D
deva
Guest
Dear friends!
I have posted some articles and then felt unwell. I was not sure whether I did correct thing. Then I want all the people from disadvantaged communities and all the people who want new lives to come here. I always pray to God to give everybody the chance to live the life they wanted to live. But the actual scenario is not what we perceive from faraway places. Things have changed tremendously during last couple of years.
I as an IMG have been preparing for the license and have already cleared two exams with very good scores. I was sure to get a position and started feeling comfort. Then I read this story:
http://www.rxpgonline.com/postx127903-0-810.html
Hi,
I just want to say based on what I see here that everyone is super qualified - really. We have all met - AND exceeded the levels expected of Canadian grads. It is so disappointing to see my country treat such educated people in this way. Reducing us to another year or so, just to get a slightly better letter of reference, slightly higher scores etc.
And from a foreign relations perspective, we dump tons of money into development projects through CIDA into nations to develop 'capacity' and then we only take the highest educated immigrants and lure them here with the hue and cry of 'we're' desperate for physicians.' So, those countries who need their people are here. And of course, us - the Canadians who chose to study abroad. Or, in our case, those who couldn't afford to do medicine in Canada so we went abroad where we could finance it.
Anyhow, I'm happy with my FM Ontario invite and I hope it works out - as all of us qualfied people do. It is my first match. Although last year, I went with a colleague to Toronto to the 'celebration' dinner and when Deb Matthews (Minsiter of Health) went around glad handing all the successfully matched folks, I did tell her: 'It's nice you are here for the photo opportunity, but there are thousands who are not in this room who didn't match who have also met the Canadian requirements.'
Of course, such bitter? - nay real - statements can never be uttered anywhere other than an anonymous forum. However, should I be fortunate enough to be selected I vow not to let this IMG issue rest. If Canada is closed - and it really is with 118 positions in FM for thousands of grad's - then say it like it is. And so many people here seem to want ob-gyn. 3 positions is it? I also wanted ob-gyn but I don't have a chance in H*%!l compared to such qualified candidates as yourselves.
Truthfully, I think that we cannot afford to eliminate the 'doctor shortage.' EAch doctor costs x amout of dollars, plus referrals to specialists plus drug costs etc. As a socialist medical system, we can't afford to do eliminate the shortage. Thus, the processes aren't really so ineffective or stupid - they are actually designed to deliver just the right amount of doctors that the Canadian system can afford.
I just feel duped. When I started, there were 12 FM positios, then 22, then 50 etc. So, I didn't do my American exams although my husband did.
And to be fair - as a Canadian born and bred - I feel there should be separate positions for Canadians returning home and truly new immigrants to Canada. Who can compete with a Canadian caribbean grad whose Dad is chief of whatever? With electives, language etc.
Anyhow, my .02 in a forum where all I see is hope and despair and a few successes. And each of us takes these results back to our families. How do we explain 10+ years of education for nothing? It is hard.
I cannot face family members this Christmas. My husband didn't even get an interview - and I did, but the chances of securing a position are low. I just can't answer all the family questions....
Ciao all. S-
PS. And yes, my husband with BSc, MSc, MBA all from top Canadian univeristy had to do IELTS. Really?
I felt bad and thought this was only true for the IMGs. Soon I found that I was wrong. I now know that there is something very wrong in the system. Something very bad is going on which should not be allowed to go on for long. We love our Canada and we should do everything for the benefit of its people. Please read the following stories and think again and again.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/19/demand-high-but-medical-specialists-not-finding-work-in-canada/
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/noon-today-super-rich-made-average-workers-yearly-021638891.html
The REAL Reason for denying IMDs
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/19/demand-high-but-medical-specialists-not-finding-work-in-canada/
Tom Blackwell Sep 19, 2011 – 6:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Sep 18, 2011 4:00 PM ET
The queues are shorter than they once were, but cancer patients in Canada can still wait close to a month to see a radiation oncologist and weeks more to start treatment.
As newly trained doctors in the specialty have hit the job market in the last year or two, however, they have faced an almost bizarre quandary; most cannot find work in a field that seems to urgently need them.
The oncologists are not alone. Medical organizations say physicians in a half-dozen or more specialties are facing unemployment or underemployment, despite the country’s continuing shortage of doctors and long wait lists for many medical services.
“It’s really frustrating,” said Dr. Shaun Loewen, 36, who recently finished his five-year residency in radiation oncology. “I want to start working and treating patients. That’s what the public has paid me to do and that’s what I want to do.… Unfortunatley, if I can’t find those opportunities in Canada, I’ll have to look elsewhere.”
