Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

OTTAWA (CP) - The federal government has quietly handed senior government officials and the heads of Crown corporations pay raises and increased bonuses, sounding alarm bells from a tax watchdog and the biggest public service union.

Government executives and deputy ministers, the highest ranking public servants, are in line to get a 2.5-per-cent pay raise.

The chief executives of Crown corporations, such as the CBC and Canada Post, are slated to get three-per-cent raises.

The salary increases will be applied retroactively dating back to April.

Executives and deputy ministers will also receive a 1.1-per-cent increase to what is known as “at-risk pay,” which is an end-of-year bonus. Besides this payment, executives and deputy ministers are eligible for another bonus of between three and five per cent if they earn all their at-risk pay.

The raises are part of a strategy aimed at preventing high-level public servants from jumping to more lucrative positions in private enterprises.

There was no formal public announcement of the increases from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

“What troubles me is this is a government that was elected to ensure greater transparency, and they’ve decided to shelve a public announcement,” said John Williamson, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“It’s not so much the pay raise that bothers me as the way it was quietly stated.”

John Gordon, president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said the salaries of senior government executives should face the same scrutiny as those of any other public servant.

“This is really a slap in the face to our members,” he said. “Regardless of the amount of money (in the raises) they should be made public.”

Gordon also called the quiet pay raise a “turnabout” for a government that campaigned on a platform of more transparency.

Mike Van Soulen, spokesman for Treasury Board President John Baird, said there was nothing underhanded about the raise. The information, he said, was made public on the Treasury Board’s website.

“It’s transparent” he said. “We felt it was an appropriate way to release this news.”

Van Soulen said the news was also made available to those in the public service who were affected by the raise.

Williamson said he wonders why the government decided to raise the amount of bonus pay senior executives receive, given the Tories’ vociferous opposition to such moves when they were in opposition.

He estimates that as many as 90 per cent of executives receive their at-risk bonus pay, which defeats the purpose of rewarding exceptional performance.

“This provides more money through the back door,” he said. “If it exists, it should be tied to budget savings.”

Williamson’s group would like to see executives rewarded for saving taxpayers’ money if a department or Crown corporation comes in under budget at the end of the government’s fiscal year.

Government executives earn $94,000-$178,700 in salary while deputy ministers earn between $170,000 and $288,400 depending on their seniority. That doesn’t count the bonuses for which they are eligible.

The heads of Crown corporations start at $109,000 in annual salary and can work their way up to $445,600.

source: canoe.ca