Hydro-Québec refuses to reveal the salaries of almost all of its 2,259 executives

Hydro-Québec has chosen to keep the salaries of almost all of its 2,259 executives hidden.

• Read also: Salaries of $275,000 and more for 10 big bosses of little-known Hydro-Québec subsidiaries

The state-owned company only provided the salaries of its nine most senior executives, in response to a request for access to information made by our Bureau of Investigation.

Among them, it is the head of operations and infrastructure, Claudine Bouchard, who was the best paid at Hydro in 2023, with a remuneration of $658,783, ahead of CEO Michael Sabia who has a salary of $639,000.

As for all other executives, the state-owned company mentions industrial secrecy and the fact that this could come into play in its negotiation strategies with its staff.

“The disclosure of such information would undermine the way Hydro-Québec operates in the recruitment and retention of its personnel and would give an unfair advantage to its competitors in the market,” Hydro wrote in response to our request.

Ontario does it

The former Minister of Health and professor at the National School of Public Administration, Rémy Trudel, expresses doubts about the validity of this argument.

“They say it will hurt the competition. Who are Hydro-Québec’s competitors? It is a company to which we have granted exclusivity for the production and distribution of electricity,” he maintains.

In Ontario, the state-owned electricity producer Ontario Power Generation is required to disclose the salaries and names of its 9,300 union members and managers earning $100,000 and more.

This disclosure is made throughout the public service among our neighbors. The famous Sunshine Listavailable on the Ontario government website, compiles the salaries of 300,000 employees.

A similar exercise is carried out in several other Canadian provinces.

Since May 10, our Bureau of Investigation has made available the most exhaustive list ever compiled of Quebec public service salaries. The web tool includes nearly 20,000 names.

CONTESTATION

The newspaper intends to contest Hydro-Québec’s response to the request for access to information, with the aim of making this data of public interest accessible.

“A public company must be publicly accountable. This is the basic rule of access to information. We cannot, when it comes to the disclosure of information, be judge and jury. It is up to the Commission for Access to Information to decide,” says Rémy Trudel.