Some of those stymied in their job search are trained in areas — like oncology and orthopedic surgery — where governments have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to expand services and reduce patient delays.
But while provincial governments have paid to train more specialists in those high-demand areas, hospitals and health regions often lack the money to hire them once they hit the job market, experts say.
Others argue there is a disconnect between the divvying up at medical schools of specialty training positions, called residencies, and the real-world patient demand for the graduates’ various services.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons — which oversees and sets standards for medical specialties — has already catalogued a list of high-unemployment specialties. It includes not only oncology and orthopedics but cardiac surgery, nephrology, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, otolaryngology — the ear, nose and throat field — and public health and preventive medicine.
“We thought, ‘Wow, this is a really surprising list,’ ” said Danielle Fréchette, the college’s health-policy director. “It’s paradoxical to have ongoing issues with wait times and cancelled surgeries — and able-and-willing bodies to meet those unmet needs (who can’t find work).”
The Royal College is currently surveying recently graduated residents on the issue and has so far discovered that one in five have failed to find full-time work, prompting them to take locums — temporary fill-in jobs for absent doctors — work part time, or return for further, sub-specialty training.
Half the 1,500 respondents to a recent survey by the residents’ association reported they were moderately to extremely concerned about finding work, said Dr. Adam Kaufman, president of the Canadian Association of Interns and Residents. The group has even started a program, Transition into Practice Service (TIPS) to help get positions for newly trained specialists.
Of 35 doctors who recently completed training in radiation oncology, only a handful have found jobs in Canada and three have already left for the United States, said Dr. Loewen.
During a typical TIPS session at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., one pathology trainee said he had already been told there would be no positions in the province when he finished next year, said Bryan MacLean, a project manager with the program.
Yet a national shortage of pathologists, resulting in heavy caseloads, is often blamed for the slew of scandals that have cropped up in recent years over mistakes in cancer diagnoses and child-death investigations.
In another province, a health minister actually told a meeting of student doctors last year “when you finish your training, don’t expect there to be a job,” said Mr. MacLean.
It is expected that most of the jobless doctors will get work eventually, but the delay could mean a year or two of not applying highly-sophisticated abilities, though numerous studies have shown that the competency of surgeons, especially, improves as they perform more of a particular procedure.
“If you’re not practising once you’ve been taught, your skills get a little rusty,” said Dr. Geoff Johnston, an orthopedic surgeon in Saskatoon and a spokesman for his specialty’s national association. “It’s important that one can promptly employ these people.”
While the situation varies from region to region and specialty to specialty, there is relatively little debate that Canada needs more doctors. In 2008, it ranked 26th of 32 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries on that front, with 2.3 physicians per 1,000 population, compared to the average of 3.2, and 2.4 in the U.S.
In response to outcry over long wait lists, provinces have in recent years significantly boosted medical school enrollment and the number of on-the-job training positions: two-year family-medicine residencies and five-year residencies in a specialty.
Once trained, family doctors and many other “primary-care” physicians, like pediatricians or psychiatrists, can simply hang out a shingle and start billing for their services. Surgeons and others who require expensive infrastructure like operating rooms to do their jobs, are often hired by hospitals or health regions. A cardiac surgeon, for instance, costs a hospital $1.5 million a year, though the doctor’s income is only part of that, said Ms. Frechette.
Physicians say the job market has been tightened in part because the expected wave of retirements has yet to materialize, with many older doctors deciding to keep working after investment losses.
Sometimes, as well, the jobs are out there, but might require a new specialist to relocate across the country, not always easy if they have working spouses and children, said Mr. MacLean.
Yet in areas where demand for doctors is still high, budget-constrained health institutions are often not hiring the additional specialists recently churned out, medical leaders say.
“I don’t think there was downstream planning as to ‘How do we accommodate them once they’re finished?’ ” said Dr. Johnson
The problems can also be traced back to medical schools, where there is scant science behind deciding how many positions to allot to each field, said Dr. John Haggie, president of the Canadian Medical Association.
“We don’t know as a nation or a province or a jurisdiction what kind of physician population … we actually need going forward,” he said. “As a result, people often take a fairly opportunistic, almost random career path, and end up with skills that are fairly focused and difficult to accommodate where they want to be.”
