The Peace Tower in Ottawa. The federal government does not disclose specific salaries.KeithBinns/AFP/Getty Images
Matt Malone is a Balsillie Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the founder of the Open By Default database.
Thirty years ago, the Mike Harris government implemented a radical change to Ontario’s employment laws with an act that required organizations receiving provincial funding to disclose the name, position and salary of employees earning more than $100,000.
At the time, various stakeholders decried the creation of a sunshine list. Calling it a “nefarious piece of legislation,” one critic said the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act would put employees on a “public wanted poster.” Another called the bill an “injustice.” Many raised concerns about privacy.
They were wrong. As in high-equality-scoring countries such as Sweden, Norway and Finland, where similar transparency measures have long been in place, the Ontario law became a catalyst for achieving pay equity, driving up accountability in governance and generally making citizens more aware of how their taxpayer dollars were being spent.
Despite some predictable grousing over the Ontario law’s flaws – such as the failure to tie the original $100,000 threshold to inflation – Ontarians support such rules. Similar pay transparency laws have also since spread to other provinces.
Support for these measures tends to be bipartisan. And, generally speaking, jurisdictions that pass such laws do not unwind them; they expand them, as Ontario did last year, when it required covered employers to share more pay details in certain job postings.
Canada’s peers disclose specific salaries, and increasingly, the provinces disclose, too.
But the federal government does not.
At the federal level, the general rule is that the government publishes classifications, job responsibilities and salary ranges – but not specific salaries, with narrow exceptions. Federally appointed regulators have consistently taken the position that taxpayer-funded salaries of federal government employees are personal information. Those individuals must consent to the disclosure of their yearly earnings.
Viewing taxpayer-funded salaries as personal information effectively uses privacy to shield details of taxpayer-funded spending. This goes against the principle that the details of public spending should be public – the idea that Canadians have a right to know how the government spends their money.
As the government notes in its Access to Information Manual, from a court decision on contract confidentiality: “The public’s right to know how government spends public funds, as a means of holding government accountable for its expenditures, is a fundamental notion of responsible government that is known to all.” When it comes to specific salary numbers, however, we have made an exception.
This lack of transparency also has real consequences for vulnerable groups. Just as a lack of transparency of a minimum wage would produce inequalities affecting the most vulnerable in society, a lack of visibility over higher salaries disempowers individuals in their salary negotiations. These informational asymmetries often hurt historically disadvantaged groups most – something that contributes to the persistent wage gap between men and women.
Inattention to these issues is already a signature of the current Liberal government, whether by making clear the person responsible for Women and Gender Equality Canada is a second-tier minister or eviscerating the budget of that department by over 80 per cent, unlike the standard 15-per-cent cuts to most other federal institutions.
Directionally, this follows the Liberal government’s broader lack of interest in bolstering transparency. It has not yet delivered on an electoral promise to conduct an “objective review” of the Access to Information Act. It has ignored the legal obligation to review the Lobbying Act. It has buried an expert review of Canada’s whistleblower legislation (even as whistleblower disclosures of suspected wrongdoing and reports of reprisal reached new records last year).
The foreign agent registry, which will use transparency measures to deter foreign influence, is also now far behind schedule. For a government focused on growing the economy and defending our sovereignty, such delays make little sense. In the consultations for the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act, government officials themselves noted that transparency legislation contributes to an increase in Canada’s gross domestic product.
Transparency, in other words, will quite literally make us richer. So why can’t we have more of it? Equating taxpayer-funded salaries with truly private information – such as one’s medical diagnoses, intimate communications with loved ones or passwords to personal accounts – is a cynical way to pit the virtues of privacy and transparency against one another.
Thirty years ago, Ontario put in place a durable policy tool that has promoted equality and bolstered accountability. It’s time for the federal government to catch up.