Federal Court Case Could Bring Transparency to Bank of Canada Salaries
Canadian taxpayers have the right to know how their money is spent, but transparency at the federal level has been lacking. Transparency advocate Matt Malone asked the Bank of Canada to disclose the salaries and bonuses of its governors going back to 2012. The bank refused, citing a privacy exemption.
The governor of the Bank of Canada sets interest rates that affect what millions of Canadians pay on their mortgages. The bank is owned by taxpayers and its surplus flows back to the federal treasury. Under the access-to-information law, the person who decides whether to release the governor's pay records is the governor himself.
Mark Carney, Stephen Poloz, Tiff Macklem, and their deputies have all been paid without transparency. The bank claims that exact salaries are protected personal information, but this was not always the case. In 1940, the finance minister disclosed Governor Graham Towers' salary as $30,000 a year.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is backing Malone in his fight for transparency. A win would confirm that officials can't hide their pay behind a privacy exemption they administer themselves. The federation is also pushing for a federal sunshine law to put the names and salaries of Ottawa's top earners online every year, automatically.