Wynne has no plans to hike $100K ‘sunshine list’ threshold

There are no plans to eclipse the “sunshine list” threshold of $100,000 for disclosing the salaries of provincial public sector workers, says Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Thestar.com
March 29, 2017
By Robert Benzie

There are no plans to eclipse the “sunshine list” threshold of $100,000 for disclosing the salaries of provincial public sector workers, says Premier Kathleen Wynne.

The annual tally of civil servants earning six figures and above will be released Friday.

“Increase the amount, which would mean there are fewer people on the sunshine list? I’m not sure that that accomplishes the transparency that the sunshine list is intended to engender,” Wynne told reporters Wednesday.

“One hundred thousand dollars is still a lot of money and so we’re going to keep it at that level,” the premier said.

Each year, the list grows longer, in part, due to inflation.

The $100,000-threshold for disclosure was introduced in 1996. The sum is the equivalent of $147,219 today, according to the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator.

At the same time, $100,000 today is the equivalent $67,925 in 1996.

Despite that, Wynne said Ontarians expect to be told what their taxpayer dollars are funding.

“People have the right to know where those salaries sit at, so we’ll leave at that,” she said.

Last year, there were a record 115,432 people on the sunshine list.

At the time, the government noted the list would have been 83 per cent smaller if the threshold had changed with inflation.

The highest paid public servant in Ontario then was recently retired Ontario Power Generation CEO Tom Mitchell at more than $1.5 million.

There is no federal sunshine list, so Ontarians only know how much provincial and municipal public servants earn.

Successive Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa have refused to introduce the salary-disclosure measures that have been the norm at Queen’s Park for a generation.