March 31, 2011

McGuinty Government Committed To Eliminating Waste And Finding Savings

"Our government continues to modernize the delivery of public services to achieve better value for Ontario taxpayers. This includes our proposal to reduce the size of the Ontario Public Service by an additional 1,500 positions and trim funding for executives and their offices at hospitals, universities and other government agencies" Dwight Duncan, Minister of Finance

In keeping with its commitment to increased accountability and transparency, the salaries and taxable benefits of Ontario Public Service (OPS) and broader public sector employees who were paid $100,000 or more in 2010 were released.

Overall, the average OPS employee’s salary listed in the Public Sector Salary Disclosure compendium dropped by one percent in 2010 when comparing to the average salary in 2009. There was also a decrease of the average broader public sector employee’s salary for those earning over $100,000.

Proposed efficiency measures announced earlier this week in the 2011 Ontario Budget include:

• Instructing major agencies to deliver efficiencies of $200 million by 2013-14.

• Reducing funding permanently for executive offices of specific transfer payment recipients such as hospitals, school boards, universities, colleges and major government agencies.

• Reducing the OPS by an additional 1,500 positions between April 2012 and March 2014. This is on top of the reduction of about 3,400 full-time OPS employees announced in the 2009 Budget.

As part of the Open Ontario Plan, the government is committed to eliminating waste and finding savings that can be used in our schools and our healthcare system, such as bringing full day kindergarten to all schools by September 2014 and ensuring all Ontarians have access to a family doctor. The government is also reducing the deficit with a plan in place to eliminate it completely by 2018.

• Ontario reduced unnecessary agencies by more than 5 percent and introduced amendments to eliminate public sector perks.
• The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act applies to the provincial government, Crown agencies and corporations, Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One and their subsidiaries, and publicly funded organizations such as hospitals, municipalities, school boards, universities and colleges. The act requires organizations that receive public funding from the province to disclose the names, positions, salaries and taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year. The compendium is published annually and includes organizations that, during the previous year, received transfer payments from the province of at least $1 million or that received 10 per cent of their gross revenues from the province, provided the transfer amount was $120,000 or more.
• The province also posts on a separate website the expense information for Cabinet Ministers, political staff, OPS senior management, appointees and senior executives at Ontario’s 22 largest agencies.
• The government froze the compensation structures of non-bargaining political and legislative staff, as well as non-bargaining employees in the broader public sector (BPS) and Ontario Public Sector (OPS) for two years. Additionally, the freeze on pay for Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) was extended from one to three years.

• Download the list of $100,000-plus income earners.
• Learn more about the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act.