By Doug Draper
They call her ‘Debbie Sevenfigures’.
Debbie Sevenpifer, CEO for the Niagara Health System, once again makes top ten on annual Sunshine List.
Indeed, I’ve heard that play on the name of the Niagara Health System’s CEO used so many times over the past few years – even by people who turn around and quietly confess that they work for the NHS – I’ve actually had to remind myself from time to time that her real name is Debbie Sevenpifer.
‘Sevenfigures’ is an obvious reference to the fact that, compared to most of the rest of us who live and work in this region, Sevenpifer gets paid a pretty generous sum of money – about 10 times more than the media n income in Niagara, as a matter of fact – and that’s not including other bonuses and other perks.
I would only say that in fairness to Sevenpifer, it is not a seven-figure salary. It is six figures, which makes me wonder if Debbie might be a little better if she changed her last name to ‘Sixpifer’.
But that is about as fair as I am prepared to get because paying the chief executive for Niagara, Ontario $340,467 a year – the figure contained in the latest ‘Sunshine List’ released by the provincial government for public servants making $100,000 or more in 2009 – is outrageous when our hospital system is many millions of dollars in debt and front-line services to patients are being cut.
Given the mess our hospital system is in, the province should step in and see that the salaries of hospital administrators are cut. Just consider the fact that of the top 10 public sector wage makers in Niagara in 2009, seven of them, including Sevenpifer, are making more than $330,000 annually.
If those seven salaries were even cut in half, it would make up most, if not all, of the $1 million or so the NHS claims it can save in a year by its conversion of the emergency rooms at the hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into urgent care centres.
And that is just seven of the dozens upon dozens of high-priced NHS employees who made the sunshine list.
Certainly, many Niagara citizens have written editorial notes to columnists like me or stood up at forums like the one the Toronto-based Ontario Health Coalition held on hospital services in our region last month questioned by the NHS CEO should be making more than the prime minister of Canada or premier of Ontario. But you don’t even have to go that far.
Why is she making more than Mike Trojan, the CEO for Niagara’s regional government? According to the Sunshine List, Trojan made $234,559 last year, which is also well up there, but let’s also consider what he does. He is the chief administrator for a region of more than 400,000 for such services as water and wastewater treatment, public health, community and social services, waste management, public works and planning.
One could argue that there is at least as much responsibility and potential liability in that package of public services as there is in managing hospitals. Just ask the people of Walkerton, Ontario how much liability their municipal officials can run into if you have a major problem with drinking water?
A couple of years back, when I called up a spokesperson for the NHS and asked why the salaries for the CEO and other top administrators for the health system had to be so high, I was told that this is at least as much as other hospital system’s across the province are paying their employees. And certainly, there are about 14 other hospital CEOs in Ontario making more than $500,000 a year, which is also outrageous.
I was also told that this is what you have to pay to attract “the best and the brightest.” I could not help thinking at the time that if this is the best and the brightest, I would hate to see the worst and the dullest.
On this score, it was at least a little bit encouraging to read in an article published in The Globe and Mail this April 1 that the province is looking at curbing salary increases for hospital CEOs.
“If a CEO has an enormous pay increase and talks to employees about holding the line, it undermines their credibility,” the Globe quoted Ontario’s finance minister Dwight Duncan saying at a recent editorial board meeting. One would certainly think so!
Duncan and his government ought to put the ordinary taxpaying citizens of this region and province first and role back these obscene salaries.
Niagara At Large will have more news and commentary on the Sunshine List in the days ahead.
(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for Niagara At Large and more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
At least most of the other overpaid health bureaucrats have the grace to be doctors or at the very least have a string of letters behind their names or have Medical backgrounds to try to justify their insulting wages to the public.
What we got as the best and brightest was a Brock university accountant who skipped the course on fiscal restraint.
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Right on Doug.
The wages being paid to Debbie Sevenpifer (I too have heard many other names for her but will restrain myself) are way out of line .
You didn’t mention the $12,992.52 that was listed with her salary as taxable income. There are a lot of people, mainly seniors, who don’t receive much more than that for their taxable income yearly.
How can her wages be justified, when they help use up the budget for Health Care in Niagara?
Are there any lists out there that show the Sunshine recipients donations to the Foundations pleading for funding from the same people they are gouging?
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Whoops!!!! Should have called her $12,992.52 Taxable Benefits, not taxable income.
Sorry, but want to be right and not stating something that is not fact.
Joy
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Well said Sue as usual.
“If a CEO has an enormous pay increase and talks to employees about holding the line it undermines their credibility” – well DUH!
Forget about freezing their pays – roll them back – that has happened to many plain old labourers in the recent past in order to save their jobs and their employers/institutions. Sounds appropriate here does it not?
When I point blank asked Ms. S. what her medical qualifications were she said “none”. Surpise, surprise, surprise! Just who we should have as CEO of the NHS.
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As a PS – Why do we never see any input in “Niagara at Large” in favour of the NHS and its current activities? I guess no one is in favour except the “powers that be” and they can’t stand the scrutiny since the general public would see right through their propaganda.
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Once upon a time I used to say, don’t knock it if someone, who’s competent, needed, wanted and in short supply, makes more than you – just work hard and fight for more for yourself. Of course that was when I worked as the City’s child psychiatrist, setting up the first Children’s Service for Hamilton. I did make a couple thousand more than the mayor, but about half of what other doctors then made. So, I’ll ‘generously’ affirm now, let Ms Sevenpifer make a big bundle – if she’s competent, needed and wanted, and, if there is absolutely no qualified replacement, the foregoing being to the nasty contrary. Being so obviously unprejudiced in this personnel matter, I’d like to do the job-effectiveness examination on her myself.
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When I asked Ms ??????er why they did not look at 406 and 20 She said and I quote “there ARE NO SEVICES AT THAT LOCATION”
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Debbie: Here’s some advice
It’s easier to find a job when you already have one. Either be a hero and take a large cut in salary or get your resume out there …
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Bill I know if it the hospital were put on the 406 and highway 20, I’d never be able to get to it … only people who drive can access it. This is a big part of the whole health care reforms here … only benefits people who drive and/or live close. We already had two deaths, how many more do we need before we discover that we can’t keep closing hospitals and centralizing services when there is no way to get from point A to point B without a car!
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Would would be interesting is to see how the salary for the same position has increased over the last 10 to 15 years. Take a VP role and see how it mushroomed from $150k to $250k+ …. take a look at WOHS as an example.
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