There are legislated requirements for the public reporting of public sector compensation in British Columbia
We present a brief discussion of the data available to conduct analysis of public sector compensation in British Columbia. In particular, two acts mandate the public disclosure of public sector compensation in the province: thePublic Sector Employers Actand theFinancial Information Act. A number of additional sources on public sector compensation are also potentially at the disposal of the BC Government. 1. Under thePublic Sector Employers Act,
Provincial Government employers have two reporting obligations:
► All Provincial Government organizations covered by the Act must publish
compensation information for the CEO and the next four highest paid/ranking executives earning a base salary of at least $125,000. School Districts must publish compensation information for all Superintendents,
regardless of their salary. This disclosure, or ‘Statement of Executive Compensation’, must include information about base salary, benefits, pension contributions, and any performance payments
► All public sector employers are also required to make available for inspection during normal business hours contracts of
employment for senior employees (defined as any employee earning a base salary of $125,000 or more)1
2. TheFinancial Information Actrequires all public sector employers to disclose the total amount of remuneration and expenses of all employees with a base salary over $75,000 as part of their Financial Statements made in accordance with the FIA, where remuneration includes any form or salary, wages, performance incentives, gratuities, taxable benefits, payment into trust or any form of income deferral paid by the corporation to the employee, and does not include anything payable under a severance agreement2
1PSEA, “A Guide to Excluded and Executive Compensation in the BC Public Sector” (2009) 2Financial Information Act (1993)
Stakeholders interviewed observed that British Columbia is considered to have one of if not the most stringent legislated disclosure requirements for compensation in North America
Case study: Surrey School district
FIA data does not provide a total
compensation view. For example, a former association superintendent in the Surrey school district received $614,382 in compensation in 2009-10.
His base salary was $117,095 but he also received $486,650 in “vehicle allowance, unused vacation, retiring allowance and severance payout”. There was also a pension contribution of $9,637 and another $1,000 unaccounted for.
His compensation under FIA disclosure was reported as $332,224 in 2009-10.
Vancouver Sun, “Surrey gets a record $614,382 compensation” (2010)
Appendix C-18. Data limitations have implication for controlling
compensation
There are also a number of aggregate data sources available from Statistics Canada
1. Settlement agreements covering the outcomes of collective bargaining are also reported publically, and are available through a number of sources including:
► The Negotech database, a repository of collective agreements which is available as a courtesy via the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada website1
► The BC Bargaining database as maintained by the Business Council of British Columbia2
2. Census data – note that where in previous years census reporting was mandatory, reporting for the 2011 census was voluntary and may therefore impact results. Data is not publically available at an adequate level of detail to support analysis of compensation differentials, but can be purchased from Statistics Canada. PSEC has traditionally purchased this information
3. Labour Force Survey (LFS) – The Labour Force Survey is a monthly survey of approximately 56,000 Canadian households. This source is not currently leveraged by the BC Government
The BC Government has made initial efforts to use these sources to begin to understand variation in compensation across the arms of the Public Sector
► PSEC collects detailed compensation data across
the broader Provincial Public Sector prior to each bargaining round through electronic submissions. This data covers wages, wage impacted benefits, non-wage impacted benefits, headcount and FTE numbers, by bargaining unit or grouping, for all Provincial Government employers and employees. PSEC does not have the legislated authority to collect similar data from local Governments. ► Data reported under theFinancial Information Act
is not currently collected, aggregated or
analysed, by the Government. While the data may be available on organizations’ respective
websites, to collect this data would take
considerable time and effort. This is compounded by the fact that many organizations report their data in scanned ‘hard copy’, limiting the ability to extract and manipulate data. It is worth noting that the Vancouver Sun has collected and
aggregated this data in electronic format over the last six years, through Freedom of Information requests submitted to individual organizations across both the Provincial and Municipalities. This dataset is, in turn, made available in searchable form to the public
► The BC Government does collect data on collective wage settlements in electronic format from Human Resources and Development Canada. PSEC is in the process of building a comprehensive dataset of public sector collective agreements
► PSEC has traditionally purchased census data from Statistics Canada but not LFS data This Review represents an early step by the BC Government to build on its own existing work.
1Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, “Negotech” (2013) 2BC Bargaining Database (2013)
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