Canadian Fund Executive Compensation: methodology

Snapshot canada-2026-09-16-622ba89c · 9 funds · 56 people · 128 executive-year records · 2019–2026 · data as of September 16, 2026

What this is

Named executive compensation at Canadian public funds, read from each fund's annual report and compensation discussion and analysis and standardized by Michael Oak Advisors. The file behind this page holds 128 executive-year records for 56 people at 9 funds, disclosure years 2019 to 2026. Every figure on the page is computed in the browser from those records; nothing is typed into the page.

BCI and HOOPP disclose governance only, not individual compensation, and are not in this release.

Which records enter a benchmark

A record enters a benchmark when the executive held the role for the full year and the compensation is completely disclosed (Present-Full and Complete in the review). 114 of 128 records are eligible; 14 are not: 6 for partial year, 6 for disclosure could not be read reliably, 2 for disclosure gap. Excluded records stay visible on the People tab and in each fund's profile with their reason, and never enter a percentile.

The default benchmark takes each fund's latest disclosure year and the eligible executives in it: 42 records at 9 funds. Years are not pooled: a fund with six years of disclosure is one peer, not six. A single disclosure year is the alternative, and every year remains on the People tab.

What the dollar figures are

Six pay bases, never merged. MOA Standardized Direct Compensation is the default. MOA Standardized Direct Compensation is computed by Michael Oak Advisors so that one figure means the same thing at every fund; every other basis is the fund's own number as filed. That distinction is the point of having both: a filed total can be traced back to the fund's table, and a computed one can be compared across funds, and neither does the other's job.

The deferred portion of the annual incentive is distinct from a separate long-term incentive. At 2 funds (CDPQ, IMCO) the fund's own summary compensation table carries no separate long-term column, so a blank long-term column on those records is a design and not a gap (CDPQ, 2025 annual report TABLE 40 p91; IMCO, 2025 annual report p76). Every other fund does disclose a separate long-term or deferred-award column.

Pay mix runs on the same test as MOA Standardized Direct Compensation: a record enters it when all four components (base salary, cash incentive, deferred incentive, long-term incentive) are backed by the fund's own compensation table AND admitted by that basis, and its shares are computed against that standardized total. A component counts as backed when the table discloses it and the figure matches, when a column of that kind shows it as nil, or when the fund has no such column and its own filing shows there is nothing to disclose. A nil in a column of a different kind — a payment of an earlier year’s award, say — proves nothing about the grant and does not count. A component that is merely present in the file, or missing, does not count and is never read as a zero — and a component the table discloses as a PAYMENT of an earlier year's award is refused even though the figure matches, because a grant-basis total cannot hold it.

On that test 39 of 128 records carry a standardized total, including 37 of the 42 eligible records in the default cohort. Those are two different denominators and the page keeps them apart: 42 records are eligible for a benchmark, and the standardized medians are computed on the 37 of them this basis admits. The rest are left out of pay mix and carry no MOA Standardized Direct Compensation figure rather than a partial one. Coverage is therefore never complete by construction: it is complete only where the filings make it so, and today that is 39 records and not 128.

Pension and other compensation

Two elements are published beside every total and never inside one: no pay basis, median, percentile or pay-mix share on this page includes them. Each is the fund's own figure, read from its compensation table, and is published only where that printed figure matches the file for the person and the column. 106 of 128 records carry a pension figure and 105 of 128 an other-compensation figure.

A blank is never a zero. 12 records carry neither element because the record's own pay figures do not match the fund's table for that year, so nothing is attached to them; 11 carry pension only because the fund prints its other-compensation column blank for that person; 10 carry other compensation only because the fund's table has no pension column. A printed 0 is published as 0.

