You would think the Community Care Access Centres would tread a little carefully these days. The Tories want to get rid of them. The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario would like to fold them into the LHINs. We’re creeping into the time of year where budgets run out and home care patients get left in the lurch, particularly around rehabilitation. It’s generally not a fun time for the CCACs.
The CEOs might be enjoying their day a little less this morning after Bob Hepburn’s column in the Toronto Star. It left our spoons hovering above the Cornflakes.
Hepburn contends that the leadership at the CCACs have been handsomely rewarding themselves with lavish increases while applying restraint to the front line workers. Maybe it’s a last hurrah before it all ends?
Hepburn points to two examples – Cathy Szabo, CEO of the Central CCAC who saw her salary jump by 50 per cent from 2009 to 2012, and Melody Miles, CEO of the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brant CCAC who gave herself a 24 per cent increase over the same period. For Szabo, her wage jumped $91,000 to $270,734. For Miles, her wage jumped during the same period by nearly $53,000 to $265,949.
The information comes from the sunshine list, which we always caution fails to give the full picture, including if the executives worked the full year covered under the report.
We decided to look at the rest of the list. Among CCAC CEOs, you have to really feel for North Simcoe Muskoka CCAC chief William Innes. Back in 2009 he reported earnings of $224,890. For the last two years it has been $199,877.
Central East’s Don Ford is the lowest paid CCAC CEO today. It’s true his kid’s likely didn’t go hungry with earnings of $180,769 in 2012, but the man has not had a raise since the economy took a dump in 2009. In 2009 Ford’s reported earnings on the sunshine list were $181,953. His taxable benefits are also far lower than many of his counterparts at $761.02 in 2012 (by comparison Catherine Szabo received $11,723 in taxable benefits). He’s at the bottom of the provincial heap.
Szabo and Miles draw down some of the biggest incomes among CCAC executives province-wide, but the biggest winner in 2012 was former deputy minister Margaret Mottershead, who was then the CEO of the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres (and now she’s gone). Some may wonder why a small group of 14 CCACs needs an association, but we’ll leave that alone for now. Mottershead’s reported compensation for 2012 was $318,322, up slightly less than $5,000 from the year before. That would be a 1.5 per cent increase for anybody lacking a calculator.
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