I first gathered the data for the Public salary disclosure act for the last five years. There was no CSV available. So I had to take an HTML file and copy and paste that into Excel. Once I had all of my data, I began to sort it. First, I sorted it by school. Eliminating all of the other colleges from the list. Then I filtered it by profession. Eliminating everyone who did not have the word “president” in their title.

I had heard rumours that our old President, Robert Gillett, was still being paid by the college even though he hasn’t worked here in a few years.

Through filtering the data, I found out that this rumour is true. Gillette was paid over $100,000 in 2013, even though he is was longer president of the college at the time.

By obtaining data from the last 5 years, I was also able to see that he was paid over $300,000 at his peak earning. In comparison, Cheryl Jensen (our current president) signed a contract that entitled her to a $270,000 salary per year for five years.

I created a graph to show the growth of his salary over the last five years.

The graph shows Gillett’s salary, as well as his taxable benefits. When I spoke to the union about what that meant, they weren’t sure. They told me it would probably include a company car and cell phone. In 2013, when Gillett was no longer the president, his taxable benefits exceeded $40,000.

I attempted to contact Gillette to ask him about the deal he signed, but he never reached back to me. I did, however, hear from the union. They are very upset that the school is still paying him. They feel as though those resources could be better put to use. We could hire more part-time teachers, and more support staff.

They clarified that a contract like Gillett’s would not be signed today. Instead of officially stepping down, Gillette has been taking a “paid leave”.

I would not have been able to find this story had I not been able to sort through the data. Filtering the data allowed me to filter down the data to enable me to see the top earners at the school.

Links to original data:

2013: http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/pssd/orgs-tbs.php?organization=colleges&year=2014

2012: http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2012/colleg12a.html

2011: http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2011/colleg11.html

2010: http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2010/colleg10.html