How much should politicians be paid? And who should pay them?

The proposal to increase Ontario MPP's pay has elicited the usual flurry of indignation:

"It's remarkable that they would have the chutzpah, the nerve, I mean gonads the size of a canal horse, to introduce legislation like this..."

Whenever politicians try to vote themselves a pay increase, a certain amount of scepticism is warranted. But what criteria should we be using to decide whether or not the increase is deserved?

We all know why politicians are paid a salary: if they weren't, we'd be governed by those who are independently wealthy. Prime Minister Bertie Wooster, anyone? So the questions we're faced with are: what kind of politicians do we want, and how much would it cost to persuade them to take on the job?

Firstly, we should set aside any illusions about the glamour of life as an ordinary MP: it's a miserable existence. There's the travel (commuter flights lose their charms rather quickly), the separation from your family, the innumerable rubber chicken suppers, and the flinching certainty that no-one cares not one whit about what you think about questions of policy. It's not a life for which you'd take a pay cut.

And you also have to consider the competition for politicians:

Federal Members of Parliament earn a base salary of $147,700. Indeed, a backbench MP makes more than an Ontario cabinet minister, who earns $126,321. And Mississauga councillors get about $115,000 if they also serve on the Peel Region Council and Toronto city councillors will be paid $95,000 a year starting in January. As well, McGuinty earns $159,166 a year for heading the second largest government in Canada. His pay is barely half of what Prime Minister Stephen Harper gets and is less than that received by the mayors of Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga.

Such discrepancies prompted Ontario Integrity Commissioner Coulter Osborne to warn last week that Queen's Park risks being seen as "a farm team for the House of Commons" if improvements are not made to MPPs' salaries and pensions.

So there's a case for keeping politicians' salaries at levels comparable to (say) those of a senior administrator if you want to attract good candidates.

But it's less clear who should be footing the bill.  If a political party trying to recruit a candidate who is balking at the salary, then maybe it's the party that should be paying to remove that obstacle.

Comments

[Adam]

You must be kidding. First of all, I'd say all this is pretty good evidence that mayors and MPs are massively OVERpaid. The skill set most MPs have would earn them a much smaller salary in the private sector (employers don't just hand out $150K to some moron who knows how to spew drivel but has no powers of analytical thought). Second of all, being a politician is not SUPPOSED to be a full-time job. It was supposed to be something you do as a civic activity and not a profession. Increased salaries have created professional politicians who have never created a thing of value in their lives (and destroyed a great many). Third of all, a system in which people can set their own salaries without any accountability to anyone AND with the power to forcibly extract the money required to pay those salaries from their neighbours is completely indefensible.

These people are pigs with their snouts in the trough. In a just world, they'd be in jail for theft.

[Mark]

Agreed with above; this is more about the mayor of Toronto being paid too much, than it is MPP's being paid not enough.

If paying $1 million dollars ensured top-quality MPP's I would be all for even that much, but given what we see I think lower salaries would attract a more honest crowd.