Successfully predicting needs is not necessarily easy, given the five-year lag before a medical-school graduate finishes specialty training. Ms. Fréchette said the Royal College is hoping to gather data that will contribute to better planning in future and avoid “knee-jerk” decisions on training doctors.
In the meantime, some worry about a medical exodus like that seen in the 1990s. Even Dr. Loewen, who wants nothing more than to work in Canada, said he may have to consider relocating to the U.S. soon.
“If recent graduates take more than a year or two to find a position in Canada, they may go to the States. If they do go to the States, history tells us that they are not likely to come back,” said Dr. Parliament. “I would find that to be a real shame.”
National Post
tblackwell@nationalpost.com
Physician facts
Cost to train a family doctor in Ontario during a two-year residency: $186,000
Cost to train a specialist during five-year residency: $514,000
Annual salary for doctors during residency: $50,000 – $80,000
Number of radiation oncologists who finished training in 2009 or 2010, responded to a recent survey and have not found full-time positions: 22 out of 31
Sources: Ontario Health Ministry; Canadian Association of Interns and Residents; Loewen et al. presentation to Canadian Association of Radiation Oncologists conference
By noon today, the super-rich have made an average worker's yearly salary
By Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – 8 hours ago
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/noon-today-super-rich-made-average-workers-yearly-021638891.html
OTTAWA - The richest of the rich have gained more ground in Canada, and are now making 189 times the average Canadian wage, according to a new report.
The 100 highest paid chief executives whose companies are listed on the S&P/TSX composite index made an average of $8.38 million in 2010, according to figures pulled from circulars by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think-tank.
That's 189 times higher than the $44,366 an average Canadian made working full time in 2010, the report says.
And it's a 27 per cent raise from the $6.6 million average compensation for the top 100 CEOs in 2009, the report says.
Regular Canadians, on the other hand, have seen their wages stagnate over the past few years. In 2010, after adjusting for inflation, average wages actually fell.
"The gap between Canada's CEO elite 100 and the rest of us is growing at a fast and steady pace, with no signs of letting up," says economist Hugh Mackenzie, who authored the report.
"The extraordinarily high pay of chief executive officers is more than a curiosity. It actually is a reflection of a troubling redistribution of society's resources in Canada and the United States, and in most of Western Europe," he said in an interview.
He points out that in 1998, the top 100 CEOs were paid 105 times the average wage. Since then, the ratio has generally climbed up.
In 2008, it was 174, dropping back to 155 during the recession in 2009. The high-water mark was 2007, when it peaked over 190.
It means that by noon on Jan. 3, the average top executive will have already made as much money as the average Canadian worker makes in a year.
The driving forces behind the inequality gap are complex, and lie in the structure of executive compensation packages, Mackenzie says.
Consultants giving advice to corporate boards on how much to pay their CEOs only compare to other CEOs, perpetually driving up the average in the race to be above-average, he explains.
The corporate board members all run in the same circles.
And many companies use stock options for a large part of their executives' bonuses, a practice that not only drives up pay packages but also ties compensation to share price rather than company performance, Mackenzie notes.
"The process of paying CEOs is really quite incestuous."
Solutions are equally complex. Debate in the United States has raged over this subject since the subprime fiasco of 2008, and the consensus seems to be that regulating the structure of compensation packages won't really work, Mackenzie says.
Instead, taxation is a better way to go, allowing corporate boards to compensate as they please, but putting governments in a position to claw back excesses and redistribute them as they see fit.
While Mackenzie does not expect Prime Minister Stephen Harper to hike taxes on the rich tomorrow, he does see some kind of policy response eventually.
"I actually see this kind of growing income inequality as inherently unstable. I think there will be a response," he said.
"The people at the very top of the income scale — and CEOs are at the top of the top — have really launched themselves into a kind of economic interplanetary travel. If the rest of us are on Earth, they're off somewhere else in a different world. I think that's unstable."
The top earner on the list is definitely in a galaxy of his own. Frank Stronach, the honorary chairman of auto-parts manufacturer Magna International Inc., (TSX:MG.DB) took home almost $62 million in 2010.
Excluding Stronach from the Top 100 calculation would bring the average pay package down by about $62,000, Mackenzie said.
Number two on the list — Donald Walker, also of Magna — made $16.7 million in 2010.
The top banker was Richard Waugh of Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS), pocketing $13.8 million in pay, bonuses, options and perks.
But Mackenzie points out that the compensation information companies include in their circulars don't catch the pay packages of investment bankers, whether or not they work for publicly traded companies.
