Compensation Disclosure – 2019

Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act

Given the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic and its impact on government services, the former Treasury Board Secretariat (now the Treasury Board Secretariat) received legislative approval to delay publication of salary compensation information. The Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act requires an annual disclosure of salary information for employees making more than $100,000 in total compensation annually.

The approved Variation of Deadline requires publication of the 2019 list by December 1, 2020.

2019 Compensation Disclosure Listings

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Notes on Interpreting the Reports

  • The Regulations of the Act require all amounts reported be rounded to the nearest $100. The process implemented was to determine which employees qualified for the report based on their actual total compensation, and then to apply rounding to the nearest $100 to each individual compensation element for each employee. The total compensation reported is the aggregate of each rounded individual compensation element.
  • Pursuant to the Act, total compensation reported does not include employer contributions for pension, insurance or other employee benefits (such as EI or CPP). It also does not include amounts paid to employees as either pay-in-lieu of notice (whether as a lump sum or as salary continuance) or amounts for the payout of leave balances, both of which occur almost exclusively upon the cessation of employment.
  • Public bodies listed in the Regulations of the Act that did not have employees who earned more than $100,000 submitted a Nil Report, which are posted above for those entities.
  • Departmental salary details for the core public service, can be found here
  • The Act provides two means for exemption from the report:
    • Under Section 7, individual employees could apply for exemption to their Deputy Minister or the CEO of their public body on the basis that disclosure “could reasonably be expected to threaten the safety or mental or physical health of the employee.” Each report indicates the number of employees who were exempted on this basis by each public body.
    • Government itself has the authority to grant exemptions to categories of employees under Section 8. Only one such exemption was granted. For reasons of safety associated with being a member of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Association (RNCA), names of employees on the list from the RNCA are not disclosed. Instead each member’s name is replaced by a unique identifier. Job title and the rest of the compensation information is shown as per the Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act.

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Background

On December 13, 2016, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador passed legislation in the House of Assembly that requires an annual listing of all employees in departments and in a number of agencies, boards, commissions, health care bodies, educational bodies and Crown corporations who receive total compensation of more than $100,000 in a calendar year.

Newfoundland and Labrador Joins Other Provinces in Introducing Compensation Disclosure Legislation

Public Sector Compensation Transparency Act

Public Sector Compensation Transparency Regulations

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Exemption Policy and Process

An individual employee, or category of employee, may be exempted from disclosure if disclosure could reasonably be expected to threaten the safety, or mental or physical health of that employee. There are no other grounds for granting exemptions to disclosure. To learn more about the exemption process see the Guideline document below.

Exemption Application

Proof of Authority

Compensation Disclosure Frequently Asked Questions

Exemption Guidelines

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