Tomorrow the Province will release the 2014 Moonlight list. Following the popularity of the annual Sunshine list, the Province is finally releasing the Moonlight list - a long anticipated list of people (not only Public Service) who are earning ‘undeclared’ income from second and third jobs or employment. The Sunshine list provides the public with the salaries, including overtime, of people being paid from the public purse who take home more than the $100,000 each year.
At one time, $100,000 was a lot of money, but it is now a goal within reach of many public servants. Nonetheless, the Sunshine list draws much attention away from the financial mess at Queens’ Park and is so a good thing. The Premier, in her wisdom, has taken the advice of senior bureaucrats and will now publish the Moonlight list. This list will reinforce the Premier’s initiative of cutting jobs and wages to balance the budget since people will see that we are not so bad off financially as we think when we are not on the Sunshine list.
People on the Moonlight list will include people who are double-dipping (working while collecting a government pension), those with two (or three) jobs, private-sector workers who receive tips on top of the minimum wage, ‘cash only’ jobbers who do not declare income (an estimate only by the audit firm of Peak, Tell & Whisper) and the three people who are running an insurance scam for non-debilitating injuries supposedly incurred at work.
The dollar limit for the Moonlight list will be half the Sunshine amount, the logic for that amount being that the moon is not as bright as the sun, a number that the PC finance critic finds as absurd as the price of electricity. Nonetheless, persons who find themselves on both the Sunshine and the Moonlight list might be uncomfortable with this news release. Revenue Canada will certainly be interested once Toronto (Wynne) and Ottawa (Harper) begin speaking to each other.
There are rumours that next year the government will also publish a ‘Ray of Sunshine’ list so the rest of us can see our names in the paper. That will leave only those people who have no job or income but we do not want to talk about them, do we?
Have a happy April 1.
