Inflation, anyone? Ontario’s Sunshine List system is now unfair to small towns, mayors say

Bob Mullin isn’t against sunshine lists. He just believes that, with inflation eroding the value of salaries over the last three decades, the rules of Ontario’s public salary reporting system need a revamp. 

Mullin is the mayor of Stirling-Rawdon, a township of about 5,000 people located 23 kilometres northwest of Belleville, Ont.

Like any other Ontario municipality, big or small, Stirling-Rawdon is required every year to publicly report which of its employees makes $100,000 or more in a year. It’s been that way since the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act of 1996 was adopted in the name of public accountability on government spending. 

In 2024, however, $100,000 buys a lot less — and yet that reporting threshold has not been changed since Mike Harris ruled at Queen’s Park.

Had that figure been adjusted for inflation, that would now represent somebody making around $180,000 — “a huge difference,” Mullin said.

Stirling-Rawdon’s township council recently called on Premier Doug Ford’s government to update the act so that the inflation rate is applied each year.

For a township the size of Stirling-Rawdon to publicly disclose the name and salary of a small number of locals who meet that outdated threshold almost amounts to an invasion of privacy, Mullin said. 

“They all live in a small town. Everybody knows who they are,” he said. 

Frances Smith, the mayor of the Township of Central Frontenac — one of several Ontario municipalities that have voiced their support for Stirling-Rawdon’s call for change — agreed it’s awkward. 

“Our community is made up of a lot of seniors who live on a very fixed income,” she said. “It’s hard for somebody in their 70s, 80s to realize that $100,000 isn’t a lot of money these days.”

Unfair advantage

The current system is also unfair because private employers — or even other municipalities — against whom Stirling-Rawdon competes for workers get to see what the township offers in salaries, Mullin said.

“[It] makes it pretty easy to say, ‘Come to us. We’ll give you this little perk,'” he said of those rival employers.

Small communities already struggle with having enough staff to do the needed work, on top of the Sunshine List.

“So when you have something like this that we think is kind of frivolous, it just doesn’t sit right,” Smith said. 

Ontario’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing — to whom Stirling-Rawdon directed its request (in addition to Ford’s office) — did not provide an interview. 

But in an emailed statement, Minister Caroline Mulroney, the president of province’s treasury board, said the government recognizes $100,000 is still “a lot of money” for Ontario families.

Maintaining the threshold “allows taxpayers to do year-over-year comparisons and makes Ontario’s public sector more transparent and accountable.”

The government is not considering a change to the threshold, it added.