9,000 More Civil Servants over $100,000

WOODSTOCK – Today, Ernie Hardeman, Oxford MPP and PC Critic for Agriculture and Food, said that the fact there are 9,000 more public sector employees making over $100,000 a year is evidence that the government needs to implement a real wage freeze to get costs under control.

“People in my riding tell me they haven’t had a raise in years and are struggling to make ends meet because of taxes and increasing costs like hydro,” said Hardeman. “I don’t know how this government justifies to them that there are 97,000 people – 9,000 more than last year – being paid over $100,000 a year with their tax dollars.”

Today the Ontario Ministry of Finance released the sunshine list which contains the names of all public sector employees who earned over $100,000 in the previous year. It increased from 88,412 names on last year’s list to 97,796. The list is available at www.fin.gov.on.ca.

“This government announced a wage freeze and budgeted for the savings but when you look at the numbers we have 9,000 more people earning over a $100,000 than last year,” said Hardeman. “This is why we want to amend the wage freeze bill to include government employees as well as MPPs.”

This year there are 111 people on the sunshine list from Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Ministry of Rural Affairs.

“To put this in perspective, the amount that these 111 people at OMAFRA earn is almost double the amount University of Guelph said was required to keep both Alfred and Kemptville Agricultural Colleges open,” said Hardeman.

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For more information, contact:
Ernie Hardeman, MPP Oxford
(416) 325-1239