I have posted some articles and then felt unwell. I was not sure whether I did correct thing. Then I want all the people from disadvantaged communities and all the people who want new lives to come here. I always pray to God to give everybody the chance to live the life they wanted to live. But the actual scenario is not what we perceive from faraway places. Things have changed tremendously during last couple of years.
I as an IMG have been preparing for the license and have already cleared two exams with very good scores. I was sure to get a position and started feeling comfort. Then I read this story:
http://www.rxpgonline.com/postx127903-0-810.html
Hi,
I just want to say based on what I see here that everyone is super qualified - really. We have all met - AND exceeded the levels expected of Canadian grads. It is so disappointing to see my country treat such educated people in this way. Reducing us to another year or so, just to get a slightly better letter of reference, slightly higher scores etc.
And from a foreign relations perspective, we dump tons of money into development projects through CIDA into nations to develop 'capacity' and then we only take the highest educated immigrants and lure them here with the hue and cry of 'we're' desperate for physicians.' So, those countries who need their people are here. And of course, us - the Canadians who chose to study abroad. Or, in our case, those who couldn't afford to do medicine in Canada so we went abroad where we could finance it.
Anyhow, I'm happy with my FM Ontario invite and I hope it works out - as all of us qualfied people do. It is my first match. Although last year, I went with a colleague to Toronto to the 'celebration' dinner and when Deb Matthews (Minsiter of Health) went around glad handing all the successfully matched folks, I did tell her: 'It's nice you are here for the photo opportunity, but there are thousands who are not in this room who didn't match who have also met the Canadian requirements.'
Of course, such bitter? - nay real - statements can never be uttered anywhere other than an anonymous forum. However, should I be fortunate enough to be selected I vow not to let this IMG issue rest. If Canada is closed - and it really is with 118 positions in FM for thousands of grad's - then say it like it is. And so many people here seem to want ob-gyn. 3 positions is it? I also wanted ob-gyn but I don't have a chance in H*%!l compared to such qualified candidates as yourselves.
Truthfully, I think that we cannot afford to eliminate the 'doctor shortage.' EAch doctor costs x amout of dollars, plus referrals to specialists plus drug costs etc. As a socialist medical system, we can't afford to do eliminate the shortage. Thus, the processes aren't really so ineffective or stupid - they are actually designed to deliver just the right amount of doctors that the Canadian system can afford.
I just feel duped. When I started, there were 12 FM positios, then 22, then 50 etc. So, I didn't do my American exams although my husband did.
And to be fair - as a Canadian born and bred - I feel there should be separate positions for Canadians returning home and truly new immigrants to Canada. Who can compete with a Canadian caribbean grad whose Dad is chief of whatever? With electives, language etc.
Anyhow, my .02 in a forum where all I see is hope and despair and a few successes. And each of us takes these results back to our families. How do we explain 10+ years of education for nothing? It is hard.
I cannot face family members this Christmas. My husband didn't even get an interview - and I did, but the chances of securing a position are low. I just can't answer all the family questions....
Ciao all. S-
PS. And yes, my husband with BSc, MSc, MBA all from top Canadian univeristy had to do IELTS. Really?
I felt bad and thought this was only true for the IMGs. Soon I found that I was wrong. I now know that there is something very wrong in the system. Something very bad is going on which should not be allowed to go on for long. We love our Canada and we should do everything for the benefit of its people. Please read the following stories and think again and again.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/19/demand-high-but-medical-specialists-not-finding-work-in-canada/
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/noon-today-super-rich-made-average-workers-yearly-021638891.html
The REAL Reason for denying IMDs
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/19/demand-high-but-medical-specialists-not-finding-work-in-canada/
Tom Blackwell Sep 19, 2011 – 6:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Sep 18, 2011 4:00 PM ET
The queues are shorter than they once were, but cancer patients in Canada can still wait close to a month to see a radiation oncologist and weeks more to start treatment.
As newly trained doctors in the specialty have hit the job market in the last year or two, however, they have faced an almost bizarre quandary; most cannot find work in a field that seems to urgently need them.
The oncologists are not alone. Medical organizations say physicians in a half-dozen or more specialties are facing unemployment or underemployment, despite the country’s continuing shortage of doctors and long wait lists for many medical services.
“It’s really frustrating,” said Dr. Shaun Loewen, 36, who recently finished his five-year residency in radiation oncology. “I want to start working and treating patients. That’s what the public has paid me to do and that’s what I want to do.… Unfortunatley, if I can’t find those opportunities in Canada, I’ll have to look elsewhere.”
