Stock price when the opinion was issued
He likes XEI and VDY. Both pay ~5% yield. VDY is about 45% Canadian banks. XEI is a bit more diversified, with 23% Canadian banks as its top weighting.
For income, he prefers these to a covered call strategy. Though the covered call strategies look very attractive, they tend to underperform the underlying securities, especially in a rising equity market. Great if you need the income, but you'll get a better total return with the other.
When you go for high-dividend payers in Canada you get the banks, insurance companies, pipelines, and some of the energy names. Yield will be a bit over 4%. A nice way to play.
Vanguard, iShares, and BMO all have offerings, but they all do it slightly differently. BMO has a covered call version, ZWC. There's ZDV, XDV, VDY. Take a look at them all and see what you like. All have different weights to the components. They're all equally good.
Holds banks as the top weighting, which he has no problem with, as many of the banks are undervalued now. Likes this approach. Note that 46% of the portfolio is made up of banks. Yield is 5.2%.