In the spirit of Monday's post, here is Canada's Globe and Mail offering its take on executive compensation. In its "Report On Business," Bill Dimma writes:

"Except for those absent from our planet for the past couple of decades, infamous examples of the wildly excessive senior executive compensation that has become commonplace in the United States, though not limited to there, are so widely known that they've become urban legends. But unlike most urban legends, they're not myths but unfortunate reality.

But most of you have heard this sort of thing before. So what? It's like that famous line of Mark Twain's about the weather: "Everyone talks about it but no-one does anything about it." Should anything be done about these massive changes in senior executive compensation levels, or not? And if so, what? At the broadest level, there are only three approaches worth considering.

The first is for government to step in and impose some arbitrary limits or at least some quasi-voluntary guidelines. Not recommended. Even in war-time, this worked erratically and badly. The elemental forces of supply and demand can be ignored or played down for only so long.

The second approach is to do nothing, to believe and accept that the wild earnings numbers are simply a reflection of a market at work. This approach ignores the growing rumbles of discontent from society at large, including employees further down an organization, investors and shareholders, along with the media and opinion leaders.

The third approach also believes in letting the market work but takes it as a given that the current market isn't working well. So approach No. 3 focuses on ways to help ensure that the market for chief executive officers is truly a market, not one where too many CEOs win big, even when their shareholders win small or, worse, lose big.

Here are eight ways I believe the market can be improved:

1 - Go independent

The compensation committees of widely held public companies must be comprised entirely of independent directors.

2 - Understand pay structures

Every member of the compensation committee should be compensation-literate and, ideally, one should be an expert.

3 - When hiring Independent consultants ...

Any external compensation consultant should earn no revenue from a corporate client beyond fees paid for executive compensation work.

4 - Clear reporting structures

Any external compensation consultant should report functionally, though not administratively, to the independent chair of the board compensation committee.

5 - Screen your peer group

Choose wisely and fairly when you peg your company's compensation against others. This means being as close as is possible in measuring product-market offerings, size, and profitability.

6 - Align your goals

Internal quantitative measures of corporate performance should be aligned with longer-run shareholder goals.

7 - Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure

Public disclosure of senior executive compensation must be "full, fair, clear, and unambiguous," to quote from the recent report of the Blue Ribbon Commission of the Institute of Corporate Directors.

8 - Shareholder Say for Pay

Say for Pay is the current effort to convince companies to allow non-binding shareholder votes on senior executive compensation. This is an idea whose time has not yet come in the Canadian setting, but I predict that within two or three years it will become common here, as it already is in several other advanced countries."