The total compensation paid to the top 40 Calgary-based executives was $293.6 million in 2010.

Recently, the Alberta government announced that the minimum wage will be raised to $9.40/hour which comes to under $19,600 per year. It would take 14,980 Albertans working at this wage to earn as much as these 40 executives. Is this social justice?

Why are these executives paid such outrageous amounts? The answer is simple; it is found in the colloquial saying: “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

The corporate elite have a ‘cartel of the rich’ whereby they serve on each other’s board of directors and buy each other’s company stocks.

“You sit on my board and authorize a high compensation package and I’ll sit on your board and do the same for you. We’ll give you large stock assessments as bonuses and also buy large blocks of your stock so that we can control the majority of the company’s shares. Then we can give shareholder approval to the board’s actions such as the say-on-pay vote to support executive compensation.”

Forty-three of these executives were from oil and gas production and transportation companies. They were paid over $222 million. Now we know where a good portion of the bonanza reaped by these companies as a result of the royalty reductions is going. I suppose Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Alliance are proud of themselves for facilitating their puppet masters to gorge on this wealth instead of sharing it with all Albertans.

Len Skowronski

Leader

Alberta Social Credit Party