Moe, Meili donate raises to charity, other MLAS urged to do likewise

REGINA Saskatchewan MLAS got a roughly 1.7-per-cent pay hike Wednesday due to a scheduled cost-of-living raise, but the leaders of both the NDP and the Saskatchewan Party say they won’t be keeping the added money.

In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both Premier Scott Moe and Opposition Leader Ryan Meili committed to donating their raise to charity.

MLAS get regular pay increases that are indexed to the consumer price index, a measure of price inflation.

As of April 1, their base pay went up to $100,068 per year, or a bit more than 1.7 per cent compared to the $98,325 they made previously.

Moe and Meili get additional top ups to reflect their additional duties. As premier, Moe gets an added $72,780. Meili gets $50,947 more, the same boost as a government minister.

In a statement, Moe cited the pandemic crisis as a reason to donate the money. He encouraged every MLA and cabinet member to do the same.

According to his press secretary, Moe made a “substantial personal donation” on Wednesday to the Prince Albert Food Bank and Mobile Crisis Services.

Meili made a similar commitment on Twitter before Moe’s statement reached media inboxes. He promised to donate his raise to the Lighthouse in Saskatoon.

“With so many people hurting right now, it doesn’t seem right to be getting a raise,” Meili wrote.

The raise had attracted some criticism on social media earlier Wednesday. SEIU-WEST, a health sector union whose members rejected a contract with two years of retroactive wage freezes, also put out a news release questioning the fairness of the MLA pay hike.

While SEIU-WEST president Barb

Cape was happy to hear that charities will benefit, she asked how long MLAS will donate their raises. The pandemic is not the only source of economic unease in Saskatchewan, particularly given recent bouts of labour disruption in both the public and private sectors.

“There’s a huge amount of uncertainty in the economy,” she said. “I think it’s ill-advised to take the increase in the first place.”

She accepted that the wage hike counts for little in the context of a multi-billion dollar provincial budget. But she said refusing the money would be a strong “symbolic gesture” to make.

“I think that’s bad leadership,” she said of MLAS who take their raises.