The executives for Canada’s three biggest supermarket chains – Loblaws, Empire (Sobeys) and Metro – were rewarded with millions in pay and bonuses last year.
Sales soared at the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns because restaurants and cafeterias were closed.
That triggered bonuses based on meeting sales and profit targets.
Metro paid chief executive officer Eric La Flèche a bonus of $1.29-million on top of his salary of just over $1-million for the year that ended Sept. 25, reports the Globe and Mail.
Metro’s executive team of four garnered bonuses of $450,000 to $505,000.
Empire’s chief executive officer Michael Medline was paid a bonus of $2.71 million. The four members of its executive team reaped bonuses of $579,000 to $1.01-million.
These are the executives who decide how to squeeze suppliers, a squeeze that ends up hurting the weakest in the supply chains, such as farmers.
Meanwhile the CBC reported that Canada’s top-paid executives used federal employment subsidies to boost their income. Many of them make more in the first half of the first day of 2022 than many full-time Canadian workers are paid for a year.
It's past time to reverse tax breaks for the wealthiest Canadians.
