Governments at all levels are being urged to enhance transparency regarding the cost and effectiveness of public sector employees. While initiatives like Ontario’s Sunshine List, introduced in 1996, aimed to increase accountability and control payroll expenses, their impact after three decades is being questioned.

The Limitations of Current Disclosure Practices

Current salary disclosures are often seen as superficial, with the public primarily using them to find the salaries of individuals they already know. The original $100,000 cutoff in 1996 has expanded to include many middle-class occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and nurses. Adjusted for inflation, that figure would be $185,000 in 2025.

Some provinces have even lower thresholds, like British Columbia’s $85,000. Focusing on salaries of lower-level employees with limited decision-making authority detracts from the need for transparency at higher levels.

Recommendations for Improved Data

Experts suggest a more nuanced approach to salary disclosures. While high-earning decision-makers’ salaries should remain public, data for lower-level positions could be aggregated, showing salary bands without individual names. This data should be detailed, consistent, and comparable year-over-year.

Key data points should include:

  • Types of duties performed
  • Performance pay received and justification
  • Overtime hours worked
  • Sick days taken and banked
  • Cost of benefits and pensions
  • Number of new positions created and their roles
  • Comparisons with similar private-sector organizations

Beyond Staffing Costs: Measuring Performance

Accountability should extend beyond staffing metrics to include the achievements of public sector employees and whether service standards are being met. While auditor generals provide oversight of spending, more detailed evaluations of program effectiveness are needed.

David McLaughlin, former CEO of the Institute on Governance, noted that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada previously conducted approximately five internal program audits annually to assess and improve performance.

Models for Comprehensive Assessment

Jocelynne Bourgon, a former leader in the federal public service, suggests the Clerk of the Privy Council’s annual report on the state of the public service offers a useful model. She believes it could be strengthened by adopting a more robust assessment approach.

Bourgon points to The State of the Civil Service, an unofficial annual report by the Institute for Government, as a strong example. This report compiles public data to provide a comprehensive analysis of changes within the public service.

These changes would significantly improve public understanding of government operations and resource allocation.