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Alberta’s ‘sunshine list’ of top public-sector compensation hits snag as prosecutors allowed to opt out

Alberta's "sunshine list" of high-paid public servants, set to go up Friday, will have a hole in it after Crown prosecutors were suddenly allowed to opt out.

The change on the eve of the Alberta government's Jan. 31 deadline to post the list came after one prosecutor succeeded in winning a court injunction Thursday out of fear for her safety, the Edmonton Journal reported.

The last-minute deletion puts a crimp in Alberta's assertion that its sunshine list was the most transparent in Canada.

Alberta announced plans for the list last month, joining the other western provinces, Ontario and Nova Scotia with rules requiring disclosure of the names and compensation of top provincial employees. However, unlike other provinces, it doesn't extend to municipalities and other non-provincial agencies.

The Alberta compensation disclosure policy covers pay, benefits and severance packages for provincial public servants earning base salaries of more than $100,000 a year, roughly 3,400 people.

[ Related: Alberta’s sunshine list to disclose high-level public-sector salaries ]

But a judge on the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench agreed with the prosecutor, whose identity was withheld under a publication ban, that she should not have to reveal such specific data.

Justice Doreen Sulyma said prosecutors' salary ranges are already public information but not individual pay and benefits packages.

"That is extremely personal information and raises the serious question of a breach of her Charter rights," she said.

The injunction is temporary until both sides can argue the issue more fully in court. But it requires the government to comb through the sunshine list and delete Crown prosecutors before it goes public. Whether or not there's a delay depends on how fast that can be done, a spokesperson told the Journal.

It's also not clear whether Sulyma's ruling opens the door for other Alberta bureaucrats to challenge their inclusion on the sunshine list based on a Charter argument.

The prosecutor's lawyer, Paul Moreau, argued disclosing her name and compensation potentially puts her at risk from criminal elements she's dealt with in court, as well as opening her to fraud and identity theft, the Journal reported.

"Crown prosecutors deal with many people who are dangerous and not well-intentioned toward prosecutors," Moreau told Sulyma. "The more personal information is available in the public sphere, the less secure the owner of that information."

[ Related: Ontario’s ‘Sunshine List’ grows as nearly 9,000 more public workers make above $100K ]

So-called sunshine lists are always somewhat problematic. Ontario's list came into question last year when it was learned Dr. Chris Mazza, the disgraced former head of the province's troubled air-ambulance service, hid hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for him and his executives via a series of outside companies that weren't part of the non-profit Crown agency.

People naturally balk at having their personal financial information made public, Doug McArthur, a former senior bureaucrat and now a public policy professor at Simon Fraser University, told the Journal.

"At the beginning, people are a little shocked and they imagine everyone's going to be talking about their salaries," McArthur said, adding there were similar complaints when British Columbia introduced its sunshine list.

McArthur, who held a number of posts in the B.C., Saskatchewan and Yukon governments, including deputy to the B.C. premier, said disclosing top public servants' compensation is an overall benefit. But he warned of "unintended consequences" such lists can produce.

"The numbers go out there and there's very little context ... it's just dropped," McArthur told the Journal. "There is a problem of ... interpretations that tend to be fed by resentment that this is a privileged group."