tl;dr: The 2025 Ontario Sunshine List dropped on March 27, 2026. A record 404,922 public sector employees made the cut – a 7% increase from 2024. Total disclosed salaries hit $54.64 billion. Ontario Power Generation dominated the top spots again, and yes, the $100K threshold conversation is louder than ever. We predicted most of this back in October. Here’s how it all played out.
Back in October 2025, we put out our predictions for what the Ontario Sunshine List 2025 results would look like when they landed in spring 2026. We said the list would almost certainly cross 400,000 employees for the first time ever. We said Ontario Power Generation would own the top spots again. And we said the pressure around the frozen $100,000 threshold wasn’t going anywhere.
Well, the 2025 Ontario Sunshine List dropped on March 27, 2026 – and the numbers are in.
Let’s walk through what actually happened.
The Big Number: 404,922 People on the List
We predicted the list would pass 400,000. It did – by nearly 5,000.
A total of 404,922 public sector employees are named in the 2025 disclosure, representing a 7% increase over 2024’s 377,665 entries. That 7% jump is actually more moderate than the year before. In 2024, the list grew by a striking 25%. So while growth has slowed a little, it’s still consistent, and it’s still pushing the list into new territory with every passing year.
Total Sunshine List expenditure for 2025 came in at $54.64 billion. That’s the combined salary figure for everyone on the list – a number that probably deserves a moment of reflection on its own.
For context, that’s not the entire Ontario public sector wage bill. It’s specifically the portion tied to employees earning $100,000 or more. But it’s a useful signal of just how much of the public payroll now sits above a threshold that was set in 1996 and has never been adjusted.
What Drove the Growth This Year
According to Ontario’s President of the Treasury Board, Caroline Mulroney, three specific factors pushed salaries upward in 2025: retroactive payments from collective bargaining, new contract outcomes, and – interestingly – an additional pay period for several organizations.
That last one is easy to overlook. An extra pay cycle in a calendar year can push annual salary totals just enough to clear the $100,000 mark for employees sitting right at the edge. It’s a mechanical factor, not a raise – but it still shows up on the list.
More than 50% of the list’s growth came from municipalities. And more than half of the total list is made up of public service organizations like school boards, hospitals, and public health units – primarily nurses and teachers. These aren’t outlier earners or executives. They’re career professionals whose wages have slowly climbed over the years to meet a threshold that hasn’t moved in three decades.
If you’re interested in how collective bargaining shapes these trends, you can browse more articles on public pay trends at PublicPayPulse Public Sector Insights.
OPG Still Runs the Top of the List
We called this one too. Ontario Power Generation employees dominated the highest-paid spots again in 2025.
Former OPG President and CEO Kenneth Hartwick topped the list with a salary of just over $1.9 million – specifically $1,907,408. Current CEO Nicolle Butcher came in second at $1,596,218, and Chief Nuclear Officer Steve Gregoris placed third at $1,092,854. In fact, five of the top five spots and seven of the top ten all belong to OPG.
That’s not a surprise when you consider the scale of what OPG manages – roughly half of Ontario’s electricity generation, including major nuclear facilities. The compensation reflects the complexity and risk profile of those roles, even if the numbers are jarring to look at next to, say, a public school teacher just clearing the $100K threshold.
Some other names worth noting from this year’s list:
- Premier Doug Ford earned $269,567 in 2025, up from $208,974 in 2024
- Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow earned $240,349, up from $225,093
- Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw brought in $445,366
- Toronto City Manager Paul Johnson earned $523,925
- Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay earned $327,439
Fifty people from Ford’s office appeared on the list this year, up from 47 in 2024.
The $100,000 Threshold: Still Frozen, Still Controversial
This is the part of every Sunshine List conversation that tends to generate the most heat.
The $100,000 cutoff hasn’t changed since the list launched under Premier Mike Harris in 1996. Adjusted for inflation, that same purchasing power would be roughly $182,000 today. So a lot of the people now appearing on the list – mid-level managers, experienced nurses, veteran teachers, transit supervisors – would not have appeared on a threshold-adjusted version of the disclosure.
That’s not a criticism of the list itself. Transparency in public sector pay is genuinely valuable. But it does raise a reasonable question: is a list that now includes over 400,000 people still capturing what it was originally meant to capture?
The debate around raising the threshold to somewhere in the $150,000 – $200,000 range has been circling for years. The 2025 results make that conversation harder to avoid. You can read more about the history of the threshold and how it’s shaped the list over time in our piece on the Ontario Sunshine List’s history and context.
How Our Predictions Held Up
Back in October, we made three main predictions:
Prediction 1: The list would cross 400,000 employees. Result: Correct. 404,922.
Prediction 2: The $200,000 threshold debate would intensify. Result: Directionally correct. The conversation is louder than ever, particularly given that municipalities drove more than half of the growth.
Prediction 3: OPG would dominate the top spots. Result: Correct again. Seven of the top ten earners were OPG employees.
The one area where we were watching closely – Metrolinx – saw CEO Michael Lindsay land at $327,439. That’s a notable figure, but it didn’t approach OPG territory. University Health Network executives also appeared, consistent with the trend of large hospital systems competing for senior leadership.
Overall, the 2025 list landed pretty close to where the signals pointed.
What This Means Going Forward
A 7% annual growth rate, if it holds, puts the 2026 list somewhere around 433,000 – 435,000 people. Combined with ongoing collective bargaining in healthcare and education, it’s reasonable to expect the list to keep expanding until either the threshold moves or wage growth meaningfully slows.
The $54.64 billion in total disclosed salaries is a figure that will likely get cited a lot in upcoming budget discussions. Ontario’s 2026 budget has already flagged a $13.8 billion deficit, which means public-sector compensation is going to stay under scrutiny.
If you want to dig deeper into how individual sectors and employers stack up, our dashboard at PublicPayPulse has the full searchable dataset. And for broader context on what drives public sector pay trends in Ontario, check out more articles at PublicPayPulse Public Sector Insights.