MPs make~ 200,000/yr in 2024. In comparison, they made 18,000/yr in 1963, which is roughly 180,000/yr. Seems close enough I'm not gonna argue they're ridiculously overpaid, unless you're arguing they've always been overpaid.

MPP in Ontario is at $157,350. Used to be $37,800 in 1980, or $140,000 today. Again, that's pretty close considering MPPs have had their pay well frozen well below that since early 2010s until this year.

Median income of Canadian families has stayed pretty flat - only source I can find is a publication from govt of Canada in 2005, but they have 1980 household income at $59,709 (in 2005 dollars), $66,343 in 2005, and $ 95,200 in 2021, ($68,614 in 2005 dollars).

So again, pretty steady.

We've got lots of issues, but the idea that this is caused by overpaying municipal staff is ridiculous. The actual problem is that these kinds of things aren't budgeted out properly when constructed. They have the money to build them, not realizing it costs a lot to keep them going, especially when these large repairs are required. I work as an engineering consultant, primarily for municipalities, but an easy example are stormwater ponds. Those ponds in most subdivisions? They're there to trap sediment and pollutants to keep it out of streams and lakes.

Tons were constructed from the 80s through to today, paid originally by the developers, but the Town has to maintain them, otherwise all those pollutants wind up in the streams and rivers.

Provincial govt did an audit a few years ago and found that less than 10% of them had been cleaned since they were installed. They're about $1mil per cleanout, and no one had budgeted for it when setting property taxes.

Multiply this by all the other municipal infrastructure we rely on, and its easy to see why things are fucked.