The city’s 100K club skyrocketed in 2013.
Ontario’s Ministry of Finance on Friday released its annual public salary disclosure for 2013. The document, known to many as the sunshine list, makes the salaries of any public sector employee in the province public.
The 2014 disclosure, which reports on salaries collected through 2013, shows the City of Thunder Bay had 249 employees earning more than $100,000. That’s slightly more than 2012 when the city had 244 employees, but is a significant jump from the 150 city employees who were on the list in 2013.
The increase can mostly be attributed to Thunder Bay Fire Rescue, which had 106 members on the list. That rise, from 41 in 2012, is a result of a contract settlement reached in June of last year that gave firefighters back pay, similar to the list from two years ago.
“The 249 number will shrink next year, I’m not sure what it will be but my sense is we’ll be well below 200 employees,” said city manager Tim Commisso.
“It’s an anomaly similar to 2011.”
There was also a slight increase in the number of members from the Thunder Bay Police Service on the list, which went from 66 on the 2013 list to 85 in the 2014 version.
Commisso tops the municipal payroll with an annual salary of $229,608. Police chief J.P. Levesque made 209,748, while fire chief John Hay took home $168,267.
St. Joseph Care Group physician advisor of mental health and addictions Lois Hutchinson was the highest paid provincial employee last year with a salary of $405,190. St. Joseph Care Group CEO Tracy Buckler earned $315, 012. Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre CEO Andree Robichaud's salary totalled more than $385,000.
Lakehead University president Brian Stevenson took home $360,000 and Confederation College president Jim Madder made $226,921. Lakehead District School Board executive director Catherine Siemieniuk made $195,845 while Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board director Joan Powell had a salary of $172,081.
You can read the province's entire sunshine list here.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version incorrectly identified the highest paid provincial employee.
