Ontario’s top-earning public servant took a pay cut last year — to $1.7 million.

Thousands of other public sector workers, including Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair and TVO anchor and producer Steve Paikin, saw their compensation rise despite the minority Liberal administration’s push for voluntary pay freezes as the province fights an $11.9 billion deficit.

Details came in the provincial government’s annual “sunshine list” of employees that made more than $100,000 last year, from bureaucrats to nurses, bus drivers, teachers, cops, hospital and municipal staff.

In all, there were there were 88,412 of them — an increase of 8,823 people, or 11 per cent from 2011.

That’s the same percentage hike as the year before, which followed a 10 per cent rise in 2010, said Progressive Conservative finance critic Peter Shurman (Thornhill).

“This is a government that wants people in Ontario to believe that they have effectively dealt with salaries in the broader public sector,” Shurman, who earned the base MPP salary of $116,550 last year, told reporters.

“This is the proof that they haven’t, and this is the reason why we say we need a legislated mandatory wage freeze.”

Tom Mitchell, the Ontario Power Generation chief executive who perpetually heads the sunshine list, saw his pay and taxable benefits trimmed fall $100,000 from $1.8 million.

Blair’s police salary and taxable benefits rose $38,610 to $370,726, almost double the $201,487.24 paid to OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis.

Paikin earned pay and taxable benefits of $307,539 — that’s almost $100,000 more than former premier Dalton McGuinty at $209,272 and up about $95,000 since 2006.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the average salary on the list — which fills five volumes stacked as high as a large Tim Hortons coffee cup — has come down slightly, to $127,525 in 2012 from $127,566 the previous year.

“We’re doing our best to hold it,” he said.

According to StatsCan, the average individual income in Ontario was $46,124 in 2010.

The number of staff at Metrolinx earning more than $100,000 grew just over 50 per cent to 262 as the transportation agency oversees a number of transit projects like the Eglinton LRT line, rail link to Pearson Airport from Union Station and Presto Cards.

Formally known as the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, the sunshine list was launched in 1996 by former Conservative premier Mike Harris to make the public payroll more transparent.

Although inflation has eroded the purchasing power of $100,000 since the list first appeared, Sousa said the government has no plans to change the threshold that would now be about $139,273 — something Premier Kathleen Wynne acknowledged is a subject of some debate.

“We want to be open and transparent . . . we have no intentions of amending it,” Sousa, who earned $159,277, told reporters. “People should be aware of who’s making what.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who acknowledged she is paid a “generous” salary of $158,157, said she’s against changing the threshold.

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“There’s a heck of a lot of people in this province that are earning less than half that, so $100,000 is still a lot of money.”

She said public sector CEOs such as hospital chief executives should not be making more than twice what the premier is paid.

“That seems to me to be a reasonable thing,” she said.