Whether the Fund-Filed Total on this page includes the elements is measured on every record whose elements publish, as the Fund-Filed Total less its base, cash incentive, deferred incentive and long-term incentive, and it is not the same at every fund or in every year:

• AIMCo: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes neither element for 2023–2025.
• CDPQ: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes neither element for 2023 and 2025.
• CPP Investments: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes pension and other compensation for 2022–2024; includes neither element for 2025–2026.
• IMCO: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes neither element for 2024–2025.
• OMERS: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes pension and other compensation for 2021–2024; includes neither element for 2025.
• OPTrust: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes neither element for 2025.
• OTPP: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes neither element for 2023–2025.
• PSP Investments: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes pension but not other compensation for 2025–2026; does not reconcile to either element on every record for 2023.
• Vestcor: on this page its Fund-Filed Total includes pension and other compensation for 2020–2022; includes neither element for 2025; does not reconcile to either element on every record for 2024.

MOA Standardized Direct Compensation includes neither element on any record, so where a Fund-Filed Total includes one the two bases differ by exactly that amount.

Currency

Figures are Canadian dollars as disclosed. 16 records (14 in GBP, 2 in HKD) were disclosed in another currency and are converted at the Bank of Canada rate on the period each record reports (calendar-year pay at that December 31, fiscal-year pay at the fiscal year end; the last published rate on or before that day). The rates used are in the table below. They enter benchmarks at the converted figure and are marked on the record; 6 of the 42 default-cohort records are converted. The page performs no conversion of its own.

Floors, counts and the percentile

A median needs at least 2 records; a quartile, a 90th percentile or a distribution needs 5. Floors count records, not funds; the number of people and the number of unique funds are shown on every row, and a row resting on fewer than 5 funds is marked with a dagger. Percentiles are linear interpolation on position (n−1)·q, the definition Excel's PERCENTILE.INC uses; the review's own role tabs reproduce under it.

Where a fund discloses two chief investment officers in one year (OTPP), both are records in the CIO row and the fund counts once.

Fund size is one current AUM figure per fund from the review, not a year-specific value; the size filter and the median AUM use it as such.

The pay-rank ladder

The Benchmarks tab groups the same records two ways. By role is the default. By pay rank regroups them: Rank 1 is the highest paid among benchmarked executives at one fund in one disclosure year, rank 2 the next, and so on, on whichever pay basis is in use. It is the same population as the role ladder -- 42 records at 9 funds in the default cohort -- regrouped, which is what makes the two views comparable. Neither is a seniority order: rank is what a fund paid, not what it called the job.

A fund's top-paid officer can be absent from every rank. Rank is taken over the eligible records only, so a record excluded for a partial year, a disclosure gap or extraction uncertainty takes no rank at all -- 14 of 128 records in the file are excluded for those reasons. In the default cohort the highest rank 1 record is Ralph Berg at OMERS (2025, $8,274,172). That is the highest paid among benchmarked, not the highest paid disclosed.

The ladder is published to rank 5. Ranks past it are computed and withheld: 2 records at 2 funds, a sample too thin to publish and one whose median no longer falls below the rank above it. A rung that out-earns the rung above it is worse than no rung. Across ranks 1 to 5 the default cohort's medians fall at every step. Under a narrower peer set they need not: funds disclose different numbers of executives, so a lower rung can rest on a handful of records at large payers and sit above the rung over it. The page marks a row resting on fewer than 5 funds, and the floors apply to a rank row exactly as they do to a role row.

Plan design

The Plan design tab summarises each fund's annual incentive structure, deferral, long-term vehicle, clawback and target market position for 9 funds, coded by Michael Oak Advisors from the fund's public disclosure. The coding has not yet been independently re-verified. Compensation consultants are reported as used or not used, never by name.

Next refresh

The next refresh is expected in July 2027: the first day of the month after the last fund's expected next release, one year on from its latest. The register below is each fund's most recent report and the day it was released, from the fund's own announcement. 0 of 9 funds have published a newer report since the review this page rests on (September 16, 2026); those reports are not yet in the data.

Sources and what is not here

Every record names the fund, the disclosure year, the report, the table or section and the page it was read from. No public URL is on file for these documents, so there is no link to follow yet. Nothing on this page is aged to a common date, converted beyond the rates above, compared across countries, or estimated by a model. Narrative descriptions of each fund's compensation philosophy are not published in this release.

Excluded records