Obscenities of the New Year

It comes up at the beginning of each year – always earlier, in fact – like a bad joke. As of January 2 at 9:27 a.m., the highest paid CEOs in Canada had already collected the annual salary of the average Canadian worker, according to a report produced by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). It will have taken these business leaders a little more than eight hours of work in the year 2024 to amass the $60,600 that the average Canadian worker earns annually.

This year, a separate calculation was carried out for Quebec by the Quebec Observatory of Inequalities. At 10:11 a.m. on the morning of January 2, the 21 highest-paid CEOs among those whose company has its head office in Quebec had amassed the average salary of Quebec workers, or $57,900.

This means that in 2022, the 100 highest-paid business leaders in Canada took home 246 times the salary of the average worker — a multiple that has increased slightly (it was 243 times in 2021). The report highlights that it is inflation which largely explains the increase in bonuses granted this year to business leaders. This is not without irony, since we generally tend to evoke “performance” to justify the hypertrophy of CEO remuneration “Instead of rewarding merit […], businesses simply reward luck,” says David Macdonald, senior economist at CCPA. Favorable market, inflation, rain, good weather, whatever: it’s going up.

Meanwhile, Canadians spent the year counting their pennies to cash in on the rising price of their grocery baskets. It’s difficult not to think again, when looking at these figures, of the irritation of Eric La Flèche, CEO of Metro, when Alexandre Boulerice asked him, during his testimony before the agriculture committee of the Chamber of communes, last month, if he was comfortable having pocketed a salary in the millions while his own employees struggle to make ends meet. He did not see the connection, he said, between his remuneration, that of low-wage earners, the rise in food prices and the record profits generated by his company.

The link is undoubtedly there, implicitly: while the purchasing power of workers melts like snow in the sun, those who are paid thanks to the market – and who, in this case, have a major role to play in the working conditions of those who work under them — are getting richer. It is undoubtedly the absence of a rational link between remuneration and results, or, worse, between the concrete value of work and its remuneration, which offends people’s minds. To put it simply, we don’t make anyone believe that the work of CEOs contributes 246 times more to society, or even to their own company, than that of the average worker.

The State, obviously, could do a lot to reduce this absurd gap. We can rattle off the usual list of good tax practices that we refuse to consider for purely ideological reasons. This is precisely what the CCPA does in its report. The solutions are not new, and most fall perfectly under common sense: eliminate the loopholes which allow company directors to limit their tax burden as much as possible, cap the deductions offered to companies for the remuneration of their directors, impose capital gains on shares. And, of course, create a wealth tax.

The last time a political party spoke of such a thing, we will remember, the entire choir of reaction was quick to shout that we were sneakily attacking honest families who had the misfortune to buy a property that has increased in value. If we take our eyes off the painting, the portrait reveals something else.

At the start of 2023, wealth gaps have widened at a record pace in the country: 20% of Canadians now have greater net wealth than two-thirds of the population. The poorest 40% held only 2.7% of wealth. The imbalance is clear, and there would clearly be space to act.

Let’s just say it’s not in the spirit of the times. Take the emergency aid granted at the last minute by the Quebec government to Accueil Bonneau to save its food service.

On the eve of Christmas, the organization announced on its Facebook page that it would be forced, as of January, to stop serving meals to people experiencing homelessness on weekends, due to lack of resources. A first in 150 years of existence, it was indicated, adding that if its provincial funding was not improved sustainably, we would be forced to interrupt food service for good.

On Wednesday, the Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, came to the rescue by announcing the allocation of an amount which will allow the maintenance of weekend food service until the end of March. What happens next, however, remains to be clarified.

Basically, we quickly placed a diachylon on a hemorrhage, even though we knew that the patient had been in distress for a long time. This sums up the State’s attitude towards social inequalities: while we watch the rich get richer, public intervention is limited to saving the furniture when the fate reserved for the less well off becomes visibly obscene. The minimum, basically, so that the status quo remains more or less tolerable, in appearance at least. For the rest, it’s in the pocket.

Columnist specializing in environmental justice issues, Aurélie Lanctôt is a doctoral student in law at McGill University.

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