Discussions

Have Legislative salaries kept up with inflation?  
Over the last 20 years or so, the trend has been to put legislative remuneration on a pure salary basis and do away with the tax-free allowance portion that has been around since Confederation.  
This change can make salaries today appear to have jumped more than they actually have. But the table below uses different sources, including the Canadian Taxpayers Foundation and the Robert Fleming series of books on Canadian legislatures, to compare the real street value of legislative salaries, after the tax-free portions are accounted for, from 1991 and 2006.  
It was a period in which inflation rose 32 per cent, according to the Bank of Canada, and as the chart shows, the costs of an MP and MLA went up in real terms in almost every case.  
 
Legislative salaries 1991-2006  
1991 2006/07 % increase  
Parliament $106,246 $147,700 39  
Ontario $70,096 $111,000 58  
Quebec $81,144 $105,231 30  
N.L. $71,617 $87,630 22  
Alberta $70,223 $82,406 17  
N.B. $60,891 $79,779 31  
B.C. $60,473 $76,100 26  
Manitoba $47,567 $73,512 55  
Sask. $51,755 $73,173 41  
N.S. $56,453 $65,556 16  
P.E.I. $48,666 $56,849 17  
 
It would appear that Manitoba and Ontario have  
done very well in this area, but Manitoba  
MLA’s are way down in the salary scale.