Final 12 months, although, dividend shares returned to type. The S&P/TSX Composite Dividend Index, a cap-weighted measure of all of the 170-odd dividend-paying shares within the S&P/TSX Composite, put up a complete return of 19.84% in 2024. The S&P/TSX Dividend Aristocrats Index, which holds the 92 shares that maintained or raised their dividends in every of the previous 5 years, posted a return of 20.92%. The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite’s whole return, in the meantime, was solely a smidge larger, at 21.65%, regardless of having a considerably larger danger profile. 

It was a vindication of types for the income-focused Canadian traders who caught with their technique. It provides them a greater than honest likelihood of outperforming in 2025. Ought to markets take a breather (or, dare we are saying, fall) after two consecutive years of double-digit positive aspects, dividend traders can count on little if any impression on the stream of revenue their holdings generate whatever the market worth of the shares. Conversely, ought to total markets carry on notching new highs as they did in 2024, buoyed by decrease rates of interest, dividend shares ought to seize most or all of that upside.

The dividend shares to personal in 2025

In fact, we’re speaking in generalities right here. In the event you imply to carry shares immediately, it issues which names you maintain. That’s why MoneySense is again with an entire new record of the Top 100 Dividend Stocks in Canada for 2025. 

Fairly than make subjective judgment calls, the methodology depends solely on the numbers. We took the 168 constituents of the S&P/TSX Composite that paid a dividend as of November 30, 2024, and ranked them based on three standards: yield, stability and valuation. 

To additional slender down traders’ decisions, we got here up with 10-member A and B lists of shares that posted the very best cumulative scores for all three standards. We name these better of the perfect, listed beneath, our Canadian Dividend All-Stars.

One apparent characteristic of our 2025 A listing is that, with the only real exception of know-how inventory Enghouse Methods, it’s composed of useful resource corporations. Investing coach Aman Raina, founding father of Sage Buyers, runs the numbers for the MoneySense dividend lists 12 months after 12 months. Raina explains this quirk when it comes to the shareholder worth commodity producers are producing relative to their market costs proper now. 

“Useful resource corporations have been having a superb run up to now 12 months, with gold, silver and copper particularly rising properly in 2024. Oil costs have additionally been elevated,” Raina says. “So, these corporations have been producing sturdy money move and better returns on fairness, permitting them extra alternatives to challenge dividends aggressively.”

Our B record this 12 months is a bit more diversified, with illustration from the economic, monetary and shopper discretionary sectors, although the power and supplies industries nonetheless predominate. Held again by sluggish progress and comparatively excessive debt ranges, not one of the Huge Six banks [Bank of Montreal (BMO), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), National Bank of Canada (NA), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Scotiabank and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD)] or Huge Three telecom corporations (Bell, Rogers and Telus) a lot as cracked the highest 50 in our table. There have been no actual property funding trusts or regulated utilities, not even any power pipelines—what we often consider after we consider dividend shares—that made the highest 50 both.