Ontario Premier Doug Ford laughs with members of his cabinet, including Peter Bethlenfalvy, president of the Treasury Board, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli and Infrastructure Minister Monte McNaughton, during a photo op with bank economists at Queen's Park in Toronto on Aug. 30, 2018. Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star

TORONTO — The person tasked with finding millions in government savings started his job with the Ford government with a hefty pay hike.

iPolitics has learned that the government’s new chair of the internal corporate audit committee, Charles-Antoine St-Jean, was given a 67 per cent pay boost over Kevin Costante who served in the role under the former Liberal government.

St-Jean is earning $2,500 per day compared to the $1,500 per day that Costante was earning in the role, according to Treasury Board spokesperson Beata Carissa.

[READ MORE: Ford freezes salaries of public service managers, reviews executive pay]

The minister responsible, Peter Bethlenfalvy, strongly defended the change in pay, calling it the market rate and “outstanding value for money.” But the NDP say it’s “offensive” and “impossible to justify.”

Neither the daily rate, nor the change in pay, was part of Bethlenfalvy’s press release announcing St-Jean’s appointment in mid-February.

Bethlenfalvy said the new pay scale is, in part, justifiable because St-Jean has an “expanded role” and “increased responsibility.” He said St-Jean will be helping to set up the government’s new audit and accountability committee, which the corporate audit committee will then report to. Bethlenfalvy said St-Jean is also tasked with setting up new processes to ensure the problems flagged in the auditor general’s value-for-money audits are acted on.

“When you’re in a new process, a new governance structure, I think you want to make sure you get it right at the outset. And I don’t think you compromise on a couple thousand dollars,” Bethlenfalvy said.

“As you know, when you hire people you pay what the market is.”

However, he said the government did not put the position out to tender, nor did it have an open competition for the job. He said the government spoke to “a number of people” before picking “the best guy.”

The change in pay was slammed by the NDP’s Taras Natyshak, who said the government’s explanation for increasing the rate of already “elite level” compensation doesn’t hold up.

“It’s just another example of Ford telling the general public that it’s time to tighten their belts but when it comes to their own appointees, it seems like the sky’s the limit,” Natyshak said. “If you’re named by the Ford government, you’ve likely hit the jackpot.”

[READ MORE: Ontario freezes broader public sector executive pay]

He pointed to several other appointments and accompanying salaries that he said shows the government has “codified” salaries that are an “affront” to average Ontarians.

On top of the pay being doled out for St-Jean, other appointments have also come with high pay:

Cameron Montgomery, a failed PC candidate, was made the chair of the board of the Education Quality and Accountability Office. With his appointment, the Ford government turned the position into a full-time job and bumped the pay up from a $225 per diem to a $140,000 salary, according to the Toronto Star.

Jenni Byrne, Ford’s former principal secretary and a senior campaign member, was appointed to the Ontario Energy Board with a $197,000 salary.

Ian Todd, a senior staff on the Tory election campaign, received a $75,000 pay bump over his Liberal-appointed predecessor, to represent Ontario in Washington, D.C. As first reported by iPolitics, Todd is paid $350,000 per year — the government said the higher pay makes up for the fact that Todd won’t get severance if he’s let go.

Rueben Devlin was appointed to the newly created position of the premier’s special adviser on health care soon after the government was sworn in. Devlin, a former hospital CEO and surgeon, is also the former president of the Ontario PCs and served on Ford’s transition team. He is being paid $348,000 per year.

Asked about the apparent trend, Bethlenfalvy didn’t directly answer the question. But emphasized that he’s “accountable to the people of Ontario” and stressed the need for the government to cut the $13.5 billion deficit, and St-Jean’s role in helping them with that.

“I’m willing to pay for quality because the amounts that we’re talking about saving, are in the $100s of millions, if not billions of dollars. So that’s why,” he said.

On top of the extra responsibilities St-Jean will have, Bethlenfalvy said the two rates of pay aren’t comparable because the previous chair didn’t find the savings that St-Jean will.

“Comparing to someone who may have been paid ‘X’ to an outcome that I would say would be a failing grade is not even a comparison,” Bethlenfalvy said, adding that he doesn’t know that the previous government “got much value for the money they paid the previous guy.”

Costante didn’t reply to an emailed request for comment but former premier Kathleen Wynne took exception to Bethlenfalvy’s attack.

“It seems to be pretty shabby to criticize someone who’s done a very good job for so many years, because you’re trying to justify paying somebody more,” Wynne told iPolitics.

“He wants to make a political attack, make the political attack on politicians,” Wynne said about Bethlenfalvy. “Don’t do it on civil servants, it’s not right.”

Both St-Jean and Costante served in senior positions in government, but one federally and the other provincially, and St-Jean appears to have more private sector experience — according to publicly available biographies of the two.

St-Jean is also the chair of the country’s public sector accounting board and is a former comptroller general for Canada and managing partner at EY. Costante meantime, is an adjunct professor at Queen’s University. Prior to retiring from the Ontario civil service in 2014, Costante served in various roles, including deputy minister of government services, associate cabinet secretary, and management board secretary.

He served as chair of the corporate audit committee from 2017 to 2019.

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