By Pepper Parr
March 28th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
The Sunshine list is out.
The high-level numbers are staggering:
There are 377,667 people on the list that runs 18,800 pages.
School Boards and teachers account for much of the increase.
The civil servant salary listing was created by the Mike Harris government in 2006. Media quickly named it the Sunshine list.
“Nearly half the growth on the list was driven by the school board sector, with teachers contributing to 87 per cent of this increase,” Treasury Board President Caroline Mulroney said in a statement Friday.
The tally from 2024 is up 25.6 per cent from 300,572 workers in 2023 — when it topped the 300,000 mark for the first time — and 266,903 the year before.
The list includes Ford, his cabinet ministers and all MPPs — whose salaries have been frozen since 2008.
MPPs make a base rate of $116,500 a year and Ford recently mused about giving them a raise.
“I don’t want to sound like a bleeding heart for politicians, but come on, folks, these guys work their backs off … and it’s not fair,” the premier told reporters after swearing in his new cabinet last week.
In contrast, federal MPs earn $203,100 and Toronto city councillors Thursday night voted themselves a 24 per cent pay increase of about $33,000 annually to $170,588.60
The sunshine list with its $100,000 threshold was established in 1996 by former PC premier Mike Harris as a transparency measure, but has lost impact over three decades because of inflation.
We will beaver away at digging out the specifics for the City of Burlington and the Halton District School Board.
Be patient – this will take some time.
In 1996 $100.000 Was a big number.It should have been adjusted up via inflation It would have been $202,000 today.
Well for one Tim Commissio got $330,000.