Singh hopes to tax companies where CEOs make ‘excessive profits,’ in bid to reduce inequality

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh plans to introduce legislation to “rein in outrageous CEO pay” by increasing the taxes of companies where CEOs make “excessive” profits.
Singh told reporters Tuesday he’s taking a page from the books of U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren by introducing a private member’s bill that, if passed, would increase companies’ taxes based on a sliding scale: they could see increases ranging from 0.5 to 5 per cent depending on the size of the CEO’s salary compared to the median salary of a worker in their company.
“What this bill will propose to do is to finally say clearly, that if you can afford to pay CEOs exorbitant salaries, then you should increase the wages of workers,” Singh said. “This is to decrease inequality. This is to force companies to stop the inequality that continues to grow.” According to the NDP, Singh’s bill would “be similar” to the U.S. Senate Tax Excessive CEOs Pay Act that the party claims would have seen some companies pay significantly more if it had been law in Canada in 2021, including:
Loblaw paying up to $106 million more; Rogers paying pay up to $23 million more; and
RBC paying up to $200 million more in taxes.
The NDP leader is currently near the top of the list of MPs eligible to table a private members bill, improving his chances of doing so before the end of session.
While inflation has cooled in the last month — dropping to 4.3 per cent in March, according to the latest Consumer Price Index from Statistics Canada released Tuesday — grocery prices remain high. In his remarks, Singh called out grocery chains and their CEO’s salaries directly.
Singh on Tuesday mentioned several times the salary of outgoing Loblaw president Galen Weston. It was announced Tuesday that Weston would be stepping away from the day-to-day operations of Loblaw, while staying on as chairperson of the board of directors and CEO of its parent company, George Weston Ltd.
Weston was one of three grocery store CEOs and presidents to appear in March, before a parliamentary committee studying inflated grocery prices.
According to the Canadian Press, Weston’s compensation last year reached $11.7 million, a nearly $1.1-million increase from the year before, between both his roles as CEO of Loblaw and its holding company… Source:ctvnews.ca/