Queen’s five highest-paid employees banked over $2 million cumulatively through salaries in 2024.
Published on March 28, the Ontario Sunshine List ranked all Queen’s employees’ salaries over $100,000 last year. Annually, the list releases the salaries of all public sector employees in Ontario making over the six-figure threshold.
In 2024, a total of 1,476 Queen’s employees made the list, an increase of 61 from 2023, with an average salary of $172,756. The Journal compiled a list of the top five highest-paid employees for the 2024 calendar year.
5. Patrick Deane, Principal: $418,609
In 2024, Principal Patrick Deane ranked as the University’s fifth highest earner, with a salary of $418,609—marking the second consecutive year without a pay increase. This placed him one spot lower than his position as the fourth-highest earner in 2023.
Deane’s salary is lower than some other Ontario University presidents, including Western President and vice-chancellor Alan Shepard who made $484,000, and University of Toronto President Meric Gertler who chequed $555,450 last year.
4. Wanda Costen, former Dean of the Smith School of Business: $438,605
The previous Dean of the Smith School of Business Wanda Costen comes in next making $438,605—an 8.5 per cent decrease from her 2023 salary of $479,578.
She ed Queen’s in 2021 and stepped down from her role this past December. Similar to Deane, Costen dropped one position in
the University’s top earners, moving from third to fourth.
3. Shai Dubey, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Smith School of Business: $475,107
Shai Dubey, a Queen’s employee since 2010, had a salary of $475,107 in 2024, a 29 per cent increase from 2023 where he made $368,407. He’s a professor in both the Smith School of Business and Queen’s Faculty of Law, teaching negotiation and international business law.
2. Tina Dacin, Professor and Smith Chair of Strategy & Organizational Behaviour, Smith School of Business: $520,254
Tina Dacin raked in a salary of $520,255 in 2024, an increase of about 72 per cent from 2023. She also acts as the Principal Investigator for the Community Revitalization Research Program at Smith Business. According to her Smith Business profile, she’s on leave until June 2026.
1. Jane Philpott, former Director of the School of Medicine and Dean of the Faculty of Health
Sciences: $552,435
Remaining the top earner, Dr. Jane Philpott received a salary of $552,435 in 2024, an increase of just over one per cent from her 2023 earnings.
Jane Philpott acted as the Director of the School of Medicine and the Dean of the Faculty of Health Science at Queen’s from July of 2020 until November of 2024. Philpott stepped down from these roles to begin her new position in the Ontario government as chair for the primary care action team, an initiative that aims to ensure every Ontarian has access to a primary care provider within five years.
Despite reg from her two leadership positions, Philpott is still a professor of family medicine at the University.
On the Ontario public salary disclosure website, Philpott’s position is titled “Chair, Connecting Every Ontarian to Primary Health Care Initiative,” not one of her roles as Queen’s. It’s unclear what portion of her salary stems from her University role versus her new position as Chair, which she assumed in December.
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Kiki
Hello, I am PhD student and we are now entering the 5th week of the PSAC901 strike. I usually avoid looking at the “sunshine” list since it does nothing to alleviate the understanding I already have about the labour inequities present in many Canadian universities. However I was truly shocked to see that the top earner at Queen’s took in $45,000 (I assume gross) per month. I don’t think I need to add anything else here, except that… I think we are all aware that having a net zero revenue as a grad student while we provide the bulk of the first few years of undergraduate student /teaching does not bare comparison. I do wonder if any negotiating is possible with people in istrative levels who fundamentally cannot comprehend, and yet enact, this level of immorality. It is immoral to segment teaching in such a way that the bulk of the first few years of undergraduate teaching is performed by net zero earners. We are being forced to pay in order to work, while that difference is siphoned to the top s whose job it is to cut more human beings at work. If there is anyone who cannot make a direct link that the need for this strike action is not in anyway connected to the current events in the world I think we are all very much mistaken.
Thomas Abrams
salaries are only a small piece of the puzzle, we should also pay attention to the costs of istration as a whole. According to the University’s budget report, the 2024-2025 Queen’s Operating Budget was $684.5 million. 31.7% of that goes to central services, 18.8% of which are allocated to upper istration. That means $40.7 million to upper istration. If you add human resources, advancement, and university relations you that number swells to $63.57 million before the istrative budgets of the individual faculties (around $10 million in Arts and Science).
If Queen’s wants to eliminate the budget deficit incurred by its s, this would be a good place to start.
B Martin
Shai Dubey’s 29% increase in 1 year seems extreme. It would be good to know what merited such a large increase. Also, his $475K salary for an Assistant Professor position seems out of the normal range for that level of university position.
Diane
For shame. No one needs that kind of a salary.
Especially when they’ve just negotiated 2 collective agreements with workers on campus, and are refusing to negotiate in good faith with the TA/TFs, offering pitiful deals. The basis of their claim has been that Queen’s has no money. This is egregious.