This story was updated with new information on Sept. 23, 2020, at 11:00 a.m.

Breaking his four-year streak, Richard Reznick, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, was the second-highest earner at Queen’s in 2019. 

Ontario released its annual Sunshine List on March 20, revealing the highest-paid employees at Queen’s in 2019. The list discloses the salaries of the province’s public employees who earned $100,000 or more last year.

Queen’s paid its employees a total of $182,979,933 in salaries last year. The average change in salary of its employees had an overall increase of 3.6 per cent, while the average given in the form of a raise was 0.8 per cent. 

Reznick was the top earner at the University in 2018. However, he experienced a 3.8 per cent decrease in pay in 2019, causing him to drop one position on the list. 

Three of the University’s top ten earners were women in 2019, which has been a consistent statistic for the past three years and includes the University’s highest-paid employee this year.

Elspeth Murray, associate dean of the Master of Business Administration programs and Master of Management programs, earned a 14.5 per cent pay increase that had her net an income of $521,415.

The list of female top earners also included Janet Dancey, director, professor, and the Eisenhauer chair of clinical cancer research, and Tina Dacin, director of the Social Impact Research Program.  

After experiencing a decrease in pay of 0.8 per cent, Dancey was still the sixth highest-paid employee at Queen’s for the third year in a row. Dacin received a salary decrease of 7.5 per cent in 2019 but remained in eighth place.

David Saunders, dean of the Smith School of Business, also saw a pay decrease. Saunders’ pay fell 3.1 per cent but remained the third-highest earner.  

Yuri Levin, executive director (analytics) at the Smith School of Business, experienced a 17.7 per cent pay decrease, causing him to drop from the fourth highest-paid employee in 2018 to ninth in 2019. 

There was only one new individual added to the list of the top 10 highest salaries in 2019 at Queen’s. 

Stephen Thomas, director of the Master of Management Analytics and Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence programs in the Smith School of Business, had a significant change in ranking due to a 48.6 per cent pay increase that saw him move up to fifth highest-paid in 2019.

Principal Patrick Deane made $234,754 at McMaster University in 2019 and an additional $207,879 at Queen’s. 

Daniel Woolf, who finished his term as principal in 2019, had a salary increase of 1.3 per cent and earned a net annual salary of $416,539. With this increase, he returned to fourth place on the University’s list of highest-paid employees after his drop to fifth.

The 2018 list showed significant raises for some faculty, with the average raise at 8.9 per cent. In contrast, the increase in wages paid in 2019 was significantly lower, with the average raise at 0.8 per cent. 

The Journal initially reported that “the largest change in salary in 2019 was for Fahim Quadir, vice-provost, dean of the School of Graduate Studies and professor, who experienced a pay increase of 104.6 per cent, earning $230,475.” This information is reported on www.ontariosunshinelist.com however, it doesn’t reflect that the difference occurred because Quadir started at Queen’s in July of 2018 and so only received his first full year of pay from Queen’s in 2019. The 104.6 per cent increase demonstrates the difference in pay Quadir received from Queen’s during his transition year in 2018 and his first full year at the University in 2019.

In line with 2018, Queen’s University was once again ranked eighth out of all Ontario Universities in 2019 for total salaries paid. The University of Toronto was at the top of the list, which paid a total of $703,215,983 in salaries in 2019 and ranked fourth highest out of all public employers in Ontario.

The university sector was the highest paying sector in 2019, with more than $3 billion distributed in salaries. This was a 2.4 per cent increase in comparison to 2018.