The best dividend stocks in Canada 2025

Last year, though, dividend stocks returned to form. The S&P/TSX Composite Dividend Index, a cap-weighted measure of all the 170-odd dividend-paying stocks in the S&P/TSX Composite, put up a total return of 19.84% in 2024. The S&P/TSX Dividend Aristocrats Index, which holds the 92 stocks that maintained or raised their dividends in each of the past five years, posted a return of 20.92%. The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite’s total return, meanwhile, was only a smidge higher, at 21.65%, despite having a significantly higher risk profile. 

It was a vindication of sorts for the income-focused Canadian investors who stuck with their strategy. It gives them a better than fair chance of outperforming in 2025. Should markets take a breather (or, dare we say, fall) after two consecutive years of double-digit gains, dividend investors can expect little if any impact on the stream of income their holdings generate regardless of the market price of the stocks. Conversely, should overall markets keep on notching new highs as they did in 2024, buoyed by lower interest rates, dividend stocks should capture most or all of that upside.

The dividend stocks to own in 2025

Of course, we’re talking in generalities here. If you mean to hold stocks directly, it matters which names you hold. That’s why MoneySense is back with a whole new list of the Top 100 Dividend Stocks in Canada for 2025. 

Rather than make subjective judgment calls, the methodology relies 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 according to three criteria: yield, stability and valuation. 

To further narrow down investors’ choices, we came up with 10-member A and B lists of stocks that posted the highest cumulative scores for all three criteria. We call these best of the best, listed below, our Canadian Dividend All-Stars.

One obvious feature of our 2025 A list is that, with the sole exception of technology stock Enghouse Systems, it’s composed of resource companies. Investing coach Aman Raina, founder of Sage Investors, runs the numbers for the MoneySense dividend lists year after year. Raina explains this quirk in terms of the shareholder value commodity producers are generating relative to their market prices right now. 

“Resource companies have been having a good run in the past year, with gold, silver and copper especially rising nicely in 2024. Oil prices have also been elevated,” Raina says. “So, these companies have been generating strong cash flow and higher returns on equity, allowing them more opportunities to issue dividends aggressively.”

Our B list this year is a little more diversified, with representation from the industrial, financial and consumer discretionary sectors, though the energy and materials industries still predominate. Held back by slow growth and relatively high debt levels, none of the Big 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 Big Three telecom companies (Bell, Rogers and Telus) so much as cracked the top 50 in our table. There were no real estate investment trusts or regulated utilities, not even any energy pipelines—what we usually think of when we think of dividend stocks—that made the top 50 either.