The salary of former Metrolinx president and chief executive officer Bruce McCuaig was more than $100,000 higher in 2017 than in 2016, despite the fact he left the job midway through last year.

According to the Ontario public sector salary disclosure list released Friday, McCuaig earned $486,035.42 last year, plus $12,484.81 in taxable benefits. He stepped away from the role in April.

In 2016, his salary for the full year was $367,197.85.

A Metrolinx spokesperson declined to answer questions about why the former CEO made more in 2017 than 2016 despite working for less time, or whether McCuaig had left the agency involuntarily and been paid severance.

“Due to privacy, we cannot speak specifically to any individual staff salaries beyond the total salary provided during any calendar year,” said Anne Marie Aikins in an email.

“Total salary may include any negotiated severance, payout of benefits such as vacation time, or other income received by a staff person, as well as taxable benefits.”

McCuaig, who started an executive job at engineering firm AECOM this month, also declined to discuss his salary. “I do not have anything to add beyond Metrolinx’s comments,” he said in a text message.

McCuaig, 57, spent nearly seven years at the helm of Metrolinx. Before taking the job in 2010 he spent 25 years in the public service, including three as deputy minister at the provincial ministry of transportation for the Liberal government.

Metrolinx announced his impending departure last March in a press release marked “urgent,” and said he was stepping down to take a job in the federal privy council office as an adviser to the Infrastructure Bank.

At the time Rob Prichard, chair of the Metrolinx board, described the move as “Bruce’s decision” and showered the outgoing CEO with praise, saying McCuaig would leave behind “a legacy of achievement that will last for decades to come.”

McCuaig left the privy council job after a year and is now vice president, Canada transit sector market leader at AECOM.

In an exit interview with the Star in 2016, McCuaig cited as his major accomplishments progress on the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, rolling out the Presto fare card system on the TTC, and expanding GO Transit service.

His tenure was marked by several high-profile controversies, including the bungled launch of the Union Pearson Express, which operated mostly empty trains for eight months. Metrolinx was eventually forced to slash fares to attract more riders.

McCuaig left the Metrolinx job four months before the Star revealed that in June 2016 he had taken a leading role in altering internal agency reports to recommend the board approve two new GO Transit stations that studies had recommended against.

Former transportation minister Steven Del Duca pressured the agency into approving the stops, one of which was in Del Duca’s riding of Vaughan. The other was a station pitched as part of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan.

As a result of the Star’s investigation Metrolinx put the stations under review. Earlier this month the agency released new analyses using different modelling assumptions under which the stops performed better than they had initially. On March 8 the board voted to proceed with them and 11 other stops as part of a major GO expansion known as regional express rail.

The public sector salary disclosure, also known as the Sunshine List, is a list of all public sector workers earning at least $100,000 a year.

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The 2017 list also reveals that Kathryn Haley, the former president of the Union Pearson Express who resigned from the position in March 2016 after controversy over the service’s launch, had a Metrolinx salary of $134,221.22 last year. She earned $231,334.78 in 2016.

Metrolinx gave the same response to questions about her salary as it did about McCuaig, noting that the salaries on the list could include severance, vacation time, and other payments.

Haley couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

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