When it comes to the salaries of local education sector workers, there's a surprise this year with the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act.
Nicknamed the “Sunshine List,” the document lists all public sector workers who were paid $100,000 or more in a given year.
Ozhand Ganjavi, a Laurentian University professor of finance and operations in the faculty of management, is listed as earning a salary of $686,760 in 2017.
In 2016, he earned $165,481, meaning his salary saw a drastic jump in just a year.
Laurentian University chief of staff Alex Freedman provided an explanation for this anomaly.
Ganjavi, who had 36 years of service with the university, was one of the staff members affected by the university's decision to no longer operate out of Barrie, he said.
Most of the Barrie employees either transferred to the Sudbury campus or opted for a salary continuance, Freedman said. Ganjavi, however, chose to take a severance package.
“And so what you're seeing there is the package accepted as part of the exit of Barrie,” he said.
Northern Ontario School of Medicine dean Dr. Roger Strasser is Sudbury's next highest-paid education sector worker, earning $358,585 in 2017. He earned exactly the same amount in 2016.
The medical school's deputy dean, Dr. David Marsh, earned $248,007.
Laurentian University interim president Pierre Zundel earned $246,224 in 2017.
The university's former president, Dominic Giroux, who left Laurentian in August, and became the CEO of Health Sciences North in October, earned $235,427 from Laurentian last year.
Among the city's three federated universities, Huntington University president Kevin McCormick earned the most, with a salary of $245,259.
Thorneloe University president Robert Derrenbacker earned $231,019 and University of Sudbury president Sophie Bouffard earned $149,366.
Cambrian College president Bill Best earned $256,025, while Collège Boréal president Daniel Giroux earned $258,663.
The director of education with the Rainbow District School Board, Norm Blaseg, earned $238,328 last year. Joanne Benard, his counterpart with the Sudbury Catholic District School Board, earned $193,063.
Among the French boards, CSCNO director of education Lyse-Anne Papineau earned $203,515 and CSPGNO director of education Marc Gauthier earned $155,206.
In terms of the number of employees on the Sunshine List, Laurentian University came in tops at 426. That's up from 417 in 2016.
The Northern Ontario School of Medicine had 42, Huntington and Thorneloe universities both had eight and the University of Sudbury had 15.
Cambrian College had 57 employees on the list and Collège Boréal had 34. That's down significantly from 2016, when Cambrian had 115 employees on the list and Boréal 82.
These lower numbers relate to a five-week-long strike by college faculty in Ontario last fall.
Rainbow District School Board had 167 employees on the list (up from 134 in 2016), Sudbury Catholic District School Board had 46, CSCNO had 87 and CSPGNO had 46.
