BC Ferries' senior managers were reeling in titanic salaries before the province vowed to sink million-dollar paydays, newly released documents show.
Some 21 employees netted total earnings of more than $200,000 last year, with the five top managers pulling down just under $3 million in compensation.
David Hahn, president of the publicly-regulated independent operator, took home about $984,000, compared to about $1 million the year before, although his base salary saw a moderate jump.
Hahn came under fire when just his and his top four executives' salaries were first disclosed in July 2009. Their earnings were about two times more than the money made by top executives at Crown-owned BC Hydro and ICBC.
Now the public can see the full picture.
In April, the government introduced legislation limiting annual salaries to levels more accustomed to public sector bureaucrats, as opposed to the benchmark of top executives at Coca Cola, Nike and Ford. But the move sought only to cap the salary and benefits of future hires.
At the time, transportation minister Shirley Bond called the arrangement fair.
Hahn, meanwhile, had defended his earnings under the quasi-private scheme.
The data shows that last year, the president also earned a $233,000 bonus, $210,000 in his long-term incentive plan and $20,649 in taxable benefits.
Hahn wasn't immediately available for an interview.
Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University, says using the private-sector benchmark to determine salaries won't hold water for close cousins in the public sphere.
"They're hoping and praying that Santa Claus is going to come and under the Christmas tree, they're going to find a 'three-P' designation from the government," he said, referring to B.C.'s public-private partnerships. "Because apparently when you get that category, it's a duck shoot."
BC Ferries was formerly a Crown corporation until restructuring in 2003 made it a private company with the provincial government as its largest client and single shareholder. The company continues to receive about $170 million a year from taxpayers.
In October, the government reapplied the accountability practice of requiring the company to release data under the Freedom of Information Act.
Posted online Thursday in response to an FOI request, the now-available documents show a total of 976 BC Ferries employees earned more than $75,000 last year. The data accounts for both current and former employees for both the 2009 calendar year and 2009-2010 fiscal year.
Of the 21 top-earners, 14 employees are active and seven were on a list of former employees who were either retired or let go in the same period.
A BC Ferries spokeswoman said at least three of the former employees left positions that hadn't been or weren't expected to be filled. Those three vice presidents' combined salaries was more than $1 million.
The company is among the largest ferry operators in the world, employing 4,200 people and carrying 21 million passengers on its 36 vessels over 25 routes.
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