VANCOUVER—British Columbia’s five top-earning executives on the public payroll together raked in a total of $3.5 million in the most recent fiscal year, according to government data released Tuesday.

The province’s so-called “sunshine list” of top-paid public employees revealed that amount was a full $1 million more than the same public employees earned in 2016-17.

The highest-grossing employee in 2017-18 heads B.C. Hydro subsidiary PowerEx. The public energy exporter’s president and CEO Tom Bechard took home $898,258, the province said.

Several of the top-10 executives on the list have been dismissed by the New Democrat government, among them several ex-B.C. Liberal government insiders connected to former premier Christy Clark. Several of them got many times their salaries in what the list called “other” costs, which could include severance pay or salary continuation, the province noted.

“When so many Crown corporation executives consistently find themselves in the top 1 per cent of earners in B.C., something is seriously adrift,” Dermod Travis, executive director of the nonprofit government watchdog Integrity B.C., told StarMetro. “Salaries at B.C.’s Crown corporations are — more often than not — out of line with similar jobs in other provinces.

“It's time for the government to stop patting itself on the back at keeping the paycheques in check, and instead conduct a thorough inter-provincial review of salaries, as Alberta did recently with school boards.”

The top five earners were Kimberly Henderson, deputy minister under Clark (paid $687,589 last fiscal year despite a base salary of $85,790); B.C. Securities Commission chair Brenda Leong (paid $639,702); former deputy finance minister Athana Mentzelopoulos (paid $619,739); and University of British Columbia president Santa Ono (paid $595,848).

Each of them was hired during the B.C. Liberals’ 16 years in office. Taxpayers are on the hook for their severance and other contractual obligations.

“Legislation governs severance calculations and provisions for public sector employees,” a finance ministry spokesperson said in an email. “Severance packages are independently administered by the Public Service Agency according to the terms of the Public Sector Employers Act.”

Another with a take-home that was much higher than her base salary is B.C. Hydro’s axed CEO Jessica McDonald — a one-time deputy minister under former B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell. She was sixth on the list, earning a total of $541,615 — roughly 150 per cent of her base salary.

The NDP fired McDonald last summer after they took office, in addition to a number of other civil servants and executives they replaced with new appointees.

The “government is committed to ensuring that executive compensation is fair and transparent for the public,” the B.C. finance ministry said in a release Tuesday, as part of its annual public accounts review. “British Columbia is considered a national leader in reporting standards of executive compensation disclosure, which includes base salary, pensions, holdbacks, bonuses, severances and an explanation of the compensation paid.”

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Mentzelopoulos, Clark’s deputy minister of corporate priorities, took home $619,739 this year despite a salary of just $73,537. That’s 840 per cent of her salary.

According to detailed government accounts, her severance after the NDP took power was nearly a half-million.

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