Stock price when the opinion was issued
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.
Basket of high-dividend Canadian names. Both about 24-25% cumulative returns over the last 3 years.
XEI more diversified with 30% financials plus 30% in energy. Slightly better MER of 22 bps. Yield is ~5.5%.
ZDV is 38% financials and 20% energy, so might make sense if you really love financials. MER is 39 bps. Yield is 3.8%.
How to increase dividends. These are all the same thing. You get exposure to Canadian large caps. There is no diversification by being in all three. ZWU-T should replace one of them to get utilities including pipelines and telcos and less reliance on the banks. Still Canada so you need international. ZWE-T is the best international dividend payers yielding 7% with a covered call overlay. ZWS-T is the best in the US. These are the two to add to the three. These should be in a registered portfolios if you are retired because there is no divined tax credit.