Some cheerleaders on the street have been jumping for joy because CEO bonuses skidded 19 per cent in Canada in 2002, the notion being that corporate boards are finally cracking the whip on shoddy performances in corner offices.

We’re here to rain on that parade.

The reality is that there is still a huge posse of bloated CEOs feeding at the public trough.

The correlation between pay and performance is still laughable at many public companies, and many corporate boards still don’t get it. In a year when the TSX was down 15 per cent, base salaries still rose eight per cent.

Sure, it’s heartening to see Jim Shaw, CEO of Calgary’s Shaw Communications, get a big fat goose egg in the bonus department along with Nortel’s Frank Dunn and numerous other CEOs in the annual Globe and Mail compensation survey.

But shareholders are probably not exactly overjoyed by the fact that Jim Shaw’s father, JR (for Jolly Rich?) Shaw, Shaw’s executive chairman, received compensation totalling $7.3 million in 2002, when the company lost $288.3 million and the shareholders took a 50-per-cent pay cut as the stock was chopped in half.

According to the survey, JR’s bonus was $6.3 million, an increase of 37 per cent over the previous year.

We tip the fedora to JR, who must run one heck of a board meeting.

Shouldn’t shareholders, like hockey fans, be invited to sit in on the boardroom games and cheer on the star players? Unfortunately, these days you need a program to tell the stars from the pretenders.

WestJet CEO Clive Beddoe is widely regarded as one of the marquee corporate players.

Yet, the mastermind behind the Calgary-based airline can’t carry JR’s skates when it comes to cashing a bonus.

As much as Beddoe is revered for his corporate governance, he received a bonus of $120,786 last year despite ramping up profits by 40 per cent in 2002 (which, of course, goes a long way in explaining why he is so revered).

True to WestJet’s penny-pinching philosophy, Beddoe’s base salary is one of the lowest in the country at $220,000 per year, which is about one dollar for every time he takes a rip at Air Canada.

But before you erect a statue of Beddoe, you ought to know he took home $4,025,545 in 2002 by exercising stock options worth $3,640,781.

The fattest paycheques in Alberta in 2002 were cashed by Calgary’s oilpatch CEOs, who must have worked their butts off getting the oil price to double like that.

While Galen Weston topped the CEO list with a stipend of $32 million, Rick George of Suncor Energy and Gwyn Morgan of EnCana did the ’patch proud, managing to crack the top 10.

George’s base salary was $809,615, but he was fourth in Canada, raking in $20.9 million on the strength of stock option gains and the granting of share units.

But George and Suncor did produce with the bottom line. Suncor’s profits doubled in 2002.

Morgan, 10th with total compensation of just over $10 million, boasted one of the most lucrative bonuses at $2.5 million while EnCana shares gained 22 per cent.

The only other oilpatch CEOs with million-dollar bonuses were Ron Brenneman of PetroCanada, which showed a 28-per-cent return on its shares, and Hal Kvisle of TransCanada Pipelines, which showed a 15-per-cent return.

Shareholders can’t be too upset with lavish compensation to executives who enhance shareholder value, but many CEOs are handsomely rewarded for mediocre results.

Magna International shareholders absorbed a 12-per-cent pay cut last year, but company CEO Belinda Stronach was showered with a bonus of $6,214,811.

A handful of high-profile Alberta CEOs were stiffed on bonuses, including Hank Swartout of Precision Drilling, whose company’s profits were halved in 2002.

Swartout will manage. His total compensation was $10,003,914 – 11th on the list.

ATI Technologies shareholders can’t be too thrilled to see that CEO K.Y. Ho received $6.1 million, including $5.7 million from exercising stock options, while the company lost $47.5 million US.

Ho and Co. may be brought back to earth by the Ontario Securities Commission, which has accused Ho, his wife and four others of trading company shares in advance of a profit warning.

Some board members have begun tugging on the reins in the front office, but this is no small task.

Nope, a horse named avarice ain’t too easy to rein in.

* SAGE WORDS: “Twenty-five years ago, CEOs earned 40 to 50 times the pay of their average workers. Now, they get 500 times the pay of their average workers. It defies the precepts of economics.” – Graef Crystal, U.S. executive-pay critic.



HOT ALBERTA STOCK: ONCOLYTICS BIOTECH
ONC-TSX $1.97
Up 37 cents (+24.1%) on 1,036,000 shares(for week ending May 2).
While other Canadian biotechs such as Biomira (BRA-TSX) and Lorus Therapeutics (LOR-TSX) caught fire recently, stock in Calgary’s Oncolytics had been sleepier than a spaced-out lab mouse. But Oncolytics took off like a cannon when a U.S. investment service, 21st Century Investments, gave the company a highly favourable review for the potential of Reolysin, the cancer-treatment drug that is being tested in clinical trials. The stock traded as high as $2.38 before profit-takers drove it down.



COLD ALBERTA STOCK: PROMAX ENERGY
PMY-TSX 13.5 Cents
Down .07 (-34.1%) on 1,117,300 shares (for week ending May 2).
Stock in the money-losing Calgary oil-and- gas play took a tumble before the shares were halted for news and that’s usually a sign of bad news. Promax, which lost $2.2 million in 2002, has seen its stock plummet 92 per cent in a two-year span.