Tories support boost to judges’ pay in time of austerity By: Larry Kusch Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 17, 2019 Last Modified: 8:23 AM CST Friday, Jan. 18, 2019 Updates

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The Progressive Conservative government has signalled its willingness to support three years of pay increases for provincial judges, while insisting on pay freezes for other publicly compensated workers.

The PC-dominated legislative affairs committee voted Thursday to endorse the recommendations of an independent panel. The measure would boost the pay of 42 provincial court judges by 1.9 per cent in the first year of a three-year contract. There would be adjustments in the second and third years based on average weekly earnings in Manitoba.

Judges would earn $259,000 effective April 1, 2017, with yet-to-be disclosed pay boosts taking effect on April 1, 2018 and April 1 of this year.

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As recently as this week, the government made it clear to the province’s doctors that it intended to freeze their pay for two years and allow increases of no more than 0.75 per cent in the third year of any deal — as set out in Bill 28, passed by the legislature in 2017. The bill has yet to be proclaimed.

The acceptance of the judicial compensation committee’s (JCC) report comes as a bit of a surprise because the government argued strenuously in hearings in 2017 that judges shouldn’t be exempt from its public-sector wage policies.

"When the government has a policy of restraint, which it does, it is not proper to treat judges in a different manner than employees in the public sector," said a summary of the government’s position in the JCC report, which was tabled in the legislature last fall.

The issue of judges pay in Manitoba has been highly contentious for decades. The former NDP government balked at implementing the JCC recommendations more than once, but was forced to live by them when the judges appealed to the Manitoba Court of Appeal.

The support for the JCC recommendations Thursday indicates the Pallister government won’t challenge the independent panel.

Finance Minister Scott Fielding said while the government argued strongly that judges’ compensation should be in line with other public-sector workers, the JCC disagreed. He later said the "vast majority" of the panel’s recommendations are binding on government.

NDP MLAs, while supporting the recommendations, said the government’s stance on judges’ pay amounted to a "flip-flop."

Finance critic Matt Wiebe, picking up on statements by Fielding that the provincial economy is doing well, said the government should allow public-sector unions to bargain for wage hikes.

"Why is it that the minister is prepared to treat judges in a different manner than he has all other Manitobans…?" Wiebe asked.

The JCC had three members: one chosen by government, one chosen by the judges and a chair — lawyer Michael Werier — who was agreed upon by the two parties.

Susan Dawes, lawyer for the Provincial Judges Association of Manitoba, urged the legislative committee before its vote to accept the JCC’s recommendations, which must be approved by the legislature.

"We urge you to respect the need to protect judicial independence and to depoliticize the setting of compensation," she told MLAs. "And you can do that by accepting, in full, the recommendations of this highly experienced independent and objective panel," she said.

Dawes noted that the panel’s decision was "unanimous," meaning the government’s nominee, Robert A. Simpson, was also in accordance with its findings. In it’s report, the JCC said while its decision was unanimous, it was a "collective decision reached through much discussion and some compromise."

Judges had been seeking a salary of $263,000 for 2017 from $254,263 in 2016. Dawes said acceptance of the committee’s recommendations would still leave Manitoba judges "at the low end of judicial salaries" in Canada.

Generally, judicial pay in Manitoba is based on the average wage of provincial judges in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The comparative numbers cited in the JCC report had Saskatchewan judges at $290,848, Nova Scotia judges at $236,151 and New Brunswick judges at $252,240 for an average of $259,746.

Manitoba law says if the JCC recommendation is equal to or less than that tri-province average for the first year of a contract, it is binding on the government.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Larry Kusch
Legislature reporter

Larry Kusch didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life until he attended a high school newspaper editor’s workshop in Regina in the summer of 1969 and listened to a university student speak glowingly about the journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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