were more publicly traded micro-cap companies based in the province. In particular, Manitoba was once a hotbed for income trusts. Many of them converted to share-owned corporations and/or were taken private or ceased operation. (Some micro-caps, including some mineral exploration companies that are nominally publicly traded, may have been missed in the list.)

In a few cases, the CEO’s compensation was not the largest among the company’s named executive officers.

Two publicly traded companies do not list CEO compensation: Marwest Apartment REIT includes a complicated compensation formula for management; and Buhler Industries Inc. underwent a change of ownership in 2023 and lists Yury Ryazanov, the outgoing CEO, as having made $0 in 2023.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca