The New Democrats had a simple idea — get a grip on outlandish pay in Alberta’s public agencies, boards and commissions.
They ended up wrestling an octopus. The tentacles are obvious everywhere in Thursday’s rollout of a website detailing pay disclosures.
This vast quasi-public sector is wildly diverse. Some bodies are very important (the Alberta Energy Regulator), while others are virtually useless (the committee that regulated crossbow licences.)
Pay rates are all over the place. Some executive and board pay is goofily extravagant, while other people in this largely volunteer sector (monks, evidently) refuse to take any pay at all.
The poster child for recklessness is the Agriculture Financial Services Corp., whose board and three top officials were suspended by the NDP June 14 — with pay — after allegedly improper dealings by the executives with suppliers, as well as abuse of expenses.
Brad Klak, the president and managing director, was being paid $610,700, plus $121,371 in other compensation, for a total of $732,000.
(Apologies for reporting last week that Klak was making a mere $485,000. That was from the latest report then available, which is now updated by the online filings released Thursday.)
A quasi-public body like the financial services corporation can run wild for one reason only: the Progressive Conservatives allowed the boards they appointed to set the pay rates for executives.
There were no limits or even guidelines. These bodies weren’t even required to disclose their detailed financials to the government.
Asked how the NDP had any idea what they were up to, one official said the government had to hunt for annual reports, “just like you.”
The NDP’s first pass at the problem showed that 27 of these bodies paid the executives more than $200,000 a year, and often much more.
These 27 were placed in a special category, “designated agency.” Designated, as in “target.” From the AFSC to the Alberta Energy Regulator and Alberta Electrical System Operator, the pay will be going down.
Some grandfathering of pay deals will be necessary, but within two years the pay will be confined to the “bands” on the level of civil servants.
The AFSC appears to be an extreme and unique case. This outfit organizes farm insurance with large companies and makes business loans to farmers.
That’s an important role, but not nearly as vital to Alberta as the energy regulator, whose CEO, Jim Ellis, makes a grand total of $721,000, $11,000 less than Brad Klak.
And yet, even the AER is often cited in government circles as another vivid case of questionable pay.
The board chair is oilpatch veteran Gerry Protti, who is paid $280,000 for his governance role. This pay seems to be highest by far for any chairperson in the public agency ecosystem.
The government is also extremely interested in pay levels for the executives of the big universities.
By Thursday, University of Calgary, University of Alberta and University of Lethbridge still hadn’t filed their disclosures, which aren’t technically due until June 30.
Elizabeth Cannon.
A couple of years ago U of C president Elizabeth Cannon’s base pay was about $454,000. Indira Samarasekera, then president of U of A, was making $529,000, nearly as much as the $573,000 paid today to Dr. Verna Yiu, the CEO of Alberta Health Services, which has 100,000 employees.
The NDP may even have its eye on the Alberta Human Rights Commission, whose top official, Robert A. Philp, made $341,800 last year.
We should perhaps bow in thanks to the organizations whose members work hard for the public good, but take little pay, or sometimes none at all.
At the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, board chair Joan Udell was paid a modest $5,145 in an honorarium and expenses in 2015. One board member, Stephen Krasnow, claimed only $454.
On other bodies, some members donate their honoraria to charities.
The quasi-public world the PCs built is afflicted by salary bloat, but in some corners the lack of compensation is entirely admirable.
The picture is so diverse that the NDP has to pick through these agencies one by one, controlling here and encouraging there.
This isn’t as easy as it looked when they started.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
