LAKELAND - Shannon Stubbs, the Member of Parliament for the Lakeland riding, says questions about recent salary increases for Canada’s Members of Parliament have a lot of “understandable misunderstanding.”
Stubbs was one of 14 randomly selected MPs recently sent emails by Lakeland This Week, asking the elected representatives to justify recent pay increase that took their annual basic salaries to more than $200,000.
Stubbs was the only MP to respond to the media inquiry with an answer about the pay increase, which she explains, is part of an annual, automatic process managed by an external board. She says the board bases any increases for MPs and Senators on the average wage increases of working Canadians.
“I appreciate this question because there is a lot of understandable misunderstanding about this issue, including whether Members of Parliament have the ability to reject or vote against the automatic increase,” she told Lakeland This Week. “Of course, MPs do not, which was legislated under Bill C-30 in 2005.”
That legislation, she explained bases the indexation of salaries and allowances for MPs and Senators on the average percentage increase in base rate wages for working Canadians in each calendar year. The change is then automatically made.
Stubbs said members of the Conservative party opposition have raised the issue in parliamentary discussions and have even asked for a freeze to be put in place on MP salaries.
The Liberal leadership, however, she said, has rejected those calls.
“Conservative MPs did raise this issue in parliamentary discussions in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Trudeau argued that the salary increase is externally managed and is not a topic for Parliament. However, Conservatives still asked for it to be addressed and called on him to put a freeze in place for MP pay.”
At the same time, she said, Conservative MPs have written to the board responsible for the policy and requested they freeze pay increases of the elected members.
“Over the last couple of years, this Liberal government unfortunately did not stop the raise and the board did not rule any differently, so the MPs saw an automatic increase,” Stubbs said,
Pay rise to local charity
In past years when the raises have been given, Stubbs said she and several other elected officials have given their increases to local charities.
“When this happened before, several MPs, including myself, donated the increase to local charities,” Stubbs said. While I support many charities annually, the charity I chose was the volunteer driven Haying in the 30’s in Lakeland, that raises money for families who have a loved one undergoing cancer treatments and helps cover some expenses with travel, accommodations, and other related expenses.”
Past freezes
Stubbs says there have been instances where pay freezes of elected Member of Parliament have been put into place.
Under Stephen Harper’s government, she said, during times of economic uncertainty across the country, salaries for all MPs and Senators were frozen for three years.
She places the current resistance squarely in the hands of the current Prime Minister.
” As this precedent has been set, the Prime Minister can use the same rationale to freeze MP salaries again if he wants to — but he chooses not to do so.”
This year’s salary increase for MPs took the back-bencher salary from $194,600 to $203,100. The salary increases do not include quarterly reimbursements for travel, meals, accommodations and other out of pocket expenses for each elected representative.
The annual wage for an average working Albertan in 2024, according to statistics from a North-American employment agency, is about $50,000.
