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While Ontario’s college and university staff were busy getting massive pay hikes during the pandemic, taxpayers and college tuition paying students barely got by.
The newly appointed Secretary of State for Universities, Jill Dunlop, now has a backpack of homework to do on this expensive file.
With a $ 33 billion deficit, the main task of any newly mixed cabinet ministers from Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford should be to find savings in their departments.
In the case of Dunlop, there is a lot of savings.
Look at the numbers for Ontario’s three largest universities: the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Waterloo.
At the University of Toronto, the number of employees earning more than $ 100,000 rose 8.9 percent in 2020.
York University and the University of Waterloo also recorded significant increases of 7.8 percent and five percent, respectively.
But while university employees enjoyed increases, ordinary taxpayers lost their jobs. The province lost 355,300 net jobs in 2020. At the end of last year, the unemployment rate in Ontario was 9.6 percent.
The numbers for the students keep getting worse.
Young workers aged 15 to 24 saw the largest job losses of any demographic in the province last year, according to Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office.
For every worker over 25 who lost his job in the past year, five workers under 25 lost his job.
Despite these massive job losses, Ontario students face higher costs returning to school in the fall, while Ontario taxpayers will be forced to pay for the provincial post-secondary salary scales bloated.
Ontario universities spend well over half of their budget on paying their staff.
Compensation represented 61 percent of the University of Toronto’s 2020 budget, 68 percent of York University’s budget, and 62 percent of the University of Waterloo’s budget.
How does this affect government spending?
The Province of Ontario currently spends more than $ 10 billion annually on post-secondary education.
Based on the three largest universities in our province, Ontario will spend between $ 6.2 billion and $ 7.0 billion on university employee salaries this year.
Additionally, the Ontario government’s post-secondary budget has increased by $ 2.4 billion over the past five years, suggesting that worker wages and benefits for household growth have increased by approximately $ 1.5 billion were responsible.
With a deficit of $ 33 billion, Ontario cannot afford a billion dollar raise.
As the new minister to bring a fresh perspective to the Department of Colleges and Universities, now is the time for Dunlop to show leadership.
That leadership should begin by addressing these outrageous wage increases.
The Ford government has passed laws that appear to try to curb extravagant salaries and benefits by capping government employees’ wage increases to one percent per year.
However, there are far too many loopholes in the legislation. It enables increases of more than one percent for duration of employment, performance assessments and the completion of further training.
In addition, the Ministry of Higher Education is not going far enough to limit the salary increases to one percent.
It’s time for a pay cut.
Dunlop can work with Treasury Secretary Peter Bethlenfalvy to reduce the deficit through wage cuts at the Department of Colleges and Universities and to close the loopholes that make these extravagant annual pay hikes possible.
It is simply unfair to keep asking students and taxpayers to pay higher costs so that those who work for the government do not have to share the burden of dealing with the disaster that is Ontario’s finances.
For too long, the Ontario governments have allowed the provincial deficit to spiral out of control by refusing to make tough decisions.
It is time for Dunlop and the Ford government to act.
Jay Goldberg is the interim director of Ontario for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Jay Goldberg is a thought leader at Troy Media. For interview requests, click here.
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