Despite the provincial budget taking a $595-million-dollar hit near end of the last fiscal year, top government executives still received full pay and many received bonuses

Finance Minister Carole James was asked if it’s time to look at salary cutbacks for executives at Crown corporations.

“As we do in every budget cycle, we will be examining all the spending of government, whether it’s in that area or whether it’s any other particular area. We’ll be going through all of that process as we go through the budget process for this next fiscal year. So as I said, everything gets reviewed during that time period.”

James says the NDP government got rid of bonuses for many top executives after being elected in 2017.

“Those were just part of salary, so most of the executive compensation now simply includes a salary, it doesn’t include a bonus. We have not made changes in the Legislature when I introduced the changes to the balanced budget legislation, to be clear that we weren’t going to balance the budget over the next number of years.”

She adds that Minister bonuses were cut in half last year, commonly known as holdbacks.

“We will not have balanced the budget, and so therefore the ministers don’t receive half of their holdbacks.”

On April 1, MLAs also voted not to give themselves a 2.3 per cent wage increase this year, because of the pandemic.

The top-paid government employee last year was Thomas Bechard, the CEO of Powerex, who made $937,845. Of that, $540,000 was bonuses.

UBC president and chancellor Santa Ono was the second-highest government earner, making $605,225. BC Hydro president and CEO was third on the list, earning $566,084. Others in the top-10 included ICBC CEO Nicolas Jimenez, BC Securities Commission chair Brenda Leong, BC Hydro’s chief financial officer David Wong, as well as four other university officials.