The Government of Canada and Crown corporations lack transparency by keeping the salaries of almost all of its senior executives secret, public administration experts deplore.
For several months, our Bureau of Investigation has been trying to compile, as it did for Quebec, the salaries of the heads of federal organizations.
In particular, we collected the information contained in federal government decrees in addition to making around ten requests for access to information.
However, we came up against a wall of opacity from the government. The vast majority of documents received after our access to information requests did not include the requested information or were completely redacted.
Inconsistency
According to François Dauphin, CEO of the Institute on the Governance of Private and Public Organizations, there is a “transparency deficit” regarding remuneration compared to what is done in Quebec. “There is no uniformity on disclosure,” he says.
The documents sent were in fact completely different from one organization to another.
For example, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service preferred to keep the first name, last name and salary of its leaders secret. He only sent a list of positions.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation sent us a list with a single line that says “vice-president” and a salary range. Same thing for -.
The Canada Infrastructure Bank responded to our request in the negative by sending 40 pages of documents in which no salary is revealed.
The Department of National Defense and Canada Post have still not responded to us, almost four months after our requests.
Confidential salaries
Exact salaries, according to the Treasury Board, are considered by law to be “personal information and […] protected against disclosure. For this reason we can only publish salary ranges.
“Now, if we ask ourselves the question of whether we are paying our public service too much, we cannot know. It’s a question of transparency and trust in our institutions,” laments Geneviève Tellier, professor of public administration at the University of Ottawa.
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