The former CEO of Shared Health received nearly $1 million in salary and other pay last year, despite working for only one month before being fired following a provincial health-care system audit.
Lanette Siragusa was paid $988,520 in 2025 and was at the top of the health authority’s latest compensation disclosure.
Siragusa and Winnipeg Regional Health Authority leader Mike Nader were removed from their roles in February 2025 following the release of a financial audit that showed, apart from Southern Health, the province’s other health regions regularly overspent their budgets.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
Lanette Siragusa
A Shared Health spokesperson would not provide a breakdown of Siragusa’s compensation, but said the total figure includes regular earnings and certain “legislative and contractual payments,” such as vacation and severance, which were paid out at the time of her departure from the organization.
By comparison, Shared Health’s interim CEO, Chris Christodoulou, made $355,083 last year, according to the financial records. In 2024, Siragusa’s salary was marked at $384,425.
A University of Manitoba business instructor guessed Siragusa’s high salary was likely a result of Shared Health paying out the rest of its contract with her.
Sean MacDonald, who teaches at the Asper School of Business, said while the amount isn’t scandalous in itself because the dollar figure represents the entirety of a contract, the revolving door of CEOs at Shared Health is adding up.
Siragusa was tapped to lead the health authority following Adam Topp’s resignation four months into the job in 2023. He left the position shortly after a report commissioned by Shared Health found most of the province’s health workforce reported a low level of well-being and resilience and was ready to quit.
Topp earned $603,604 before he departed in April that year. Nader made $726,339 in 2025 before his departure from WRHA, financial documents show.
“(The province) has got to stop, or really consider the contracts that they’re entering into, because this is getting very expensive to pay all of these executives for not working,” MacDonald said.
While Siragusa led Shared Health between 2023 and 2025, she served as dean of education at the University of Manitoba Rady Faculty of Health Sciences in a reduced role. She remains in that position, according to the U of M’s website.
Her salary at the U of M in 2025 was $161,605, according to its compensation disclosure report.
“…This is getting very expensive to pay all of these executives for not working.”
Siragusa did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Provincial governments tend to want the executives leading government entities to be aligned with their philosophies, so it could make sense the NDP government severed ties with Siragusa in its first few years of governance, but MacDonald said the paycheques should be a cautionary tale.
“This is an extremely expensive business practice that (the province) is engaging in,” he said. “It kind of reflects that they’re not clear on the strategy they desire, and so they keep on switching the leaders, and that’s a little concerning in terms of how the overall public sector is being managed.”
Siragusa was named to the position by the former Progressive Conservative government in April 2023. PC health critic Kathleen Cook declined to comment on the former CEO’s compensation.
A spokesperson for Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the government is required to operate within the confines of the contracts it signs and its legal obligations.
Compensation for other executives in Manitoba’s regional health network last year included Southern Health CEO Dana Human’s $207,540. Human stepped into the role after former CEO Jane Curtis replaced Nader at WRHA. Curtis took home $293,365 last year.
Mary Anne Ellis made $240,545, leading the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority. Prairie Mountain Health CEO Treena Slate earned $284,200 and Northern Health CEO Rajesh Sewda was paid $237,859.
Under provincial law, government entities must disclose the salaries of public-sector employees who earn more than $85,000 in a fiscal year. The total listed figure includes overtime, retirement and severance pay, lump-sum payments, vacation payouts and benefits.
Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson was frustrated by the figures, suggesting the money could be put to better use elsewhere.
“This is an extremely expensive business practice that (the province) is engaging in.”
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“We need to see increased money in security, we need to see nurse-patient ratios instituted,” Jackson said. “There’s so many areas of health care that need to have an injection of money to keep nurses and other health-care providers and patients and families safe.”
At the time of the province’s audit, Asagwara told health leaders to redirect eight per cent of the dollars earmarked for corporate services toward improvements to patient care before the end of the current fiscal year.
Pathologists, who were paid between $523,000 and $913,000, appeared in the 23 spots immediately after Siragusa on the compensation list.
Doctors Manitoba spokesman Keir Johnson said pathologists received a two per cent increase in remuneration last year, but the salaries are similar to those in the 2024 compensation disclosure.
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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