Sunshine List reveals Rye’s top pay grades

By Mohamed Omar

Who made more than $100,000 last year at Ryerson? Eight-hundred and nintety-two people did.

Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure statement, or the Sunshine List, was released Friday March 29.

The document lists public employees, from nurses to nuclear engineers, who were paid $100,000 or more the previous year.

The number of Ryerson faculty, administration and staff on the 2012 list swelled to 892 from 791 in 2011, a jump that Ryerson President Sheldon Levy said was understandable due to inflation rates and incremental salary increases.

“I think as you approach the $90-100,000 [salary range] where a lot of faculty members are, all of a sudden you’re going to get bumps because you’re very close to that magic mark under which you’re on or off the list,” he said. “So I think if you take into account the inflation of two or three per cent, you would drop a whole lot of people off.”

But the list shows that many salaries went up by much more than the 1.5 incremental increase that the Ryerson Faculty Association agreed to in 2012, and out of the school’s 50 highest-paid employees, 20 are professors.

Thanks to a one-time bonus of more than $80,000, Levy’s salary jumped to $445,780 – more than Rob and Doug Ford’s combined $275,000 – from his $365,000 in 2011.

The bonus was so large because any other gradual increase in salary would be illegal.

“If you’re in the senior administration, you cannot get a base increment,” Levy said. “I can’t have a base increment. It’s against the law. So you’re given a bonus increment. The bonus has to be taken by Revenue Canada. I can’t defer it. But that bonus, as in all increments, I give back to student scholarships. I don’t make a big deal about it.”

Other top spots in the administration also enjoyed a significant increase.

Elisabeth Stroback, the executive lead on capital projects and real estate at Ryerson who is also ineligible for incremental increases, saw her salary shoot up by 57 per cent, jumping to more than $287,000 from $183,000. She began working at Ryerson in 2011. That’s $7,000 more than what an authorized nuclear operator at Ontario Power Generation made.

Incoming provost Mohamed Lachemi, the current dean of the faculty of engineering and architectural science, also enjoyed a healthy pay boost. His 2012 salary increased to more than $282,000 from $211,000 – a 34 per cent jump.

Some Ryerson employees on the list don’t even work at the school anymore. Linda Grayson, former vice-president of administration of finance at Ryerson, has received about $770,000 in paid leave since resigning from her position in 2010.

The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act came into effect in 1996 and requires all public institutions to disclose the names, positions, salaries and taxable benefits of employees who received more than $100,000 the previous year.

Ryerson became subject to the Act in 2006.