Calgary's Naheed Nenshi is Canada's highest paid mayor

Someone has to be Canada’s highest-paid mayor, so it might as well be one of the country’s best-known civic leaders.

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi picked up the honour this week when the mayor and city councillors received a 3.8 per cent pay raise. But unlike the country’s previous highest-paid mayor, the honour doesn’t seem to come with much controversy.

According to CBC News, Calgary council raises are automatic and are tied to the average wage increase for workers in the province. Nenshi’s salary increase is about $8,000, which brings him to $216,401 per year.

The network also noted that Nenshi donates 10 per cent of his salary to the Nenshi Family Charitable Trust, which is run through the Calgary Foundation.

At last check, Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell had been found to be the highest-paid mayor in Canada. The former leader of the Greater Toronto Area city was paid an annual salary of $213,727 before being trounced in a November election.

The high salary came amid a flurry of misspending allegations and bad press – including “earning” a Teddy nomination from the Canadian Taxpayer Federation.

In March, she quietly reduced her salary ahead of a provincial audit, which would have dropped her out of top spot on the highest salaries list and help avoid a great deal of unwanted attention.

Fennell has since been replaced as mayor by Linda Jeffrey, who quickly slashed her pay to $165,850.

With the Brampton mess sorted, someone else was inevitably bumped into top spot. And that someone was Nenshi, who had been among the highest paid mayors for the past few years.

As Nenshi reminded the Calgary Sun, this salary increase was set not by politicians but by a citizen committee. And it comes one year after Calgary council rejected a 4.6 per cent salary increase and instead took no raise, as an act of good faith during a salary negotiation with city staff.

“I think if you look at what raises have been over a period to time … it’s been equal to or less than what administration or other areas have been getting,” Coun. Shane Keating told the Sun.

Controversies surrounding money mismanagement aside, the “highest salary” list now seems absent of scandals.

Scott Hennig, acting Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, says a lot of it has to do with the strategies used by various municipalities to lure candidates.

"It depends on what your philosophy is when it comes to paying politicians," Hennig told Yahoo Canada News.

"There are those that believe you need to pay a pile of money – like CEO level money – to attract the best candidates…. There are others who say you don’t want people who are seeing this as a lottery win, you only want people who are interested in public service."

"Those are the two extreme philosophies on politician pay, and it is hard to convince Canadians for either of those."

Hennig said tying raises to an outside factor such as average provincial wage increase is actually preferred to many alternatives – such as basing it on inflation or letting politicians dictate their own value.

"It’s probably bad timing for the cost of living adjustment considering what is going on with the oil prices in Alberta," he said. "But the alternative … is you let politicians pick their own pay, and that is typically worse."