The Bank of Canada divvied out massive bonuses to its executives last year, while Canadians were faced with the highest inflation in over 40 years and seven interest rate hikes.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation obtained records through an access-to-information filing which revealed that of the 82 executives working for the Bank of Canada, all but two received bonuses for either “at-risk pay” or “performance pay.”
In 2022, executives received an average bonus of $43,700, amounting to a total cost of over $3.5 million, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).
“Executives at the Bank of Canada shouldn’t be showering themselves with big bonuses when Canadians can’t afford gas, groceries or mortgages,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director.
“Most organizations don’t give 98 per cent of their executives bonuses when they have their worst year in four decades.”
Since 2015, executives at the Bank of Canada have accumulated almost $21 million in bonuses and the central bank’s executive class has expanded by 18%.
In 2015, there were a total of 69 executives who received at total $683,794 in bonuses, by 2022, that number grew to 82 executives, receiving a total of $3,588,324.
Altogether, Bank of Canada executives have received $20,960,416 in bonuses since 2015.
The mandate for the Bank of Canada has been to maintain “an inflation target of two per cent inside a control range of one to three per cent” however, inflation was 6.8% in 2022.
According to Statistics Canada, that number made for “a 40-year high, the largest increase since 1982” and the Bank of Canada didn’t manage to meet its inflation target the year before either in 2021.
Canadians had been assured by the central bank’s Governor Tiff Macklem that interest rates would remain low for a “long time” in 2020, however only two years later rates had been hiked up seven times in 2022.
Macklem was willing to admit that they “got some things wrong” when pressed about the bank’s poor performance.
That same year, the Bank of Canada’s deputy governor also admitted that “we haven’t managed to keep inflation at our target,” and said that it was the central bankers themselves who “should be held accountable.”
“Handing out big bonus cheques is an odd way to hold your organization accountable,” Terrazzano said. “Canadians have every right to be furious when they find out executives at their central bank were taking bonuses as inflation and interest rates soared.”
