A small group of leaders of Canadian charities in the environment, conservation, and animal protection sectors are taking home compensation packages equivalent to, and in some cases higher than, the salaries of provincial premiers.
An analysis by The Canadian Press identified 17 charities whose top executive drew annual compensation that was in the $200,000 to $250,000 range or higher, according to filings with the federal government made in 2022 and 2023.
The review focused on organizations recognized by the Canada Revenue Agency as registered charities in the categories of “environment” and “animal protection,” which include several conservation organizations. The group of 17 with the highest salaries represents just over one per cent of all charities in those two categories.
The bracket of $200,000 to $250,000 was chosen as a cutoff because at the time it aligned with the compensation of the two highest-paid premiers in Canada — Ontario’s Doug Ford with $208,974 and Quebec’s François Legault with $208,200. Legault’s salary has since risen to $270,120 after members of the legislature voted themselves a 30-per-cent pay raise in June.
Data was sourced from the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return forms of each organization. Compensation, as defined by the CRA, includes salaries, bonuses, honorariums and all other benefits given to employees.
The overwhelming majority of the 864 registered charities in the two sectors examined rely on volunteers or a modestly paid workforce. Almost 59 per cent of them only have volunteers and 14 per cent have no employees earning more than $40,000. Another 15 per cent have no employees earning more than $80,000.
The charity with the highest-paid executives was Ducks Unlimited Canada, based in Manitoba. Its 2023 declaration indicates that two people earned more than $350,000, three others received between $250,000 and $300,000, and four received compensation between $200,000 and $250,000. The organization has 565 full- and part-time employees. Governments contributed just over $27 million to Ducks Unlimited for its year ending March 31, 2023, and a quarter of its $140 million in revenue came from donations.
Spokesperson Janine Massey defended the pay packages in an email. “Ducks Unlimited Canada is Canada’s largest nature conservancy …. It is difficult to compare environmental non-profits due to wide variation in mission, scale, and complexity of operations,” she said.
“We regularly undertake competitive compensation reviews and adjust our compensation accordingly to ensure that we can attract and retain highly skilled personnel.” Among organizations that responded to requests for comment, the competitiveness argument was frequently used to justify the salaries.
Sylvie St-Onge, professor of management at Montreal business school HEC and an expert in compensation management, governance and boards of directors, said the green movement has turned into a small industry. “When they compare themselves, they’re going to compare themselves to others in the industry who are like a core group of well-offs,” she said.
At the David Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver, one manager received compensation of between $250,000 and $300,000 for the year ending Aug. 31, 2022, and three others were in the $200,000-to-$250,000 bracket. Spokesperson Charles Bonhomme said the organization has always made it a priority to pay its employees fairly and noted its offices “are located in the most expensive cities in Canada: Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.” The foundation employs just under a hundred people.
Bonhomme said it called on “the expertise of a human resources consulting firm” to help carry out “a salary review across the entire organization.” He said recent staffing changes mean the salaries posted in the most recent publicly available report “no longer reflect our current team.”
World Wildlife Fund Canada employs approximately 110 people, and nearly 80 per cent of its revenues come from donations. One of its executives received compensation between $250,000 and $300,000 for the year ending June 30, 2023, and two others received between $200,000 and $250,000. In its response, the organization said its compensation structure “is comparable to that of similar national charities, including in the field of the environment (…) We believe that to have the greatest possible protection, we must recruit the best individuals.”
Nature United had 36 Canadian employees, according to its 2022 statement. One manager received compensation between $250,000 and $300,000 and another between $200,000 and $250,000. Its director of communications, Jacqueline Nunes, says salaries are based on “robust salary review processes” that ensure that they are in the mid-range relative to peer organizations.
“As a non-profit organization, we take our finances very seriously and would not be compensating leaders more than necessary to secure strong leadership, which is so crucial as we work towards a Canada where people and nature are united, and ecosystems, communities and economies are thriving,” she wrote in an email.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation, based in Saint-Andrews, N.B., had one employee earning between $200,000 and $250,000 in 2022. The federation, which employs 32 people, derived 22 per cent of its $6 million in revenue from government sources and 16 per cent from various donations in 2022.
“We recently completed an external compensation review, which found our salary structure to be competitive with other mid- and large-sized Canadian NGOs focused on conservation and the environment,” federation spokesman Neville Crabbe said. “Whether people work in the private sector, for government, or non-government organizations, they should be compensated fairly and reasonably for the quality of their work.”
St-Onge, however, suggested the high pay might be delivering a message that is at odds with the public persona of these charities, which ostensibly are there to help the planet.
“When we talk about sustainable development, it is also about social responsibility. It’s like sending a contradictory message with the values that there should be,” she said. “Somewhere, there is a board of directors that either did not do its job or that found a rationale for it.”
It would be preferable, according to her, to look for people for such organizations who are motivated by a calling rather than by ambition. “In these organizations, it is not so much the best in terms of expertise that you need, but the best in terms of mobilization, faith, belief in adherence to the mission — someone who doesn’t come so much to get the money.”
Other organizations with compensation in the higher bracket that did not respond to a request for comment include the Nature Conservancy of Canada — which in 2022 paid one employee between $300,000 and $350,000 and three between $200,000 and $250,000 — and the Alberta Conservation Association, who had one employee in the $300,000-to-$350,000 range and two in the $200,000-to-$250,000 bracket.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 4, 2024.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
