Unfair spin

The City of Toronto site on their offer to the unions includes calculation of salary including benefits, but does not present salary not including benefits. I don't know what the benefits are and it occurs to me that not everyone might make use of every benefit (for example, if they have maternity leave top-up, I'd never need that) and certainly would not make use of every benefit in every year.

But there's something more important:

You can't pay your rent with benefits.

When you go to get a new apartment, when you go to get a mortgage, they look at the gross salary number on your paystub or on your T4. That doesn't include your dental plan or sick days or whatever the employer pays into your retirement plan. Yes, those things are good, but they won't help you with your day-to-day expenses. The big question is "How does my pay increase compare to my rent increase?"

To at least give the impression of attempting to be fair, they should have included the pre-benefits salary as well, and a brief blurb on what benefits includes.