$100,000 or more Sunshine List released

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Ontario Power Generation President James Hankinson pulled in $2,475,500 in salary and Hydro One President Laura Formusa made $924,437 in 2008.

The $100,000 Sunshine List has landed, not with its usual thud in paper form, but with an electronic file so large it froze reportersÂ’ computers, making it difficult to crunch the numbers.

The List discloses all public sector employees who earn $100,000 or more a year in salary.

Financial officials said the number of Ontario Public Service members in the six-figure salary range has gone up by about 1% since last year.

In 2008, 6,791 employees in the OPS sector had salaries of $100,000 or more.

In total, 53,572 people made it onto the list.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said that it is natural for the Sunshine List to grow longer as salaries and inflation rise, and noted some people made it onto the list for the first time after receiving a 1% raise.

McGuinty said he does not believe that the $100,000 threshold should be increased to reflect inflation.

“I think for most Ontario families $100,000 is a lot of money,” McGuinty said. “And I think it’s in their interest, it’s in everybody’s interest, they know when somebody’s achieved that level of publicly funded compensation.”

Conservative MPP John Yakabuski said the Sunshine List will likely spark concern among families who are already coping with a recession.

“When families and individuals are losing their jobs all across the province, I think it is important to know who is in that select group making $100,000 and more,” he said.

NDP MPP Rosario Marchese said the salaries and buyouts of some public sector CEOs are incredibly high.

“We need to look at some of those salaries as a way of bringing some reality and some pragmatism into the differences between the salaries of the CEOs at the top and the salaries of the workers in general,” Marchese said.

Almost 50 employees at the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, the controversial provincial organization responsible for property tax assessments, made it onto the Sunshine List.

According to the City of Toronto, there were 1,150 staff members with a salary higher than $100,000.

An additional 400 people made it onto the list due to overtime, standby and retroactive payments.

The total of City of Toronto employees on the list represent about 3.9% of the CityÂ’s workforce.