Are you angry at Western University for paying its president, Amit Chakma, double his normal salary – almost a million bucks – last year?
Then take a moment to thank the man who made this scandal possible.
That’s right: I’m talking about former Ontario premier Mike Harris.
He’s the guy responsible for this province’s Sunshine List, the legislative tool that allows taxpayers to find out the names and positions of all the provincial public servants who were paid more than $100,000 in the past calendar year.
Passed into law in 1996, we in the media — and also everyday people — now take the Sunshine List for granted.
But if it wasn’t for Harris and his government, we would be none the wiser to Chakma’s sweetheart deal.
You can say what you want about Mike Harris.
He was divisive. His Common Sense Revolution actually made no sense. He made scapegoats of teachers. He was no Bill Davis.
However, if you’re at all outraged by the Chakma revelation, then you have to admit the Tory premier did at least one thing right when his Progressive Conservatives were in power during the 1990s.
Harris believed so firmly in the Sunshine List, he made it one of his priorities soon after coming to power in 1995.
The unveiling of the list has become an annual ritual. That’s because those near the top, such as Chakma, inevitably get a lot of grief for drawing so much from the public purse.
Imagine a world without it. In that world, none of us would be aware of the arrangement Chakma made with Western to receive double his normal salary after five years.
We would likely have no clue about his salary at all. It would be a secret. Would he have given half of the money back?
We know the Sunshine List is working because it has touched off an intense debate this year here in the Forest City. There is now a very public discussion going on about how much we value school administrators. That’s a good thing.
Harris’s list is one way for the public to access very important information. And more information is always better than less.
Since it applies to all public servants with a salary of more than $100,000, it also educates us to the sheer number of police officers and firefighters who are making large incomes.
Oh, and by the way, for those of us living in the real world, $100,000 is a huge whack of money. As a salary cutoff, that number still makes sense.
So if you were an opponent of Mike Harris back in the day, by all means continue to not think much of him.
But if Chakma’s double salary makes you wince, then I’m afraid you have to concede that Harris is owed his share of gratitude, regardless of how you might feel about his other achievements while in the province’s highest office.
(Full disclosure: I teach both graduate and undergraduate journalism courses at Western.)
