Doug Ford’s private gravy train adds new passengers

Last week, Doug Ford added two new parliamentary assistants to his already bulky roster in the Ontario legislature. The Progressive Conservative Party holds 79 seats, and 34 of those members enjoy an assistantship, which comes with a raise of roughly $16,000 a year. This is in addition to the largest Cabinet in Ontario history at 37 members – including ministers and associate ministers, roles that also come with a raise. 

It’s quite the gravy train. Sort of.

As Global News reports, Ford dished out the promotions to help Tory members navigate a rising cost of living on $116,000, a salary that is, according to the premier, “unfair.” In 2007, the Liberals froze MPP salaries, a move that was meant to be temporary, but pay hasn't risen since, and no one wants to be the one to break the seal on this self-imposed austerity. Years before the pay freeze, Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris scrapped pensions for members of the legislature, just one of his “Common Sense Revolution” reforms.

The province doesn’t need 37 Cabinet members – one member shy of Justin Trudeau’s federal Cabinet – nor does it need 34 parliamentary assistants. One would be hard pressed to explain why Ontaio needs a parliamentary assistant to the minister of red tape reduction; is it one person’s job to add the bureaucracy the other is meant to reduce? How about the minister of sport? Do they really need a PA? Rural affairs? Both full and associate ministers have these assistants. 

The stealthy pay raises the government has slid to its own members is, to say the least, a dodgy and unfair make-work project. It’s unreasonable to dole out more cash for one set of MPPs under the guise of more work while denying opposition members the same boost. The solution to this problem is as simple as it is unlikely to be realised. 

Ontario should give MPPs a raise and index it to inflation, bring back pensions, and drop the size of Cabinet and number of parliamentary assistants. Bam. Done. Move on with governing and rid yourself of the need to build a Rube Goldberg machine to dole out pay raises to one side while pretending they’ve earned it through some special talent or capacity.

Of course, the same knee-jerk “common sense” populism that gave us the scrapped pensions under Harris and the salary freeze under McGuinty make these solutions non-starters today. Politicians don’t love to be seen giving themselves raises, especially while residents of the province struggle to make ends meet, and it certainly doesn’t go over well with the public. Indeed, at Queen’s Park, party leaders are reluctant to touch the issue and Ford says he has no plans to offer across-the-board raises. 

Years ago, the satirical British politics program The Thick of It captured this phenomenon with its typical elegance and economy, with Peter Capaldi’s spin doctor character Malcom Tucker berating a new minister, telling her “they,” the people, “don't like you having expenses. They don't like you being paid. They'd rather you lived in a fucking cave." 

Being a politician is a lousy job and those who do it ought to be paid fairly. It comes with plenty of costs, including harassment and threats, a diminished private life, tremendous stress, endless travel, non-stop boring events, higher than average rates of divorce, and plenty of substance abuse. In Ontario, it also comes with the risk that if you lose or leave your seat, you may have no pension to fall back on even after many years of service.

Earning $116,000 a year is quite good money, especially in a province where the median income is roughly $41,300. But it’s not what it was in the early 2000s and year-over-year it will continue to be less and less. 

One might point out there are many people out there who’d love to make that much. But that’s an argument for paying people better across the board, not for refusing to pay MPPs for the extraordinary job they are asked to do and, instead, forcing them to take an effective annual pay cut once you factor in the effects of inflation. And while they’re at it, perhaps they could also raise provincial social program payments, such as for the pitifully inadequate Ontario Disability Support Program.

Paying politicians well and ensuring some stability in the remuneration system, including pensions, is entirely reasonable in a self-respecting democracy. If one’s concerned about moral hazard, well, there are easier ways to sell out and more lucrative ways of going crooked. The Ford government ought to reinstate regular MPP salary increases, fix it in law and let it happen automatically; they ought to reintroduce pensions, too. It would be far fairer than handing out make-work gigs to the Tory side and leaving the opposition out in the cold. They might take a small hit for doing the decent thing, but they’ve survived so long doing so much worse, they’d quite likely get by just fine.