Ontarians struggling with hydro bills or transit delays shouldn’t be peeved when they hear executives at Ontario Power Generation or Metrolinx could get big pay hikes, says Treasury Board president Liz Sandals.
“Most of the people sitting on the GO train probably don’t have high-level nuclear qualifications or the business qualifications to run a multi-billion-dollar corporation,” she told reporters Thursday.
“The talent is exceptional to be in those exceptional positions,’ Sandals said when asked about $8 million in raises for 80 OPG executives by decade’s end or a possible $118,000 boost for Metrolinx president and CEO Bruce McCuaig.
Sandals, who keeps tabs on government spending in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, and Energy Minister Glen Thibeault were peppered with questions about plans for raises in the pay of public sector executives when a five-year wage freeze is lifted this spring.
They include OPG, where chief executive Jeffrey Lyash is the province’s highest-paid civil servant at $1.5 million and whose operations include the Darlington and Pickering nuclear power plants, and Metrolinx, which runs GO Transit.
Thibeault further defended the raises at OPG raises, saying the Crown corporation was starting to experience a brain drain to rival Bruce Power, which operates a nuclear power station at Kincardine on Lake Huron, and to U.S. employers.
“For me it’s about safety, the safety of our nuclear plants…I’d much rather have them working in our plants than leaving our plants,” Thibeault said on his way into a cabinet meeting.
“We were seeing people leaving OPG. I was working with the CEO and the chair of the board…the board was bringing me forward concerns about people leaving from the nuclear plants,” he added.
“They were very clear with me that they did have a very serious concern with people who had left and others were going to leave if there wasn’t some comparators put in place.”
Thibeault said he did not have statistics on attrition and referred questions to OPG.
“I just went with the experts that were involved…we need to do what we needed to do on that.”
Earlier this week, OPG officials said Lyash, who moved here from the U.S. to take the job, will be bound by his existing wage contract for the next three years “unless the board decides to make a change.”
His compensation is equally split between salary and performance pay, but could go up to $3.8 million under the new framework.
The public sector executive salary issue made headlines last month when some community colleges revealed plans to raise presidents’ salaries by as much as 50 per cent, earning a rebuke from Deputy Premier Deb Matthews.
She called that type of increase “unacceptable” and said she needed to “send a signal” because the government needs to keep spending under control as it emerges from years of deficits.
A total of 345 public sector agencies, including the LCBO, hospitals and school boards, are reviewing executive salaries for the post-wage freeze era under a provincial directive issues last fall.
They have been tasked with establishing salary comparators at similar organizations and must post executive compensation proposals on their websites for public comment by September.
At Metrolinx, for example, McCuaig’s proposed salary range is $375,300 to $479,500. He now earns $361,114.66 annually.
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