Even though he is the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau is far from being the highest paid in the federal apparatus. The prize goes to a civil servant who earns 17 times her salary, reveals a compilation from our Bureau of Investigation.
It is Deborah K. Orida, CEO of PSP Investments, the manager of pension funds for Canadian government employees, who pockets the biggest income, she who earned $7.1 million in 2023-2024 by taking into account counts his hiring bonus of $2 million.
Ms. Orida earns nearly $2.5 million more than the CEO of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Charles Emond, who was, for his part, the highest paid executive in the Quebec state.
Top executives at PSP and executives at CPP Investment, which manages Canada’s pension plan, are by far the highest paid employees of federal Crown corporations.
No less than 10 of them earn more than $2 million per year.
The best paid in the civil service
These federal leaders earn several million dollars per year
No surprise
“Those who are in the lead are the ones we expected. All financial executives who manage large pension funds are there. It’s the same thing in Quebec with the CDPQ,” says Geneviève Tellier, professor of public administration at the University of Ottawa.
The CEO of the institute on the governance of private and public organizations, François Dauphin, is not surprised either.
According to him, “the remuneration is lower if we compare ourselves to the big banks, but it remains really high compared to the rest of the state-owned companies”.
The PM below $500,000
For comparison, the salary of
Mr. Trudeau’s figure is $406,200. He is the sixth highest paid country leader in the world. To arrive at these findings, our Bureau of Investigation compiled the salaries of civil servants contained in federal government decrees and company annual reports.
The data has been added to our interactive tool which shows civil service salaries.
François Dauphin also believes that it is normal for finance executives to be better paid, because these organizations try to compete with the private sector.
In competition with the private sector
“You can easily become a private millionaire with other forms of remuneration, such as stock-based remuneration. This is what public plans must compete with,” he emphasizes.
PSP says it bases the compensation of Deborah K. Orida and the rest of its executives on what is done within fund managers in other provinces, such as the CDPQ, pension plans, investment managers, banks and companies insurance.
