Should Crown prosecutors be exempt from Alberta’s new sunshine list disclosing the salaries of public employees who earn more than $100,000 a year?
With the province set to release its first-ever sunshine list on Jan. 31, an unidentified Crown secured a temporary injunction preventing the disclosure of Crown prosecutors’ salaries. The order by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench meant the government had to scramble to scrub Crowns from the list before releasing it the next day.
According to The Canadian Press, lawyer Paul Moreau, who was representing the unidentified prosecutor, argued the salary disclosure would create safety risks, including fraud and identity theft, given Crowns’ dealings with dangerous people who don’t like them. In issuing the order, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Doreen Sulyma accepted that the release of specific salary information could cause irreparable harm. The order is temporary pending the court’s decision on a permanent injunction.
There are lots of reasons to criticize sunshine lists. They raise obvious privacy concerns and, while they function as a tool for financial accountability, they probably create just as much pressure to raise public sector salaries by allowing employees to see what their colleagues are making. And, of course, there’s a strong voyeuristic element to the lists.
But it’s hard to see why Crowns should be an exception to disclosure. Salary ranges for Crown prosecutors are already available, so people who have a vendetta against them can already get a good idea of what they make. At the same time, given that there are lots of government employees in legal roles that might put them at odds with members of the public, an exception for Crowns would be quite arbitrary. And with sunshine lists in place elsewhere for many years, the concern about Crowns’ safety seems a bit of an exaggeration.
So whatever people think about sunshine lists, there’s no reason for the court to exempt Crown prosecutors. The unidentified Alberta Crown may not like the disclosure, but that’s too bad. Let’s hope the court rejects the Crown’s arguments when it considers whether to make the injunction permanent.
To see the top-earning Crown's on Ontario's sunshine list, see "
Sunshine list shows signs of restraint among public-sector legal earners."
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Glenn Kauth
