NDP wants public sector salaries searchable online
The Saskatchewan NDP is joining calls for the provincial government to improve what one expert described as its “stone-age” approach to disclosing how bureaucrats and Crown corporation employees are paid.
“The sooner that you can get the clear picture on what’s happening with the government finances, the better off we all are, ( but) it’s like they’re doing the absolute least that they can do,” said Public Service Commission critic Warren Mccall.
Richard Leblanc, an associate professor and governance expert at York University, agreed, saying the government’s current practices are “very anomalous,” and there is no reason not to create an accessible online salary database.
The government’s current disclosure policy is “a red flag in my mind that they’re trying to block scrutiny, and they should be doing the opposite, they should be promoting communication and accessibility to enhance scrutiny,” Leblanc said.
Compensation is the government’s biggest expense, accounting for 44 per cent, or $6.3 billion of the $14.32 billion it spent last year.
Mccall raised the issue of compensation disclosure during question period on Wednesday, one day after Postmedia News reported on the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calling for better public-sector compensation disclosure.
“It’s well past time that this government get with the 21st century and perhaps provide a searchable online resource,” Mccall said in the legislature before asking the government to commit to providing an easy-to-use “sunshine list.”
Crown Investments Corp. Minister Joe Hargrave refused to make that commitment. Instead, Hargrave said the government already discloses information about salaries, and suggested the NDP did not make the same information more accessible when it was in government 11 years ago, a common theme during this legislative session.
Requests to interview Hargrave or Public Service Commission Minister Ken Cheveldayoff were declined. Instead, the provincial government provided a written statement outlining its “high level of transparency in disclosing public sector compensation.”
“The Government of Saskatchewan already discloses public sector compensation in transparent and publicly available documents that can be found on public websites,” government spokesman James Parker said in the statement.
Information about how most government employees are compensated is contained in the public accounts, a roughly 300-page document released online each October as a PDF. It includes the workers’ names and the total paid to each over the fiscal year.
Crown corporation employees’ compensation information is detailed in a similar document called a payee disclosure report, which is also released online as a PDF. Like the public accounts, it lists the workers’ names and total paid out to each over the year.
Leblanc said the current level of disclosure is “inadequate” and an “attempt to block scrutiny” when the cost of creating a searchable and manipulatable online database is low and common among provinces and large publicly funded institutions.
Parker noted in the statement that Saskatchewan discloses all expenditures greater than $50,000, while other provinces have much higher thresholds. However, Leblanc said that is not related to how the information is disclosed.
“You would think that they would err on the side of enhanced scrutiny as opposed to what they ’re doing. But it’s the complete opposite. The greater the use of public funds, the greater the expectation is that you will have that scrutiny.” Mccall said the Saskatchewan Party government has drifted away from its promise to be accountable and transparent, and he has not seen a lot of encouragement that things will change. “It’s not like it’s this big comet in the sky, but it is important.”