When COVID-19 hit North America in the spring of 2020, its impact on millions of Canada’s workers was swift and punishing. In the pandemic’s first two months alone, more than one in ten were laid off — a share significantly higher than in previous economic downturns. Predictably enough, low-wage workers were the hardest hit, with those in the bottom 10 percent of earnings collectively seeing their total work hours drop by 45.5 percent and more than half being compelled to turn to the federal government for financial support. According to the Bank of Canada’s deputy governor, those earning under $16 an hour saw employment decrease by 27 percent last year — with the average loss of labor income for Canadians as a whole totaling $1,600. Many reportedly dipped into savings, and average household spending fell by $4,000 amid the downturn.

As newly assembled data makes clear, the experience of many of Canada’s most lushly compensated corporate executives was practically in another galaxy, if not another dimension. In a new report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, authors Alicia Massie and David Macdonald analyzed filings from over two hundred publicly traded companies on the S&P/TSX Composite Index and the compensation packages offered to more than one thousand executive officers. The report, appropriately titled “Boundless Bonuses,” reveals that, in 2020, executive pay rose by an average of 17 percent, with forty-nine of Canada’s largest companies modifying their own compensation rules on the fly so that executives would receive even bigger payouts.

As Massie and Macdonald explain, even parsing the pay packages of many executives is itself a complicated exercise. While most people are paid by way of a salary or an hourly wage and taxed accordingly, those at the top of the corporate ladder tend to receive the majority of their compensation in the form of bonuses — themselves a convoluted mixture of cash, shares, and stock options. Thanks to this pay structure, more than half of executives who took salary cuts during COVID-19 (for publicity’s sake) actually saw their total pay increase.