This information comes from annual reports the universities are required by law to submit to the provincial government. As public institutions, the salaries of their executives are public information — as long as you're willing to flip through a thick document.
Some of Montreal's most high-powered university executives make nearly half a million dollars annually, while others scrape by with a measly $200k. Let's take a look at how much is really being paid to whom, at least for the 2021-2022 fiscal year (the most recent period for which university reports have been filed).
McGill's Money-makers
We know that McGill's former principal, Suzanne Fortier, made a base salary of $492,543 between 2021 and 2022, with additional tens of thousands in "taxable elements." The grand total value of her earnings added up to $595,325 during that period.
McGill has since instated a new principal, Deep Saini, who became the 18th Vice-Chancellor of the university on April 1, 2023. Those working under the Vice-Chancellor don't have much to envy, though, since reports showed earlier this year that Vice-Principal and Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Dean David Eidelman made a total of $543,145 in 2022, combining his salary and other taxable elements of his income.
For those counting, that's more than double what most of Eidelman's peers and subordinates make, on average.
Even the lowest-paid executives at McGill are paid more than double Quebec's average salary. Dean for Student Services Robin Beech enjoyed a salary of $144,076 as well as $3,527 in taxable benefits in 2022.
And some other university executives fare similarly well.
Concordia's Cash-grabbers
Concordia University's head, Graham Carr, made just under the former McGill's principal's salary with a base of $464,830 and just over $2,000 in other taxable benefits. Carr's total earnings therefore had a value of $466,882 during the 2021 to 2022 period, with an additional $19,633 in reimbursements and allowances.
The school's secretary general, Frederica Jacobs, raked in $307,469 as her base salary, with another nearly $7,000 in taxable elements. Dean and university librarian Guylaine Beaudry received a comparatively low $257,835 base salary plus $24,391 in taxable elements. Whew! That's the most in taxable elements of any Concordia exec, and a fair bit higher than most of the other universities' bosses receive, too.
Carr is still the biggest boss, though, so he still earns more than most Concordia higher-ups could dream of.
The only executive with a salary comparable to Carr's in 2022 was Anne Whitelaw, the Vice-Rector of Academic Affairs. She brought in a grand total of $348,533, including taxable elements beyond her base salary.
UQAM Underwhelms
Over at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Rector Magda Fusaro brought in a significantly lower though still six-figure base salary of $253,942 during the 2021 to 2022 period. Her other taxable elements had a value of $11,980. She also received $2,884 in allowances and reimbursements.
This is pretty par for the course (ha ha) at UQAM, where other vice-rectors make just over $200,000 and deans made between $180,000 and $195,000 on average in 2022. This makes UQAM the worst-paying employer, but only when compared to places as profligate as McGill and even UdeM.
One dean, Hugo Cyr, made a base salary of $181,416 in 2022, putting him at among the lowest-paid high executives in the Montreal academic world this past year. But that's still more than double the average salary across the province, which we'll get to later.
UdeM Ups The Ante
The Université de Montréal's rector, Daniel Jutras, earned a base salary of $419,883 between 2021 and 2022, with $1,162 in additional taxable elements bringing the total value of his earnings to $421,045.
For comparison, at UdeM, the next-highest-paid executives — all vice-rectors in some capacity — earned just over $271,000 as their base salary. The disparity between the highest-paid and next-highest-paid executives is striking, considering that they're all just doing one person's job.
The vice-rector for information technology, Denis Fortin, makes $198,655 as a base salary, which is low compared to Jutras' earnings but impressive when put into some real context.
Putting Things In Context
The average salary in Quebec, as of December 2022, was $58,736, according to Statistics Canada data. This means that McGill, the university that pays its chief administrator the highest base salary, is spending the equivalent of the income of approximately 8.4 average québécois workers on keeping one person wealthy.
But if you're a prestigious bilingual professor shopping around for the best deal, it seems like you'll be better off knocking on anglophone university doors if you want to make the big bucks. Otherwise, you might be limited to a paltry six-figure number that might not even pay for your two children's tuition at an Ivy league, a shame so great it might have been worth not having kids at all.
For those of us working below-average salaried jobs in Quebec, reading these numbers might give us a bit of a heart attack, so to speak. All these high-ranking salaries were paid during a pandemic and a housing crisis in the city so bad it's leading to one of the biggest rent strikes in recent memory.
So, is any of this necessary? Do university deans and principals need to make more than the average Quebec worker? That's for you to decide, and for me to think quietly to myself about for the next 48 hours.
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
