Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I’d like to raise the concern of publishing our public sector salaries. I’m referring to our senior public service, not those who are in the middle or the lower end of the pay scale. This obviously has true accountability and transparency measures and wants that are desperately called for by the public.
In the past, I’ve pointed out that New Brunswick, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba and B.C. have seen the light on this particular issue, and each province, in their own way, have found a range of salary and public disclosures to ensure that they continue to publicly show accountability and transparency to the public. I think it’s time for the Northwest Territories to look at publishing salaries over $100,000 a year.
It’s our time, as I’ve said, to do our part to demonstrate public accountability on public expenditures. But, to date, there is no mechanism in place, or I should say, rather, there are mechanisms preventing public transparency.
Each person like myself who would file a public access to information request, all I would receive back is either nothing or, of course, it would be so redacted it would be a waste of everyone’s time. Although I’ve thought about providing an access to information request, and I haven’t consulted Mr. Dolynny how many pop cans that may take, the fact is that it would cost a lot of money and waste everyone’s time. So it’s time this government looks to start addressing public transparency.
As I said, other provinces have done this. I have even gone to, oddly enough, the Vancouver Sun website and they actually publish by name, title, agency, sector, remuneration in the year and, of course, they also point out where this individual ranks. It’s funny; I just typed in the last name Clark and up popped the fellow who makes over $820,000 a year, and he is third out of 1,000 employees in B.C. Ferries, he is also seventh overall out of almost 10,000 Crown corporations, and he’s still seventh overall out of 70,000-plus employees.
The public demands accountability of where their money is going. The government will in some cases rightly argue these are privacy rules, but the demands of public disclosure, transparency, accountability and certainly the public good should stand firm on reasons why we should do these things.
I will have more examples and, obviously, I will be asking questions to the Minister of Human Resources, who I hope is reading his briefing book and give the public answers that they rightly deserve. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
