Third raise for Governor General will bring annual pay to $363K
$11K RAISE FOR 2024
• Canada’s viceregal is set to pocket a hefty pay raise in 2024.
The salary of Canada’s Governor General will increase by $11,200 in 2024, bringing the role’s annual salary to $362,800, according to information provided to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation by the Privy Council Office.
This will be the third raise for current Governor General Mary Simon’s since her appointment in 2021, meaning she now earns around $34,000 more per year than when she first entered Rideau Hall.
Simon received a $9,500 raise in 2023.
The numbers were confirmed by the Privy Council Office.
Remuneration for the viceregal is outlined in the Governor General’s Act, which established a base salary of $270,602 a little over a decade ago, subject to annual raises.
Those raises are calculated via a complicated formula involving multiplying the previous year’s salary by “the lesser of 107 per cent and the percentage that the industrial aggregate for the first adjustment year is of the industrial aggregate for the second adjustment year.” Canada’s industrial aggregate is a measure of average earnings by the nation’s labour force.
Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, called on the government to justify why Canada’s Governor General is entitled to automatic and hefty pay raises while Canadians struggle to pay rent and buy groceries.
“Canadians are struggling to afford a jug of milk or a package of ground beef, so the government shouldn’t be rubber-stamping another raise for the Governor General,” he said.
“A serious government would mandate the Governor General’s office be subject to access-to-information requests, cut all international travel except for meetings with the monarchy, end the expense account for former governors general, reform the pension and scrap the clothing allowance.”
Spending at Rideau Hall is frequently the subject of scrutiny.
Governors general are permitted to expense up to $130,000 in clothing over each of their five-year mandates, limited to $60,000 the first year and gradually dropping to $10,000 by year five.
Since 2017, current viceregal Mary Simon and predecessor Julie Payette billed taxpayers for over 200 items of clothing, costing over $88,000, ranging from ceremonial dresses and evening wear to everyday clothing, including T-shirts, shoes and sweaters.
During her first full year in office, Simon spent nearly $3 million in travel expenses, split between four overseas visits and 17 trips within Canada.
Those trips include Simon’s infamous 2022 twoweek visit to Expo 2020 in Dubai, where her plane’s 29 passengers racked up nearly $100,000 in catering costs, including beef wellington, carpaccio and over $500 for a redacted quantity of lemons and limes.
That same year, Rideau Hall spent over $71,000 in luxury limousine service during a four-day official visit to Reykjavik, Iceland — despite most events taking place a short walk from Simon’s hotel.
Last year, Blacklock’s Reporter wrote former governor general Julie Payette spent $3 million in travel expenses before the pandemic.
Former governors general Michaëlle Jean and Adrienne Clarkson spent $9.3 million and $8.9 million respectively on overseas travel during their years in Rideau Hall.
Julie Vignola, the government operations critic for the Bloc Québécois, told the National Post that the best way to save money is cutting ties with the monarchy altogether.
“In 2024, it is insane that Quebecers and Canadians still have to take out their chequebooks to pay the costs of a monarchical and purely symbolic function,” she said in French.
“The time is not for salary increases taken from taxpayers’ pockets, but rather to cut our ties with this spendthrift institution that is opposed to the democratic values of Quebec and — I am convinced — of Canada as well.”