N.S. introduces $100K club legislation

Nova Scotia will soon have legislation that will require the public disclosure of salaries for anyone who makes more than $100,000 from public sector bodies.

The Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act was tabled Friday in the legislature by Finance Minister Graham Steele.

"This will make it much easier for taxpayers to see where their money is going, and to judge for themselves whether the compensation is reasonable," Steele said.

Once it's enacted, members of the public will be able to see the name and amount of compensation of anyone who makes $100,000 or more each year from a public body that receives funding from Nova Scotia taxpayers.

The information must be disclosed in an audited statement and posted to a publicly-accessible website.

"Almost all of these entities would have their own website and if they do have their own website you can expect the information to be available there," Steele told reporters. "If they don't have their own website, their responsibility is to put it on a publicly-accessible website."

The finance minister said the list would expand the scope of reporting on salaries that is already done for employees of all government departments under public accounts by adding an additional 100 public sector bodies and government agencies.

While the list will include compensation for doctors working for universities and health boards, it will not include fee-for-service doctors — most family doctors.

"We know there is a tremendous variety of organizational structures and payment arrangements in the broader public sector, and so some time will be needed to work out exactly how this new reporting requirement will work for any given organization," said Steele.

The finance minister said he did not know how many names would end up on the list, and said the information will be just as interesting to the government as to the general public.

The first mandatory report will be for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, although any public sector body that is ready to report their results before may do so.

The legislation is similar to that already in place in Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba, which have thresholds of $100,000, $75,000 and $50,000 respectively.

Steele said Nova Scotia's threshold — the same as the one set in Ontario — may be changed in the future if the government decides it has been placed too high.

"I think most people would agree that public interest isfocused on the upper end of the salary scale," he said.