Common questions about the Ontario Sunshine List and this site.
What is the Ontario Sunshine List?
The Ontario Sunshine List is an annual disclosure of public sector employees in Ontario who earned $100,000 or more in salary during a calendar year. It is published each spring under the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, 1996.
Who is included on the Ontario Sunshine List?
The list includes employees of the Ontario government, Crown agencies, municipalities, hospitals, school boards, universities, colleges, Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One, and other publicly funded organizations who earned $100,000 or more in salary.
How often is the Ontario Sunshine List updated?
The Ontario Sunshine List is published once a year, typically in late March, covering compensation from the previous calendar year. The 2025 list (covering 2024 compensation) was released in March 2026.
What years does the data on this site cover?
This site contains records from 1996 (the first year the list was published) through 2025. That's 3.2+ million total records across all years.
Does the Sunshine List include bonuses and benefits?
The list reports salary paid and taxable benefits separately. Taxable benefits may include items like car allowances or housing benefits. Standard employer-paid benefits like health insurance, dental coverage, or pension contributions are not included as they are not considered taxable income.
Why has the $100,000 threshold never changed?
The $100,000 threshold was set in 1996 and has never been adjusted for inflation. Had it been indexed to inflation, it would be approximately $175,000 today. As a result, the number of employees on the list has grown from under 5,000 in 1996 to over 400,000 in 2025.
Why is someone missing from the list?
Someone may be missing if they earned less than $100,000 in salary during that calendar year, if they work for a private sector employer (even one with public contracts), or if their employer is not subject to the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act.
Why do some names appear multiple times?
The same person can appear in multiple years if they remained on the list. They may also appear multiple times in a single year if they held positions at more than one employer covered by the act.
How do I find a specific person?
Use the Data Explorer to search by first or last name. You can also filter by employer, sector, year, and salary range.
How do I find all employees at a specific organization?
Search the organization name in the Data Explorer, or click on an employer name anywhere on the site to go directly to that employer's detail page showing all employees, salary trends, and top earners.
Is this site affiliated with the Government of Ontario?
No. This is an independent tool for exploring the publicly available Sunshine List data. The data is sourced from the Ontario government's public disclosure portal and updated annually.
How current is the data?
The data is updated once per year when the Ontario government releases the new list, typically in late March. The most recent data available is from the 2025 disclosure (covering 2024 calendar year compensation).