Some of those stymied in their job search are trained in areas — like oncology and orthopedic surgery — where governments have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to expand services and reduce patient delays.
But while provincial governments have paid to train more specialists in those high-demand areas, hospitals and health regions often lack the money to hire them once they hit the job market, experts say.
Others argue there is a disconnect between the divvying up at medical schools of specialty training positions, called residencies, and the real-world patient demand for the graduates’ various services.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons — which oversees and sets standards for medical specialties — has already catalogued a list of high-unemployment specialties. It includes not only oncology and orthopedics but cardiac surgery, nephrology, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, otolaryngology — the ear, nose and throat field — and public health and preventive medicine.
“We thought, ‘Wow, this is a really surprising list,’ ” said Danielle Fréchette, the college’s health-policy director. “It’s paradoxical to have ongoing issues with wait times and cancelled surgeries — and able-and-willing bodies to meet those unmet needs (who can’t find work).”
The Royal College is currently surveying recently graduated residents on the issue and has so far discovered that one in five have failed to find full-time work, prompting them to take locums — temporary fill-in jobs for absent doctors — work part time, or return for further, sub-specialty training.
Half the 1,500 respondents to a recent survey by the residents’ association reported they were moderately to extremely concerned about finding work, said Dr. Adam Kaufman, president of the Canadian Association of Interns and Residents. The group has even started a program, Transition into Practice Service (TIPS) to help get positions for newly trained specialists.
Of 35 doctors who recently completed training in radiation oncology, only a handful have found jobs in Canada and three have already left for the United States, said Dr. Loewen.
During a typical TIPS session at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., one pathology trainee said he had already been told there would be no positions in the province when he finished next year, said Bryan MacLean, a project manager with the program.
Yet a national shortage of pathologists, resulting in heavy caseloads, is often blamed for the slew of scandals that have cropped up in recent years over mistakes in cancer diagnoses and child-death investigations.
In another province, a health minister actually told a meeting of student doctors last year “when you finish your training, don’t expect there to be a job,” said Mr. MacLean.
It is expected that most of the jobless doctors will get work eventually, but the delay could mean a year or two of not applying highly-sophisticated abilities, though numerous studies have shown that the competency of surgeons, especially, improves as they perform more of a particular procedure.
“If you’re not practising once you’ve been taught, your skills get a little rusty,” said Dr. Geoff Johnston, an orthopedic surgeon in Saskatoon and a spokesman for his specialty’s national association. “It’s important that one can promptly employ these people.”
While the situation varies from region to region and specialty to specialty, there is relatively little debate that Canada needs more doctors. In 2008, it ranked 26th of 32 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries on that front, with 2.3 physicians per 1,000 population, compared to the average of 3.2, and 2.4 in the U.S.
In response to outcry over long wait lists, provinces have in recent years significantly boosted medical school enrollment and the number of on-the-job training positions: two-year family-medicine residencies and five-year residencies in a specialty.
Once trained, family doctors and many other “primary-care” physicians, like pediatricians or psychiatrists, can simply hang out a shingle and start billing for their services. Surgeons and others who require expensive infrastructure like operating rooms to do their jobs, are often hired by hospitals or health regions. A cardiac surgeon, for instance, costs a hospital $1.5 million a year, though the doctor’s income is only part of that, said Ms. Frechette.
Physicians say the job market has been tightened in part because the expected wave of retirements has yet to materialize, with many older doctors deciding to keep working after investment losses.
Sometimes, as well, the jobs are out there, but might require a new specialist to relocate across the country, not always easy if they have working spouses and children, said Mr. MacLean.
Yet in areas where demand for doctors is still high, budget-constrained health institutions are often not hiring the additional specialists recently churned out, medical leaders say.
“I don’t think there was downstream planning as to ‘How do we accommodate them once they’re finished?’ ” said Dr. Johnson
The problems can also be traced back to medical schools, where there is scant science behind deciding how many positions to allot to each field, said Dr. John Haggie, president of the Canadian Medical Association.
“We don’t know as a nation or a province or a jurisdiction what kind of physician population … we actually need going forward,” he said. “As a result, people often take a fairly opportunistic, almost random career path, and end up with skills that are fairly focused and difficult to accommodate where they want to be.”
Successfully predicting needs is not necessarily easy, given the five-year lag before a medical-school graduate finishes specialty training. Ms. Fréchette said the Royal College is hoping to gather data that will contribute to better planning in future and avoid “knee-jerk” decisions on training doctors.
In the meantime, some worry about a medical exodus like that seen in the 1990s. Even Dr. Loewen, who wants nothing more than to work in Canada, said he may have to consider relocating to the U.S. soon.
“If recent graduates take more than a year or two to find a position in Canada, they may go to the States. If they do go to the States, history tells us that they are not likely to come back,” said Dr. Parliament. “I would find that to be a real shame.”
National Post
tblackwell@nationalpost.com
Physician facts
Cost to train a family doctor in Ontario during a two-year residency: $186,000
Cost to train a specialist during five-year residency: $514,000
Annual salary for doctors during residency: $50,000 – $80,000
Number of radiation oncologists who finished training in 2009 or 2010, responded to a recent survey and have not found full-time positions: 22 out of 31
Sources: Ontario Health Ministry; Canadian Association of Interns and Residents; Loewen et al. presentation to Canadian Association of Radiation Oncologists conference
By noon today, the super-rich have made an average worker's yearly salary
By Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – 8 hours ago
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/noon-today-super-rich-made-average-workers-yearly-021638891.html
OTTAWA - The richest of the rich have gained more ground in Canada, and are now making 189 times the average Canadian wage, according to a new report.
The 100 highest paid chief executives whose companies are listed on the S&P/TSX composite index made an average of $8.38 million in 2010, according to figures pulled from circulars by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think-tank.
That's 189 times higher than the $44,366 an average Canadian made working full time in 2010, the report says.
And it's a 27 per cent raise from the $6.6 million average compensation for the top 100 CEOs in 2009, the report says.
Regular Canadians, on the other hand, have seen their wages stagnate over the past few years. In 2010, after adjusting for inflation, average wages actually fell.
"The gap between Canada's CEO elite 100 and the rest of us is growing at a fast and steady pace, with no signs of letting up," says economist Hugh Mackenzie, who authored the report.
"The extraordinarily high pay of chief executive officers is more than a curiosity. It actually is a reflection of a troubling redistribution of society's resources in Canada and the United States, and in most of Western Europe," he said in an interview.
He points out that in 1998, the top 100 CEOs were paid 105 times the average wage. Since then, the ratio has generally climbed up.
In 2008, it was 174, dropping back to 155 during the recession in 2009. The high-water mark was 2007, when it peaked over 190.
It means that by noon on Jan. 3, the average top executive will have already made as much money as the average Canadian worker makes in a year.
The driving forces behind the inequality gap are complex, and lie in the structure of executive compensation packages, Mackenzie says.
Consultants giving advice to corporate boards on how much to pay their CEOs only compare to other CEOs, perpetually driving up the average in the race to be above-average, he explains.
The corporate board members all run in the same circles.
And many companies use stock options for a large part of their executives' bonuses, a practice that not only drives up pay packages but also ties compensation to share price rather than company performance, Mackenzie notes.
"The process of paying CEOs is really quite incestuous."
Solutions are equally complex. Debate in the United States has raged over this subject since the subprime fiasco of 2008, and the consensus seems to be that regulating the structure of compensation packages won't really work, Mackenzie says.
Instead, taxation is a better way to go, allowing corporate boards to compensate as they please, but putting governments in a position to claw back excesses and redistribute them as they see fit.
While Mackenzie does not expect Prime Minister Stephen Harper to hike taxes on the rich tomorrow, he does see some kind of policy response eventually.
"I actually see this kind of growing income inequality as inherently unstable. I think there will be a response," he said.
"The people at the very top of the income scale — and CEOs are at the top of the top — have really launched themselves into a kind of economic interplanetary travel. If the rest of us are on Earth, they're off somewhere else in a different world. I think that's unstable."
The top earner on the list is definitely in a galaxy of his own. Frank Stronach, the honorary chairman of auto-parts manufacturer Magna International Inc., (TSX:MG.DB) took home almost $62 million in 2010.
Excluding Stronach from the Top 100 calculation would bring the average pay package down by about $62,000, Mackenzie said.
Number two on the list — Donald Walker, also of Magna — made $16.7 million in 2010.
The top banker was Richard Waugh of Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS), pocketing $13.8 million in pay, bonuses, options and perks.
But Mackenzie points out that the compensation information companies include in their circulars don't catch the pay packages of investment bankers, whether or not they work for publicly traded companies.
