Galen Weston just gave himself a $1.2 million raise and people are outraged

by Julia Mastroianni for Post City Posted: April 5, 2023 Photo: Courtesy Ontario Chamber of Commerce/flickr

The Westons are making headlines again, and predictably, it’s for something pretty infuriating. Canada’s most hated billionaire Galen Weston received a $1 million raise for running Loblaws in 2022. The reason? A consultancy firm hired by the grocery chain his family owns determined that he was being underpaid.

As reported by The Globe and Mail, filings for Loblaw Cos Ltd. show that Weston received pay of $11.79 million last year, which included salary, bonuses and stock-based compensation. That’s an 11 per cent jump from his $10.6 million salary in 2021, and a 31 per cent increase from his salary of just over $9 million in 2020.

The pay raise occurred after the company decided to hire Meridian Compensation Partners to review the executive compensation plans at Loblaws. The firm was paid $118,574 in 2021 and $122,806 in 2022 to uncover that, lo and behold, Weston was one of the only executives among all of the company’s upper management not making enough money, according to “external benchmarks.”

“The results of the 2022 review provided that Mr. Weston’s total direct compensation was below the market median and Loblaw’s compensation policy objective,” a statement from the company circulated to shareholders reads.

Weston wasn’t alone in receiving a pay raise — despite the firm’s review finding their salaries to be within an acceptable range, Loblaws’ chief financial officer Richard Dufresne saw his pay bumped from $6.64 million to $6.73 million, and chief operating officer Robert Sawyer received an increase from $7.5 million to $9.3 million.

The news comes just a few weeks after Weston and other grocery CEOs in Canada appeared before a parliamentary committee studying inflated grocery prices. Federal politicians, including Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh called for more transparency on how grocery chains have been making record-high profits. Food prices were up over 10 per cent year-over-year in January, compared to an inflation rate that is at 5.9 per cent.

During the testimony, Weston stated that the company’s profits are reinvested back into new stores and hiring more employees. “[Profit] doesn’t go to me. It goes back into this country,” he said.

Canadians are calling him to task for those remarks now, and have expressed outrage at the size of Weston’s salary compared to that of his employees or other important jobs in the country.

The average grocery store employee makes around $31,000 in Canada, meaning Weston is making more than 380 times that of some of his employees.

Another person noted that his raise is close to what the Daily Food Bank needs to operate each month.

A recent report found that 60 per cent more Canadians per month are expected to use food banks in 2023, reflecting growing food insecurity and financial instability across the country.

But hey, at least Galen Weston can continue to pay for his Georgian Bay island and Florida vacation home!

Article exclusive to POST CITY

BACK TO HOME