Sixty-five employees at North Cowichan municipal hall earned more than $100,000 in 2025, according to the latest Statement of Financial Information.



That compares with 51 employees who earned more than $100,000 in 2024 and 40 in 2023.



The top-10 earners in 2025:



— Ted Swabey, chief administrative officer, $279,850
— George Farkas, general manager, planning development, community services, $217,374

— Bill Corsan, general manager, corporate services and community relations, $186,198
— Ron French, fire chief, $180,011.
— Jason Hammerer, manager of technical and client services, $167,472
— Amanda Young, director, planning and building, $167,092
— David Conway, director, subdivision and environmental services, $165,653
— Clay Reitsma, director, engineering, $165,400
— Teri Vetter, director, financial services, $163,413
— John Horn, director, social planning and protective services, $159,763

Add $14,242 in expenses, and Swabey's total comes to $294,092.

Among elected officials, Mayor Rob Douglas earned $97,664 plus $4,283 in benefits and $7,670 in expenses.

Councillors earned between $34,748 and $40,074, plus benefits of $4,283. The exception was Becky Hogg, who wasn’t elected until April and earned $23,137 plus $3,062 in benefits.

Councillors Tek Manhas and Mike Caljouw had the highest expenses at $11,590 and $9,188, respectively.

The province's Financial Information Act requires municipalities to publish annually a list of employees earning more than $75,000.

In North Cowichan in 2025, that amounted to $16,319,966 plus $220,974 in expenses.

When all employees are considered, the total rises to $23,596,627 plus $344,200 in expenses. The payments include salaries, wages and taxable benefits.

Vetter told sixmountains.ca that the number of employees who received more than $75,000 in 2025 totalled 164, "including Mayor and Council and staff over $75,000."

Those employees making under $75,000 totalled 373, including paid on-call firefighters.

Read the 2025 Statement of Financial Information: https://pub-northcowichan.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=23777

How does North Cowichan determine pay for exempt staff?



Marla Laycock, director, people and culture, told sixmountains.ca one year ago that municipal policy is to "compare exempt compensation with organizations that have positions similar in nature, size, and scope to those at North Cowichan and those that North Cowichan competes with for talent, and that are located in regions with similar economic conditions and cost of living.

"

North Cowichan strives to target exempt salaries at the middle of the comparison market, she said.

Laycock also said council authorized staff to undertake an "exempt compensation survey to help inform compensation gaps to ensure we stay competitive for staff attraction and retention purposes." 

This week, Swabey told sixmountains.ca that the exempt compensation survey has been completed, but the results have not yet been presented to council, partly because of the "recent CUPE bargaining process, which resulted in approved compensation increases for all staff and has improved exempt compensation relative to Council policy targets."

The survey findings will come to council in the near future, he said.

(CUPE collective agreement: https://www.northcowichan.ca/news/north-cowichan-and-cupe-358-ratify-three-year-collective-agreement )


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(On June 13, 2026, Larry Pynn won a Canadian Association of Journalists gold award for best community-based investigative journalism for his series on an unauthorized landfill on Cowichan Tribes reserve land in North Cowichan. https://www.sixmountains.ca/article/fa79807e-83f7-49a9-89ae-996360e06248 )



— June 16, 2026.