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marcus gee

Have they no shame! According to Toronto's striking unions, city leaders should hang their heads for claiming that they can't afford to give workers a decent raise. After all, city councillors got a pay hike this year. If they did, why shouldn't the workers?

The Toronto Star, hauling out the "H" Bomb, says that it "reeks of hypocrisy" for councillors to get a raise at time when the city is asking workers for restraint. In the same high dudgeon, Etobicoke Councillor Doug Holyday called it the "height of hypocrisy" when the city's executive committee voted earlier to leave the councillors' raise in place.

Now John Tory, the former leader of the provincial Conservatives who is mulling a run against Mayor David Miller in next year's election, has jumped on the shame train. "Let's see the mayor and the council roll back their pay increase," he said on his talk-radio show Sunday.

But before we flog the reeking hypocrites in Nathan Phillips Square and throw their shameful remains in the reflecting pool, let's consider the facts. Council did not "give themselves" a raise this year.

Under an arrangement made in 2006, councillors get an automatic cost-of-living raise at the start of every year, based on inflation measured by Statistics Canada's Toronto Consumer Price Index. In other words, their annual raises prevent them from losing ground, but no more. In effect, their salaries are frozen in real terms for good.

This year's 2.42 per cent raise is less than the 3 per cent average that police, firefighters and transit workers got in recent contracts. It brings a councillor's salary to $99,153, less than many high school vice-principals make. The mayor of Canada's largest city, presiding over a government with a budget of $8.2-billion, would make $166,985 had he taken the raise.

Those are far from princely salaries for leading officials in the public service. Trolling through the highly entertaining Public Sector Salary Disclosure lists, released by law every year, I found that Toronto's supervisor of golf courses makes $102,688.54, around $3,500 more than a councillor. The farm implements co-ordinator for the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs makes $111,118.26 and the general manager of the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers Board takes in $122,225.33.

In Mississauga, city councillors make $126,320 when their pay as regional councillors is factored in. And if you think Mr. Miller's pay is a bit much, consider that the police chief of Sudbury, population 158,000, makes $188,403.36.

A 2006 study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting checked out pay in other Ontario municipalities and found that Toronto's mayor and councillors were significantly underpaid for their city's size. It recommended giving them a one-off raise to bring them in line - councillors went to $95,000 from about $87,000 and the mayor to $160,000 from about $147,000 - followed by annual cost-of-living increases.

That is just what the city did and it made perfect sense. It established a fair rate of pay and instituted a mechanism for raising it over time to keep up with inflation. That should have solved the matter for good, taking it out of the hands of council and preventing it from becoming a political football.

But, however reasonable they may be, politicians' salaries are always a punching bag, especially in hard times. Even the politicians themselves can't stop themselves from swinging at it. In city council, 17 of 44 councillors are backing a special meeting to roll back this year's raise. Even if that doesn't happen, 18 councillors, plus the mayor, are declining the raise on principle, making those who do keep it look greedy.

Thankfully, some refuse to feel guilty about making the money they do. Kyle Rae, the gay activist and veteran downtown councillor, says he works hard for his salary and "I've not had anyone say I'm overpaid." He typically works from 9 in the morning till 10 at night, with 10 to 15 meetings a day and weekend events on top. He got no raise of any kind for a full decade beginning in 1994.

Should he be ashamed for taking his cost-of-living bump? Of course not. If anything, councillors should make more than they do. They do a critical job and paying them well might bring in candidates of higher calibre. The only shame in all this belongs to those who are playing populist games with councillors' fair and reasonable compensation, keeping open an issue that should rightfully have been settled years ago.

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