TORONTO – They are all Ontario Power Generation (OPG) executives who are the top four highest-paid civil servants in the province in 2021. Their names lead the “sunshine list” that discloses the names of public sector employees who have been paid more than $100,000 and which includes more than 240,000 names. 

It is Kenneth Hartwick, CEO of the company that produces electricity, who again leads the ranking with a salary of $ 1,628,246 followed in second place by Dominique Miniere, chief strategy officer of the company, whose income in 2021 was over $ 1.5 million. Two other company executives who reported earning more than a million dollars occupy third and fourth place.

With a salary of $845,092, University Health Network CEO Kevin Smith was again fifth on scrooge McDuck’s long list. But other executives in the healthcare industry have also entered the top ten highest-paid: Ontario Health CEO Matthew Anderson, for example, ranks seventh with a salary of $826,000. Dr. Penny Sutcliffe, medical officer of health for the Sudbury area ranked ninth with $800,726 in salary and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Chief Executive Andy Smith in tenth place with $799,614.

In total, among the top 30 highest paid people are 13 employees of hospitals or public health bodies. Sutcliffe is the only local public health official in the top 30, the others are high-ranking hospital executives as well as a psychiatrist working in North Bay.

The number of golden salaries, according to the province, since 2020 has risen by 38,536 with 96% of the increase attributable to growth in the general public sector.

A spokesman for Treasury Board Chairman Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria noted that school superintendents played a major role in the increase and said the average reported salary fell slightly in 2021 to $123,738 from $125,870 the previous year.

Rounding out the top 10 are Metrolinx transit Crown Corporation CEO Phil Verster with a salary of $838,960 in sixth place and Mark Fuller, CEO of the Ontario Pension Board, eighth in the ranking with $805,247.

Last year, Prime Minister Doug Ford earned $208,974, a figure similar to that perceived in 2020. Ford’s chief of staff, James Wallace, took home $333,316 instead. The salary of NDP leader Andrea Horwath was $180,885.96, and Green Party leader Mike Schreiner’s $125,874.00.
Kieran Moore, the province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, earned $235,314.14 while Thomas Carrique, chief of the OPP, received $354,343.28. Other notable gains are those of Catherine Zahn, president and CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health with $650,455, Doris Greenspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, who grossed $565,489.68. And to top it off, now former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly, earned $341,827.43 while Toronto Police Chief James Ramer earned $332,023.59.

The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, enacted by former progressive conservative Prime Minister Mike Harris in 1996, obliges organizations that receive public funding from the province to report the names, positions, and pay of people earning more than $100,000.