Sunshine list grows by more than 8,000 public sector workers The pockets of Ontario's highest-paid public sector employee got just a little lighter last year. Tom Mitchell, president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation, pulled in a little over $1.7-million, down $104,000 from 2011. The annual "sunshine list" of provincial employees who make more than $100,000 a year released Thursday was the first opportunity to gauge how well the Liberal government's attempts at holding the line on public sector pay are working. And the results are mixed. The list grew by 8,823 people to 88,412 names, an 11-per-cent jump from 2011. The average salary among these top-earners last year was $127,525, a very slight drop of 0.03 per cent from last year. Some top executives and administrators - whose salaries the Liberals vowed to limit last year - saw their pay hold steady or fall slightly. Mr. Mitchell was the highest-profile example. Twelve hospital executives clocked in at more than $500,000 in 2012, down from 14 the year before. The highest-paid among them, University Health Network CEO Dr. Robert Bell, registered the exact same salary in 2012 as the year before: $753,992.40. Catherine Zahn, CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, was down a little over $2,000 to $672,747. University presidents Feridun Hamdullahpur at Waterloo and Amit Chakma at Western both saw decreases in 2012 of $87,000 and $33,000 respectively, while most of their colleagues saw pay flat-line or rise only slightly. Not all the top-earners were frozen, however. The second-highest paid employee on the list, Hydro One CEO Laura Formusa, saw her pay rise by nearly $70,000 to $1.04-million. And many public sector employees have barely felt the pinch at all. Toronto police, for instance, negotiated a raise over the rate of inflation two years ago, which led to a spike in members joining the list. Among the 7,500 uniformed and civilian members of the service, roughly 40 per cent - 3,181 people - were on the list, even as overtime costs dipped by 15 per cent. That compares to 2,027 in 2011 and 2,159 in 2010, when the G20 summit took place in Toronto. In 2011, the Toronto Police Association and the Toronto Police Services Board hammered out a deal which awarded cops an 11.5 per cent salary increase spread out over four years. Police spokesman Mark Pugash said a blip in the 2012 calendar that occurs every 11 years meant that employees also had 27 pay periods instead of the usual 26. "So there were hundreds of people who just made the list - pages and pages of people who made 101, 102 [thousand]," he said. "The highest-ranking constable makes about 94, or 95 [thousand], so they don't have to do that much overtime," while the base salary for a detective or sergeant starts at just over $98,000. Mr. Pugash also noted that the $100,000 base line dates back to 1996. Adjusted for inflation the magic number would be in excess of $135,000, he said, and a total of 217 police employees would be on the list. Others who enjoyed raises last year include TVO anchor Steve Paikin, who clocked in at $307,539 including taxable benefits, even more than his boss, CEO Lisa De Wilde, whose pay held steady at $268,556. William Moriarty, president and CEO of the University of Toronto Asset Management took in $773,000, up from $655,000 in 2011. Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the government had clearly gotten serious about keeping salaries under control, pointing to some contract settlements with public employees that have come in with zero increases. "That bodes well, and it speaks to the fact that people, the broader public sector, the public recognizes that, hey, we as a government have to address the deficit, we have to address the fiscal impact," he said. It wasn't enough for the Progressive Conservatives, who renewed their call for an across-the-board wage freeze. "This is a government that wants people in Ontario to believe that they have effectively dealt with salaries in the broader public sector," finance critic Peter Shurman told reporters. They haven't and this is the proof that they haven't, and this is the reason why we say we need a legislated mandatory wage freeze. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, meanwhile, called on the government to cap CEO salaries at double the premier's, or a little over $400,000. Under her plan, Mr. Mitchell's salary would be slashed by nearly $1.3-million, or 70 per cent. The $100,000 level was set in 1996 and over the years some have talked about raising it or indexing it to inflation. If it had followed inflation, the limit today would be roughly $135,000. But Premier Kathleen Wynne and Mr. Sousa shot down any suggestion the threshold would be raised, a politically unpopular move. "People would still say $100,000 is a lot of money and that we need a light shone on that," Ms. Wynne said. We need to acknowledge that there just needs to be transparency. People need to know what folks are earning and what the work is that they are doing for that money. With reports from Timothy Appleby, James Bradshaw and the Canadian Press