Can you guess which federal bureaucrat got a $100,000 bonus last year?
Well the federal government wants to keep you guessing. They’re planning to gut
Bill C-461, a private member’s bill by Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber.
This bill gives Canadians the right to find out how much money senior federal bureaucrats make and what exactly they do when they’re at work.
In order to scrape the votes together to get this bill passed, Mr. Rathgeber agreed that his bill would only apply to federal staffers in job categories paying $188,000 a year or more.
Now the Harper government wants to raise the disclosure level to a minimum of $319,400. The high-priced bureaucrats in that salary range are entitled to bonuses of up to 39 per cent of their base pay: an extra $124,566, for a grand total of $443,966.
As it stands right now, none of us can find out what these federal employees are paid, or their bonuses.
Cities and provinces provide this information routinely: Ontario puts out its
Sunshine List every year with the name of every government employee in the province making $100,000 or more.
Brent Rathgeber’s bill is currently before the
House of Commons Committee on Ethics, Access to Information, and Privacy. The government says it plans to use its majority on the committee to raise the disclosure limit.
Can you phone or email the MPs on this committee? Tell them to stand up to the backroom operators in the government and support this bill. Tell them you want the disclosure limit lowered to $100,000, not raised to $319,400.
Here is the list of MPs on the committee:
Brent Rathgeber is one MP standing up for taxpayers. Let’s show him he’s not alone in this battle.