Toronto, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is criticizing the Ford government’s decision to appoint a whopping 43 MPPs as parliamentary secretaries. These new appointments will cost Ontario taxpayers an extra $280,000 a year in salaries compared to 2018.

“With soaring living costs, the last thing Ontario taxpayers need is to pay politicians higher salaries so that Premier Doug Ford can give them glorified titles,” said CTF Ontario Director Jay Goldberg. “Ford has included 73 of his 83 MPPs in either the cabinet or as parliamentary secretaries, meaning 88 per cent of the PC caucus will be getting taxpayer-financed pay raises.”

The size of the Ford government’s senior payroll has swelled since the government first took office four years ago. In 2018, Ford had a cabinet with 20 members and appointed just 26 parliamentary secretaries.

“It’s hard to imagine that governing is now 63 per cent more difficult, but that’s how many extra people have been given special posts in Ford’s new government,” said Goldberg. 

When former premier Kathleen Wynne was in office, Vic Fedeli, now the chair of cabinet, criticized Wynne for appointing a 25-member cabinet and 23 parliamentary secretaries.

“This is a government that has continued to bulk up their cabinet and bulk up their parliamentary assistants so that virtually every member of the government earns a tremendous amount of pay more than any other sitting MPP,” said Fedeli in 2014.

“Fedeli was right in 2014 and his government is wrong now,” said Goldberg. “At a time when Ontario is running the largest budget deficit in history, the Ford government is sending exactly the wrong signal by ballooning Ontario’s politician payroll.”