Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure, also known as the Sunshine List, was released on February 28. The list released the salary and taxable benefits for all public sector employees who work in the provincial civil service, all provincial Crown corporations, school boards, and municipalities, and earn over $100,000 per year. The list was started by then-Premier Mike Harris in the 1990s as a way of holding top civil servants to public account. However, the list has now turned into a grotesque voyeuristic look into the financial lives of hundreds of thousands of workers in Ontario.
When first adopted, there were 4,250 people named on the Sunshine List in 1997. That year, $100,000 per year or more was considered an upper management position with the government – the people who ran departments, school boards, and entities like Ontario Hydro. The Sunshine List was considered a way of keeping the “elites” in line when Ontario was undergoing a considerable transformation through downloading and financial restraint. That list has never been indexed to inflation, or arbitrarily set at a higher number.
Last week, in releasing the latest Sunshine List, a reporter asked if the government was going to increase or index the list: “no” was the reply. It should be increased. If indexed to the inflation rate from 1997 to 2024, that $100,000 benchmark would increase to $176,000, and in 2025 up to $180,000. More than three-quarters of the 377,000 Ontarians on the Sunshine List earned less than $176,000 per year. The list would still point to the increase in the civil service, and of governments everywhere, but be respectful of those who are doing essentially middle management or worker jobs.
Over 377,000 Ontarians are on the Sunshine List, many of those are teachers, electricians, or work in other fields within government, municipalities, hospitals, and in education. Is it appropriate to arbitrarily publish the earnings of a nurse, a teacher, or a utility line worker? No. If you are in the hospital seeking medical attention, does it matter if your nurse earns more than what a 1997 salary benchmark says? Are you going to expect more from a teacher when teaching your children if they are above or below an out-of-date benchmark? Will your electricity be repaired faster with the knowledge of what the repair crew earns per year? No.
This paper has published before and will continue to publish that the arbitrary 1997 number used for the Sunshine List is out of date and has lasted far longer than its intended purpose.
The Sunshine List was to hold decision-making government employees to account: the ones who created and put into place policy and ran the upper levels of the government. Naming and shaming those who work for the various government agencies, not in a leadership or management role – but as workers – is inappropriate for this or any other government to do. The Sunshine List benchmark should be increased, or the list scrapped in its entirety.
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