Please don’t freak out before reading the full column!
When it has come to pass that the 11 senior executives of the Caisse de depot et placement alone earn more money than all of the 125 deputies of the National Assembly, it is high time to allow our deputies to carry out some wage catch-up.
CEO Charles Emond and his 10 senior executives received compensation (salary and bonuses) of around $25 million in 2022, including $4.13 million for the big boss.
Parliamentarians will share some $20.4 million in indemnities and allowances in 2023, including $208,200 in salary for Prime Minister François Legault.
The CEO of the Caisse earned in 2022 nearly 20 times the salary that the head of the Quebec state will collect in 2023.
With an average compensation (salary and bonus) of $2 million per head, the five vice-presidents and five subsidiary managers who report to Charles Emond have pocketed in 2022 a little more than 11 times the salary that Quebec ministers will collect this year. ($177,732).
Let’s go with another comparison, more global this one. At the Caisse, the average compensation of the 1,573 employees reached $316,592 in 2022, including $122,695 in bonuses.
How much will a provincial deputy earn this year? His salary is $101,561. Eh yes ! The elected officials who govern the province with its departments, public institutions and state corporations earn three times less than the average income of Caisse employees. Worse still, our elected officials earn less than the average amount of the bonus paid to Caisse employees.
- Listen to the economic column of Michel Girard, economic columnist at the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québec at the microphone of Philippe-Vincent Foisy via QUB-radio :
THAT BEING SAID…
I am therefore in favor of the salary increase of around 30% that the government of François Legault is offering on a silver platter to the deputies of the National Assembly.
Of course, voting for a salary increase of around 30%, as the members of the National Assembly are preparing to do, is very frowned upon in this inflationary period when the Government of Quebec is in the midst of negotiations with government officials and parastatal employees.
And it is also very badly perceived by all workers in the private sector, many of whom need all their little change to succeed in making ends meet.
As timing to offer MPs such an increase, I agree, it’s problematic!
And this explains why Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of Québec solidaire and Pascal Bérubé of the Parti Québécois expressed their disagreement with the salary increase proposed by the Legault government.
- Don’t miss the economic column by Michel Girard, economic columnist for the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québecm, from Monday to Friday at the microphone of Philippe-Vincent Foisy, on QUB-radio :
CONCRETELY
The proposed increase certainly appears substantial. But you have to know that it is based on years and years of catching up.
And it is an independent advisory committee, mandated by the Office of the National Assembly to analyze the salary conditions of deputies, which, in its recent report, pleads in favor of such a catch-up salary.
What are the new salary conditions proposed in Bill 24 just tabled by Simon Jolin-Barrette, parliamentary leader and Minister of Justice?
• Increase the base salary of MPs from $101,561 to $131,766
• Increase ministers’ salaries from $177,732 to $230,591
• Raise the prime minister’s salary from $208,200 to $270,120
With good reason, the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, believes that better salaries for MPs and ministers will attract people to politics. One thing is certain, it can help when recruiting potential candidates.
The new president of the FTQ, Magali Picard, has just come out against the salary increase for deputies proposed by the Legault government.
WHEN THE FTQ LAUNCHES MORALS…
“Yes, the work of an MNA is demanding and requires devoting many hours to his constituents, but precisely, the first duty of an elected official is to serve the population and not to serve himself. The CAQ government should at least have the decency to wait until there is a settlement with an offer that makes sense with its own employees before self-administering salary increases and allowances of more than 30%, a little judgment, please. “, she said.
Ms. Picard finds it incoherent to see the Legault government go ahead with a 30% increase in MP remuneration for a minimum salary of $131,766, when “this same government only offers 1.8% salary increase per year over 5 years to the public sector workers we represent whose average salary is barely $44,000”.
Speaking of inconsistency, I would like to remind Ms. Picard that the five senior executives of her Solidarity Fund shared in fiscal 2022 the astronomical sum of $2.6 million in “salary and shares”, i.e. an average salary of $522,590 per executive.
The leaders of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ thus earn 12 times the average salary of public sector union members who are members of the FTQ!
And when it has come to pass that the FTQ finds it normal to pay the leaders of its Solidarity Fund an average salary equivalent to 2.5 times the Prime Minister’s salary, I find that it is in no position to criticize the remuneration of the head of the government, whose responsibilities are a thousand times greater.