If you’ve ever tried to wrap your head around how the Ontario Sunshine List works, you’re not alone. Every spring, the province drops a massive spreadsheet of public-sector salaries, and people scan it the way you might scan a restaurant menu you’ve memorized. We look for familiar names. We compare jobs. We tell ourselves we’re “just curious,” even though the curiosity feels almost instinctive at this point.
But the Sunshine List didn’t appear out of nowhere — and its rules are more specific (and occasionally stranger) than most people realize. So this guide walks you through what’s included, what isn’t, how often it’s published, and where the whole thing began.
And if you’re digging into public-sector pay trends more broadly, you can always browse additional articles over at PublicPayPulse’s Public Sector Insights section.
A Quick History of the Sunshine List
Most people are surprised to learn the Sunshine List is relatively young. Ontario’s first public-sector salary disclosure law arrived in 1996, during Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution era. Back then, releasing a salary over $100,000 felt bold — almost provocative. Fewer than 4,000 employees appeared on that first list.
Now we’re well past 300,000 names a year, and the number keeps climbing simply because wages, inflation, and overtime continue pushing more public jobs over the threshold.
That $100,000 cutoff, by the way, hasn’t changed once in almost three decades — which is why a system supervisor making $102,000 in 2025 ends up on the same list as a surgeon earning $580,000.
Who Actually Appears on the Sunshine List?
This is where the rules matter. The law applies to anyone working for a publicly funded organization, including:
- The Ontario Public Service (OPS)
- Municipalities
- School boards
- Public universities and colleges
- Hospitals
- Crown agencies
- Publicly funded charities receiving large provincial grants
If an employer receives public money and someone working there earns at least $100,000 in salary, they appear on the list.
But it’s not just salary. The province also includes:
- Taxable benefits (things like employer-paid life insurance or car allowances)
- Overtime
- Retroactive payments
- Performance pay (for roles that have it)
Everything gets rolled into one “salary + taxable benefit” figure.
What the Sunshine List Doesn’t Include
This part often surprises people.
Some things never appear on the Sunshine List:
- Private-sector contractors (even if their work is 100% publicly funded)
- Physicians paid through OHIP billings (unless they receive a salary from a hospital)
- Bargaining-unit details or job-specific responsibilities
- Actual income tax slips
- Non-taxable benefits like employer pension contributions
- Employees making under $100,000, even if they’re at $99,999.97 — there’s no rounding up
It’s a transparency list, but it’s not a full financial profile. Think of it as more of an annual snapshot than a full audit.
When the Sunshine List Comes Out Each Year
The province releases the list once per year, usually in late March. But there’s a rule behind that timing:
- Employers must submit salary data from the previous calendar year by March 5.
- The province publishes the full list shortly after — typically around March 23–25.
- The data always reflects salaries from January to December of the previous year.
So the 2026 Sunshine List will represent 2025 earnings, not 2026 earnings.
Some years the release hits the news cycle with a soft landing. Other years it arrives like clockwork — right before a budget, a negotiation, or a public-sector labour dispute. Timing isn’t always random.
Why $100,000 Was the Magic Number
When the law was introduced in 1996, $100,000 was seen as a high-income benchmark — roughly equivalent to about $175,000 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation (using Bank of Canada CPI averages).
Because the threshold never changes, more people qualify each year even when their real purchasing power hasn’t gone up. It’s a natural inflation creep, and it explains why the list grows even when public-sector hiring stays stable.
How the Data Is Verified
Every employer covered by the act has to certify their data. That includes:
- Full legal name
- Job title
- Salary paid in the year
- Taxable benefits
- Employer contact for verification
The province doesn’t individually audit every single record, but organizations are legally responsible for accuracy. When mistakes happen — and they do — they get corrected in supplemental releases.
How the Sunshine List Is Used (and Misused)
Different groups read the Sunshine List for completely different reasons. You might already recognize your own habits here:
- Taxpayers look for spending patterns.
- Journalists look for outliers.
- Employees compare themselves to similar roles.
- Researchers track wage growth.
- Governments occasionally use it during bargaining.
- HR teams quietly use it to benchmark salaries.
And yes — some people simply scroll for curiosity. There’s nothing wrong with that; humans like to compare.
If you want to explore more of the patterns behind those salary trends, PublicPayPulse has deeper guides on public pay trends, OPS workforce shifts, and police salary growth at:
https://publicpaypulse.com/public-sector-insights/
Does the Sunshine List Ever Change?
Small updates happen, but major structural changes are rare.
A few adjustments that have happened:
- Yearly formatting improvements
- Adding sector-specific breakdowns
- Standardizing employer names
- Occasional corrections to job titles or benefits
- Making large datasets available as downloadable CSVs
What hasn’t changed?
- The $100,000 threshold
- Annual publication
- Which employers qualify
- The basic salary + taxable benefits structure
There’s ongoing debate about indexing the threshold to inflation, but nothing has moved past discussion.
Why the Sunshine List Still Matters Today
Even with all its quirks, the list remains one of the most transparent salary disclosures in North America. You don’t need a password, a FOI request, or an account. Anyone can download it. Anyone can analyze it. Anyone can question it.
And if you’ve ever been curious about what certain roles earn — from municipal police constables to school board superintendents to OPS directors — the Sunshine List is usually your best starting point.
To go deeper, you can find more articles on public pay trends at PublicPayPulse’s Public Sector Insights page.