The Stel Salaried Pensioners Organization wishes to thank The Hamilton Spectator for permission to post the following article by The Canadian Press Reporter James Mccarten, published in the March 10, 2004 edition

Mar. 10, 2004. 12:50 AM

2.7 per cent for MPPs not considered raise

Integrity commissioner recommends increasing pay to cover inflation despite province's $5.6-billion deficit

By James Mccarten
The Canadian Press

Ontario's elected officials are entitled to a pay raise of 2.7 per cent to keep up with the cost of living, Integrity Commissioner Coulter Osborne said yesterday.

Osborne, who was given the power to review legislative salaries in 2001, recommended the raise in a brief report that acknowledged the difficulties posed by Ontario's $5.6-billion deficit.

"In light of current fiscal circumstances there is, at a minimum, a serious problem with respect to the implementation of a salary increase for members at this time and likely in the immediate future," the report said.

"That, however, is a fact of life which, in my view, should not relegate a review of the various elements of the compensation package of members of the legislative assembly to an isolated back burner."

Legislative members currently earn a base salary of $85,240 a year, up from $78,007 four years ago. A 2.7 per cent increase would lift the base rate by about $2,300 to $87,540, effective April 1.

Osborne said the latest increase should not be considered a raise since it's a reflection of last year's 2.7-per-cent increase in the consumer price index, a measure of inflation's impact on the cost of living.

"Indexing to take account of inflation is not the equivalent of a salary increase," the report said.

"It simply recognizes the extent to which the purchasing power of a given sum of money has been reduced by inflation."

NDP Leader Howard Hampton said yesterday members of the legislature don't deserve any more of an increase than employees in the broader public sector. Hampton said he has no problem with a 2.7-per-cent hike, provided there's more money in the coming provincial budget for Ontario's poorest, including minimum-wage workers and welfare recipients.

But he said Osborne shouldn't have the power to raise compensation levels outside of the legislature, where the government makes decisions about how much money goes into social assistance programs.

"You can't contract out your own pay and your own pension issues and say, 'That's for somebody else to deal with ... but at the same time we're going to freeze the minimum wage, income, benefits of poorest people in Ontario,"' Hampton said. "At the end of the day, this should all come back to the legislature. People need to be held accountable for their decisions."

Critics have long complained that Ontario's base salary is too low to lure high-calibre candidates out of the richer private sector and into the often thankless world of public service.

But an independent report in 2000 that recommended a catch-up raise of nearly 33 per cent caused such an outcry that the Conservative government at the time handed the issue of compensation over to the Ontario Integrity Commission.

Since then, another double-digit recommendation for a 25 per cent pay hike has been put on hold.

The base rate has meanwhile climbed 3 per cent a year in each of the last three years.