‘BE BRAVE’: Toronto councillors give selves gigantic raises

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Toronto city councillors found the courage to hike their own salaries by 24%. 

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On Thursday evening, Shelley Carroll urged her colleagues to “be brave” and vote “to go right on chronically underpaying yourselves” — only now, they’ll be underpaid at just $170,588.60 a year. 

“These are hard times, these are desperately hard times, and we need the best in the city to want to join us in this chamber,” an emotional Carroll said before councillors voted 15-8 to lift their salaries from $137,537. 

After the vote, Carroll hugged Councillor James Pasternak on the chamber floor. It was Pasternak who, at November’s council meeting, called for the report that ultimately recommended a 24% raise for Toronto councillors. 

Voting in favour were Carroll, Pasternak, Paul Ainslie, Lily Cheng, Rachel Chernos Lin, Mike Colle, Ausma Malik, Nick Mantas, Josh Matlow, Chris Moise, Amber Morley, Jamaal Myers, Anthony Perruzza, Dianne Saxe and Michael Thompson. 

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Opposed were Brad Bradford, Alejandra Bravo, Vincent Crisanti, Paula Fletcher, Stephen Holyday, Parthi Kandavel, Frances Nunziata and Gord Perks. Jon Burnside and Jennifer McKelvie were absent for the vote, as was Mayor Olivia Chow. 

Chow, whose salary is not affected, had reportedly called the pay hike “steep” this week. 

Bradford, Crisanti, Holyday, Kandavel and Nunziata had earlier voted to receive the report — effectively rejecting any talk of a raise.

Carroll had proposed something less than what councillors ultimately got. She put forward a motion to raise their salaries to a mere $165,933.43 — essentially the same big raise, just without a cost-of-living increase applied. That motion was made redundant by the $170,588 vote. 

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Before the vote, Morley asked city bureaucrats if they were aware of any “caps on the amount of hours we work or the demands on our time,” before putting forth the ultimate question: “Do you think councillors get paid enough currently?” 

The report was done by city hall’s HR department with the help of a consulting firm. It said the last significant change to councillor salaries was in 2006, with only cost-of-living increases since. While true, salaries in 2006 were just over $87,000, and had risen with inflation in all but three years — two of them during the pandemic. 

The report also said council’s $137,537 salaries don’t stack up especially well against other large Canadian municipalities — particularly not neighbouring Peel and York regions, which pay councillors well over $150,000. 

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At Thursday’s meeting, councillors were told their $137,000 salary put them, in terms of a comparison at city hall, roughly at the level of a manager of something like recreation, HR or finance. Myers asked if the City of Toronto had “any other public servant … that has not received a raise since 2006.” 

Moise mentioned the demands on councillors, which he suggested have been exacerbated by the shrinking of Toronto’s number of wards in 2018. He recalled conversations with politicians from places like Burlington and King City, and expressed disbelief at the money they make compared with the workload. 

“The job I do is 7 days a week, 24/7,” Moise said. 

“I don’t think the salary that’s being requested here is unreasonable. I actually think it’s quite reasonable in comparison to other municipalities not only in Ontario, but across the country itself.”

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City staff said it would cost the city about $957,000 more in salaries and benefits in 2025.

Holyday had told the Toronto Sun this week that he would vote against the $33,000 salary hike. 

“Everybody understands what the salary is when they put their name onto the nomination paper,” he told the Sun.

The optics are awful, he added, “following two years of large tax increases” for Toronto’s citizens, and with the city “on the cusp of economic uncertainty.”

On Thursday, he told his colleagues: “I just believe that if we do this, it further erodes people’s confidence in government and I don’t think we should do it.” 

jholmes@postmedia.com 

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