National Post (National Edition)
CBC staff paid $16M in bonuses in 2022
And about 80% received raises, records show
• Employees of Canada's national broadcaster were paid more than $16 million in bonuses last year, according to new documents uncovered by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The documents, obtained through an access to information request, show $16,052,148 in bonuses were handed out to 1,142 full-time CBC employees. That works out to around $14,000 per employee, on average.
Numbers provided by the taxpayers federation also show $12,505,938 was paid out as raises to 6,232 CBC employees last year — roughly 80 per cent of the broadcaster's workforce.
No details were provided on which employees received bonuses.
Since 2015, the CBC has handed out $99 million in bonuses to its employees, the taxpayers federation reported — a trend that has steadily increased. Employee bonuses hovered around the $8-million mark until 2017, when that number ballooned to $13.3 million.
In 2019, $14.3 million in bonuses was paid out to employees, followed by $15 million in 2020 and $15.4 million in 2021.
Franco Terrazzano, the federal director of the taxpayers federation, said Canadian taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for pricey bonuses.
“Canadians are missing meals while many CBC staffers aren't even missing bonuses,” Terrazzano said. “The CBC should stop handing out bonuses and stop taking so much money from taxpayers.”
The combined cost of both raises and bonuses totalled $184,902,340 since 2015.
Last month, the federation revealed the number of full-time CBC employees making six-figure salaries more than doubled since 2015 — climbing from 438 to 949 in the 2021-22 fiscal year, a 115 per cent increase.
A CBC spokesperson told National Post at the time that the public broadcaster's salaries are competitive with other employers, and that the corporation conducts outside monitoring to determine pay rates for nonunion employees.
National Post's questions to the CBC regarding the bonuses went unacknowledged by press time.
Reducing or even cutting off the CBC's federal funding has long been a popular talking point for opposition parties, particularly the Conservatives.
In a well-publicized dispute CBC president Catherine Tate dismissed Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's criticism as partisan wrangling, accusing him of using “CBC bashing” as a fundraising gimmick.
Poilievre, on the other hand, says the billions that taxpayers pay to keep the CBC on the air could be better spent elsewhere, and he wants CBC to compete on a level playing field with competing broadcasters who largely rely on advertising to fund their coffers.
The Liberals, however, are working on making the CBC less reliant on advertising — with a December 2021 mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez to transition CBC away from relying on ad revenue.
Describing the move as a “modernization,” the government is promising an additional $400 million over four years to make that happen.
In addition to the federal Conservatives, private broadcasters have also raised issues about competing against the heavily funded CBC.
“The CBC likes advertising but doesn't need it,” Canadian Association of Broadcasters president Kevin Desjardins told National Post last year. “They have an ability to skew the advertising market in a way, because it is not as essential as it is for private broadcasters, where that is the lifeblood of their business model.”
During the 2021-22 fiscal year, the CBC received $1.2 billion in federal funding, according to the CBC's annual report, while other broadcasters and news outlets continue to gut their newsrooms and personnel to cut costs.
“Struggling taxpayers shouldn't be paying for big bonuses at the CBC,” Terrazzano said. “If the CBC has enough money lying around to hand out millions in bonuses during a pandemic, then taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fork over more.”
TAXPAYERS SHOULDN'T BE FORCED TO FORK OVER MORE.