Fix the Sunshine List


Nationalpost.com
March 27, 2015
By Matt Gurney

Ontario released its annual “Sunshine List” on Friday. For the first time ever, the number of Ontario public-sector workers making more than $100,000-per-annum itself surpassed 100,000. If you’re so inclined, you can even search the list and see what some prominent members of the civil service are making.

But I hope you’re not so inclined, because the entire affair always reeks of sensationalism and nosiness and I wish it would just go away. There’s value in something like a Sunshine List, but the way we go about it is a completely unwarranted invasion of the privacy of citizens. The public’s genuine right to know what the provincial government is spending on compensation can be addressed in a far less invasive manner than this - indeed, it could be done better.

A big feature of the current Sunshine List is that it’s searchable. If you really want to know what TVO’s Steve Paikin or the Toronto Transit Commission’s Andy Byford (to name two favourite targets) are making, you can find out just by searching their names. But most of the people on the list aren’t nearly so high profile. They’re just people, like you and me, who happen to, A), work for the government, and, B), make at least $100,000. This seems like rather flimsy grounds upon which to declare that someone’s salary and benefits, which really ought to be private information, should be put in the public domain, available for all. Angry neighbours, jilted former romantic partners, neighbourhood busybodies - why should these people, or anyone else, have the right to know how much money a private citizen is making?

They shouldn’t, any more than I have the right to go snooping through your medical records on the grounds that, hey, I pay (my share) of your health-care costs. The Sunshine List is inherently an invasion of privacy - and the gleeful sharing of discoveries every year on social media - “Gosh, she makes how much?” - is all the proof of that you’ll ever need.

Nor is the argument behind the existence of the Sunshine List - keeping the government transparent and honest about spending on compensation - particularly compelling.

The public certainly has a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent. That includes getting right down into the nitty-gritty details of financial compensation for civil servants, which means both salary and taxable benefits. Indeed, in Ontario, this is particularly true. As recently reported by the Fraser Institute, and as commented on by a recent National Post editorial, the Ontario Liberals have proven remarkably inept at containing public-sector wages. Ontario would be on a far better fiscal footing these days - with much, much less to fear from sudden economic shocks or credit downgrades - if public-sector compensation hadn’t ballooned quite so spectacularly in the aftermath of the global economic crisis.

That’s why it’s important the public have access to detailed information on what the government is spending its money on (in theory, anyway - the Ontario public is very good at re-electing Liberal governments in spite of what it already knows about them). The Sunshine List does admittedly provide some of that access - and in a country like Canada, where prying basic information out of government agencies is about as easy as getting a dog to give up a frisbee, that ain’t nothing.