Caisse wage increases don’t worry Quebec at all

The CAQ government is not concerned about large wage increases in the Caisse de Depot et placement du Québec (CDPQ) in 2021 and prefers to look at the long-term trend.

“It is wrong to say that compensation for Caisse employees has increased by 25%. The Prime Minister’s Office said in writing.

But as Newspaper I mentioned that Friday in Michel Gerrard’s columnCompensation has already increased 25% in one year for 1,454 Caisse employees. The median wage was $350,756 per person last year, up $69,664 from 2020.

But Quebec instead believes that salary increases should be considered over a longer period of time.

We were told, “In fact, compensation increased by 15.8% over 5 years, an average of 3.2% per year.”

The magazine checked a longer horizon to check the direction. Over seven years, the salary increase was 69.3% (median salary of $207,176 in 2014). Importantly, Caisse’s average compensation has nearly doubled in 10 years, to $176,172 in 2011.

distorted by the epidemic?

However, Quebec believes that we must pay attention to 2020, the beginning of the epidemic, which distorts data and distorts the performance of the institution.

The government argues that “bonuses decreased in 2020 due to the decline in the financial markets.”

However, if the global stock markets had fallen significantly for several weeks, especially in March 2020, they ended the year in positive territory.

In the United States, for the S&P 500 index, the increase was 16.1%, in the Nasdaq 40.8% and in the TSX 5.6%. However, Caisse has seen a negative return in its real estate portfolio due to its exposure to malls, bloodless during the pandemic.