Ontario's 'sunshine list' tops 100,000 members for first time


Thestar.com
March 27, 2015
By Robert Benzie


Ontario’s taxpayer-funded $100,000 club includes more than 100,000 members for first time ever.

The annual “sunshine list” of six-figures-and-up earners on the provincial public payroll released Friday included 111,440 people in 2014 - 13,644 more than the 97,796 the year before or a 13.9 per cent increase.

That means the equivalent of the population of cities the size of Burlington or Thunder Bay made this year’s tally, which was curated in six volumes spanning 2,491 pages.

As usual, Ontario Power Generation chief executive Tom Mitchell, who runs the nuclear operation, was the province’s highest paid civil servant, taking in $1.555 million last year.

The silver medallist was also from OPG with former chief financial officer Donn Hanbidge, fired after a scathing 2013 auditor general’s report on the electricity utility, receiving $1.208 million, including severance.

Bronze went to University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation’s president and CEO William Moriarty at $937,500.

“The people of Ontario have a right to know how their dollars are being spent. Ontario has the leanest government in Canada while still providing high-quality public services that people can rely on,” Treasury Board President Deb Matthews said in a statement at Queen’s Park.

“Today, we are releasing the 2014 public sector salary disclosure list as part of our government’s commitment to be the most open and transparent government in the country,” said Matthews, who made $165,851.

Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose salary, like all MPPs, has been frozen for seven years, earned $208,974. Interim Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Wilson made $159,266 while NDP Leader Andrea Horwath took home $158,157.

Cabinet ministers made $165,851 while MPPs’ base salary remained $116,550 and parliamentary assistants made $133,799.

Formally known as the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, it was launched in 1996 by former Conservative premier Mike Harris to shine light on the salaries of public servants from bureaucrats to police, teachers and other workers.

Inflation is a major factor in why the sunshine list continues to swell. The symbolic $100,000 figure of almost a generation ago is worth $145,046 today, according to the Ontario consumer price index.

Conversely, $100,000 today is the equivalent of $70,260 in 1996.

If the threshold had kept pace with inflation there would be 19,260 public servants on it - that’s how many made more than $145,046.

Despite that incongruity, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have refused to raise the $100,000 mark out of fear of political blowback.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives - like their Liberal predecessors - have blocked attempts at a similar federal list of six-figure earners.

But it is known that federal elected officials and their political staff and bureaucrats earn considerably more than their Ontario counterparts.

The government noted that because public employees are paid biweekly, every second Thursday, this year’s sunshine list reflects wages earned in all of 2014 plus a portion of 2013 because workers received 27 pay cheques in last year instead of the usual 26.

In the Ontario public service alone, that pushed 2,200 employees above $100,000 even though they usually earn less than that annually.

Still, Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton) pointed out that despite government claims of across-the-board wage freezes the sunshine list keeps rising.

“I’ve been saying for years that the way the government is handling Ontario’s finances is unsustainable,” said MacLeod, who made $125,174.

She warned that because “wage envelopes” are frozen, fewer people are earning more money, meaning front-line services will have to be cut.

NDP MPP Catherine Fife, who made $118,664, said the government is a “walking-talking contradiction” that is slashing services for the most vulnerable while forking over huge payments to public-sector executives.

“These bloated CEO salaries are a slap in the face to Ontarians,” said Fife (Kitchener-Waterloo).

“This government has its priorities all wrong.”

Overall, municipal and services sectors - including police and firefighters - account for 38 per cent of the 13,644 increase or 5,114 employees. Those employees are not covered by the government’s wage-freeze edict.

Universities and colleges accounted for 9 per cent of the increase - or 723 employees.

Hospitals and other health services were 17 per cent of the rise, or 2,321 employees.

And the Ontario public service, which includes bureaucrats, made up 23 per cent of the increase of 3,068 employees.