Seven of the 10 highest-paid public servants in B.C., including one who made $1.5 million, work for just one agency: the B.C. Investment Management Corporation, which invests money on behalf of public-sector pension plans.
Data from the latest version of The Vancouver Sun’s exclusive public-sector salary database also reveals that all seven of the highest-paid bcIMC employees received year-over-year pay increases of more than 20 per cent.
Topping this year’s salary ranking is former bcIMC CEO Doug Pearce, with total remuneration of $1.5 million in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s a 24-per-cent jump from his pay the year before of $1.2 million.
It could be the last No. 1 ranking for Pearce, who has topped The Sun’s salary ranking several times: he retired in the summer of 2014 and was replaced by Gordon Fyfe.
Lincoln Webb, senior vice-president of private placement investing at bcIMC, came in second on this year’s salary ranking, with total pay of just under a million dollars ($997,019) — a 21-per-cent jump from his pay the year before ($823,153).
The five other bcIMC employees making the Top 10 are all listed as vice-president or senior vice-presidents with the agency, each specializing in a different type of investing:
• Daryl Jones, Research and Risk Measurement, $866,365 (now retired);
• Bryan Thomson, Equity Investments, $816,993;
• Paul Flanagan, Fixed Income, $764,350;
• Dean Atkins, Mortgages, $745,293;
• Mary Garden, Real Estate, $687,086.
Thomson, Flanagan and Atkins all saw their pay jump about 22 per cent over the previous year. Jones and Garden received even heftier pay hikes, seeing their total remuneration jump 53 per cent over 2012.
In an email, Rick Mahler, chairman of bcIMC’s board of directors, said the pay increases for the agency’s senior executives reflect the strong performance of the investments they’ve made.
“We value pay for performance, so returns are a driving factor,” wrote Mahler, noting bcIMC’s overall return on investment that year was 9.5 per cent.
In addition, said Mahler, Jones received a lump-sum bonus when he retired and Garden was given a raise to reflect her promotion from senior portfolio manager to senior vice-president.
The agency invests money on behalf of the pension funds of more than 500,000 public-sector employees in B.C., a portfolio worth more than $114 billion. The agency is based in Victoria and has 199 employees.
Its budget is paid out of an annual management fee charged to the pension funds it works for. That fee works out to about 20 cents for every $100 it manages, a fraction of the fees charged by some mutual fund companies.
Aside from bcIMC, the only other agency to make the Top 10 this year was Powerex, the energy-trading arm of BC Hydro.
Its top three traders — Thomas Bechard, Mark Holman and Robert Campbell — each took home between $900,000 and $940,000 in the 2013/14 fiscal year, slightly less than they earned the year before.
Powerex, which has 183 employees, buys and sells energy to ensure B.C. has a reliable supply of electricity.
But it also tries to profit from those trades — profits that Hydro argues help keep electricity rates low and contribute to government revenues.
Since 2003, according to Hydro, Powerex has generated more than $1.7 billion in income for the utility.
In 2010, Powerex significantly increased the pay of its top traders after U.S. financial firm Morgan Stanley tried to raid some of them away.
While bcIMC and Powerex dominate the Top 10 list, the picture is slightly different if you look at the Top 100 highest-paid public servants, a group you have to make at least $358,000 to be part of.
Of those Top 100, 22 work at the University of B.C., 20 at bcIMC and 17 at the Provincial Health Services Authority, which is responsible for provincial health agencies like B.C. Children’s Hospital and the B.C. Cancer Agency.
In 2008, The Vancouver Sun launched B.C.’s first searchable online database of public-sector salaries.
The database, which includes public servants who earn more than $75,000, has been enormously popular, registering more than 17 million page views.
The new database, available at vancouversun.com/pay/, includes pay for more than 75,000 public servants working at 111 public-sector agencies including Crown Corporations, health authorities, municipalities and universities.
The remuneration information obtained by The Sun includes the total amount paid to each employee, including their base salary but also any overtime, vacation payouts or severance they received.
Depending on the agency, the information in the new database covers either the 2013 calendar year or the 2013/14 fiscal year.
Of the 75,000 people in The Sun’s database, roughly 23,000 made $100,000 or more. That’s an 11-per-cent increase over the roughly 21,000 who earned six-figure salaries the year before.
That year-over-year increase is greater than last year, when it was just 4.5 per cent, but not as great as in the first two years of The Sun’s database, when those earning $100,000 or more jumped by more than 20 per cent each year.
