Bank Execs Bask In Ballooning Salaries While Seniors And Others Get By On Crumbs

By Joe Somers

Canadian banks were largely unaffected by the economic crisis which had such a dramatic effect on their American counterparts, and consequently bankers in the country enjoyed an average 10 percent increase in pay for 2009 at the six largest banks doing business in Canada.

While seniors and others on low and fixed incomes struggle to make ends meet,
The top two executive increases were for Bank of Nova Scotia CEO Richard Waugh, who received a hefty pay increase of 29 percent, and Bank of Montreal CEO William Downe, who wasn’t far behind, getting a pay increase of 25 percent.

As far as bank CEOs in Canada who reach the peak of the compensation list in general, the top spot is held by Gordon Nixon, who is the CEO of Royal Bank of Canada, who had a salary of $10 million, and Edmund Clark, CEO of Toronto-Dominion Bank, who also received the same salary as Nixon. I’m measuring this in U.S. dollars. In Canadian dollars it was about C10.4 million at the time of this writing.

No banks in Canada had to be bailed out during the financial crisis, and there was little need to write down debt as a result. The Canadian banking system is considered the most sound in the world by the World Economic Forum, being identified in that capacity for two years in a row.

Edmund Clark, from Toronto-Dominion, said in a recent interview that the reason the Canadian banking system is so sound, is they “don’t switch flavors every year. If you look at the pay packages over a five-year period, what you would find is that we never had the extremes on the upside and, not surprisingly, we didn’t have the collapse on the downside, because our banking system didn’t collapse.”

I really like the emphasis of Clark here, as it does define what makes a solid banking system, and it’s proven out in the practical performance of Canadian banks.
No one cares about good banking CEOs getting paid solid compensation when they get the kind of results they’re enjoying. It’s when they don’t get the performance and still receive the high compensation packages that upset everyone.

All of this while seniors strive to make ends meet with a zero per cent increase in the OAS (Old Age Security program) an increase in the CPP (Canadian Pension Plan) that amounts to $41.28 in 2010.

There is NO gravy train for Fathers, Mothers and Grandparents who built this country. For it seems they are the forgotten entity in a political drama that rewards only the affluent.

(Joe Somers is a Welland resident and longtime community activist)

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