The salary of MaRS’s CEO was $533,113 in 2010, according to the Ontario government’s public salary disclosure report, which can be seen at http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2011/otherp11.html

That’s an increase of 22% over her 2009 salary.

According to a consultant there, who emailed me anonymously: “MARS is covered by the Province’s salary freeze guidelines. They did this by jamming all the increases through a month before the guidelines went into effect in April 2010 (they joke about it).”

Meanwhile a Canadian site like Sprouter.com is shutting down, though it did more to promote Canadian startups (the majority of the startups featured in their popular newsletter were from here) in North America than MaRS ever did.

Beside the CEO, another 20 MaRS employees are listed as making over $100K in the disclosure, compared to 15 in 2009. The total number of full-time employees in 2009 was only fifty one, as per the nonprofit disclosure (number of employees on this page). The public disclosure for 2010 has not been published yet. The second highest salary is that of the Vice President, Real Estate, at $277K per year.

Last week, MaRS announced a real estate expansion that apparently will see it collect a loan of $230 million from the province. Beside the fact that the taxpayer is guaranteeing that loan and possibly subsidizing it (the interest rate was not mentioned), the whole project will cost $344 million and the rest of the funding was not specified. Although described as a public-private partnership, no private contribution has been announced. Public subsidies may cover the difference.

In spite of receiving government funding for virtually all of the capital to acquire the current buildings, and collecting rents from companies, MaRS still requires millions of dollars in subsidies from the province today. As of 2009, the organization had collected over $140M in subsidies, including $9.5M in 2009 (from the nonprofit disclosure, line 4550). (more…)