$1M in severance paid to ex-Tory staff

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This article was published 27/12/2023 (704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba has paid more than $1 million in severance to “technical officers” who were hired by the governing Progressive Conservatives but found themselves out of work after the party lost the Oct. 3 election.

Provincial law requires public disclosure, within 60 days, of severance payments made to political staff — including press secretaries, executive assistants, special advisers and other jobs classified as “technical officers” — who had worked for an outgoing government.

Payments to 72 Tory political staffers totalled nearly $1,090,000.

The payments, which were made Nov. 3, are posted online and are based on terms set out in individual contracts, a government spokesman said Wednesday. Salary and length of service were factors in the amount of severance.

Brad Salyn, who was promoted to chief of staff to then-premier Heather Stefanson in January 2023, from deputy director of issues management on the executive council, received $34,872.50.

Draper Houston, who was hired as a press secretary and later promoted to senior manager of health communications for cabinet, received $32,000.

Sean Kavanagh, who was hired by Stefanson to be director of communications, then moved into the role of director of special projects, received $15,000.

Neither the NDP government nor the PCs responded to a request for comment.

The severance payments posted after the latest change in government are less than one-quarter of what was paid to departing NDP staffers in 2016.

When Brian Pallister’s PCs swept into office that year, the change in government cost taxpayers more than $4 million in severance payments.

At that time, 112 political staff and civil servants left voluntarily or were shown the door. The cost of severance for these staff amounted to $4.34 million, a freedom of information request that year showed.

In 1999, the Gary Doer-led NDP defeated the Filmon Tories and paid $1,232,440 to 53 people who were considered political staff, the Free Press reported in July 2000.

Political analyst Paul Thomas said the lower amount of severance paid out in this change of government points to two possible explanations.

It may be a holdover from the “austerity campaign” of former premier Pallister, who restricted staff numbers and pay and believed non-elected staff shouldn’t have too much influence, Thomas said Wednesday.

“Voluntary, early departures in the face of a pending defeat in the October election could be another factor,” he said.

Political staffers who left the government before Stefanson lost the election wouldn’t be reflected in the Nov. 3 severance payouts, Thomas added.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca