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Widening pay gap between workers and top execs extends to Canada

Canadian Pacific chief executive Hunter Harrison earned nearly $50 million in 2013. Canadian Press

A new analysis from the Associated Press published Tuesday shows the gargantuan compensation American chief executives are awarded – up another nine per cent in 2013, it said.

The average U.S. worker meanwhile saw their wage crawl higher by a meagre 1.3 per cent.

The chasm between working wages and executive pay in America now sits at 257 times, meaning the head of a Fortune 500 firm was paid the average U.S. worker’s salary 257 times over last year. That figure has risen from 187 times in 2009.

READ MORE: 5 reasons why CEO pay is rising, and 5 more why workers’ pay isn’t

In Canada, the story is similar, according to separate report from the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published in January.

While the average chief exec pay in the United States crossed the US$10 million mark last year, in Canada the average pay among the top 100 corporate leaders was just under $8 million.

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The Canadian group on average earned 187 times the average annual income of a full-time employee of $46,634, according to the CCPA report.

“To put that in context, the average wage in Canada increased by 6 per cent between 1998 and 2012 while the average compensation of Canada’s highest paid 100 CEOs increased by 73 per cent during the same period (inflation adjusted),” the report said.

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Here’s Canada’s 10 highest-paid corporate executives, according to CCPA – and how they stack up to the top 10 highest-paid execs south of the border:

1. E. Hunter Harrison, Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. $49.2 million

2. James C. Smith, Thomson Reuters Corp. $18.8 million

3. John A. Manzoni, Talisman Energy Inc $18.6 million

4. Paul N. Wright, Eldorado Gold Corp $18.6 million

5. Donald J. Walker, Magna International Inc. $16.8 million

6. Mark Barrenechea, OpenText Corp. $14.8 million

7. Gordon M. Nixon, Royal Bank of Canada $13.7 million

8. Gerald W. Schwartz, Onex Corp $13.2 million

9. Mark Thierer, Catamaran Corp. $12.8 million

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10. Al Monaco, Enbridge Inc. $12.1 million

Here are the 10 highest-paid U.S. CEOs of 2013, as calculated by The Associated Press and Equilar, an executive pay research firm:

1. Anthony Petrello, Nabors Industries, $68.2 million

2. Leslie Moonves, CBS, $65.6 million

3. Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, $55.3 million

4. Stephen Kaufer, TripAdvisor, $39 million

5. Philippe Dauman, Viacom, $37.2 million

6. Leonard Schleifer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, $36.3 million

7. Robert Iger, Walt Disney, $34.3 million

8. David Zaslav, Discovery Communications, $33.3 million

9. Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner, $32.5 million

10. Brian Roberts, Comcast, $31.4 million

What the Canadian wage gap looks like, courtesy of CCPA:

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