Public-sector compensation disclosed under the Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act
Nova Scotia's Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act, passed in 2010, requires more than a hundred public sector bodies to publish the name and total compensation of every person they paid $100,000 or more during the fiscal year ending March 31. It is Nova Scotia's equivalent of a public-sector “sunshine list.”
Unlike most provinces, there is no single combined list. Each body files its own audited statement once its year-end is complete, and the province publishes them together in one collection — which is why reports appear gradually between June and the autumn rather than on a single release date.
The Act reaches across the broader public sector:
Each record includes the person's name, the body that paid them, and their total compensation for the fiscal year. Most bodies publish no job titles, so titles are not shown here.
The core civil service. Provincial government departments do not file under the Act, so deputy ministers and departmental staff do not appear — much as Alberta's disclosure covers agencies, boards and commissions rather than ministries. Municipal and federal employees are outside the Act as well.
Figures are total compensation actually paid during the fiscal year, on a cash basis: salary and wages plus overtime, bonuses, retirement or severance payments, lump-sum and vacation payouts, and certain taxable benefits. They are exact amounts, not bands, and generally exclude the employer-paid portion of pensions and benefits.
Because the figure is money paid in a year rather than an annual salary, a one-time payment can lift someone well above their usual pay for a single year. That is also why 2018 and 2019 show unusually large groups above the threshold: the province paid out frozen public-sector service awards as lump sums in those years.
The $100,000 threshold has never been indexed to inflation. Each year more people cross a line that has not moved, so a growing count reflects rising wages against a fixed benchmark at least as much as it reflects changes in public-sector pay. Year-over-year comparisons on this site should be read with that in mind.
This site is an independent tool and is not affiliated with the Government of Nova Scotia. Data is compiled from the Public Sector Compensation Disclosure reports and updated when new fiscal years are released.
The compensation figures shown here are facts that Nova Scotia public sector bodies are required to publish under section 3 of the Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act. The underlying statements are © Crown copyright, Province of Nova Scotia, and the individual public sector bodies that prepare and file them; Crown copyright is acknowledged. Pages on this site are not official versions of those statements, and nothing here is produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, the Government of Nova Scotia. For any authoritative figure, consult the original statement at the link above.
This site also hosts compensation data for Ontario, Newfoundland & Labrador, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan.