Mayor Olivia Chow reacts to proposed 24 per cent pay hike for city councillors

Mayor Olivia Chow enters council chambers for her Declaration of Office Ceremony at Toronto City Hall, on Wednesday, July 12, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana Martin

Mayor Olivia Chow says a recommendation to bump up the salaries of Toronto city councillors by 24 per cent is “a bit steep” despite a recent report that shows that their counterparts in other jurisdictions make more money.

A staff report suggests that the 2025 councillor salary of $137,537.40 should be hiked up to $170,588.60, which includes a 2.81 per cent bump tied to inflation.

The report’s authors said they arrived at the more than $33,000 annual pay increase while acknowledging the “unique demands placed on” city councillors, who represent a large number of constituents and oversee operating and capital budgets larger than some provinces.

The report, which was produced by the city’s People & Equity division with assistance from a third-party advisor, Korn Ferry, is set to go before council for debate on Wednesday.

It notes that the last time councillors in the city got a raise was in 2006 and that elected officials have only seen annual increases tied to inflation since then (with the exception of 2011, 2020, and 2021). Toronto councillors also have the lowest compensation per constituent among comparable cities, according to the report, and don’t get paid for their appointments on boards or other service agencies.

Back in 2006, city council agreed to adjust councillor compensation beyond the 75th percentile of the “comparator market group,” meaning that council members would earn more than 75 per cent of their contemporaries in similar-sized cities. However, the report noted that compensation has fallen below that level and current compensations for councillors sits at around the 62nd percentile.

The 24 per cent pay bump would bring councillor salary back to the 75th percentile benchmark, the report said, when compared to other cities in the review, including Brampton, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Markham, Mississauga, Ottawa, Vaughan, and Winnipeg.

In Mississauga, councillors there made $173,117 in 2024 – the most of any municipality surveyed in the report. That includes a base salary of $155,813 and $17,304 in additional compensation.

Officials estimate that the salary increases would cost the city $956,816.30.

Veteran Coun. James Pasternak put forward the motion in November to review councillor salaries and said that a comparative report that was requested in 2019 was never brought forward.

That review was first requested after Ontario Premier Doug Ford slashed the size of city council from 47 seats to 25, which effectively doubled the size of councillor’s constituencies.

“Since that time, no report analyzing this issue has come to council. It is widely understood that the report is complete and that a third-party consultant was retained. This motion restates council’s desire to review and debate the contents of the report and staff recommendations that accompany it,” he said.

Chow was asked about the proposed increase at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday and said she has “always” thought that it’s important for a third party to make decisions on salary increases, for both councillors and mayors.

“The recommendation in front of council is a bit steep given the economic times but it’s really, totally up to the city councillors to make decisions,” she said. Chow made $225,304.04 last year. Her salary would not be impacted by the motion before council.

“I do know that the councillors are facing a lot of pressure also, so I think there will be robust and healthy debate at council.”

‘The pay increase is overdue’: Coun. Myers

Coun. Jamaal Myers, who serves as chair of the TTC board and the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee, says a “good councillor” is working at least six to seven days a week and there’s “no other way” to do the job effectively, short of working those hours.

“So, I read the report… and the facts speak for themselves. City councillors in Toronto are underpaid when you compare them to almost any other municipality in the GTA,” he said, speaking alongside Chow.

“I think it’s reasonable to expect that we have this debate… where we land, I guess we’ll decide that tomorrow, but I think the pay increase is overdue,” he said, noting that his constituency of Scarborough North includes 100,000 people – which is Toronto’s smallest ward but still roughly the size of the entire city of Peterborough.

Coun. Anthony Peruzza, who was also at the Tuesday news conference unrelated to the report, was asked about the proposed salary increase, acknowledging that there’s “never a good time” to decide on renumeration for yourself.

“We have growth in this area in a way that we’ve never seen before. So, has the job changed? It has changed considerably. Have my responsibilities changed? They have been intensely magnified,” the representative for Humber River-Black Creek said of the councillor workload post 2018.

“So, what is fair for that? What is fair compensation for that role and for that job? We will land on that, I suspect, over the next few days. But that’s something that I would be very keenly interested in taking a look at that.”