The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has approved future bonuses for its executives and non-unionized staff, according to the state broadcaster’s latest annual review. This decision comes despite previous criticisms and recent job cuts.On June 25, CBC quietly announced on its website the approval of another round of bonuses for work done in the 2023-24 fiscal year, just days after the latest parliamentary session ended. The first report of these bonuses came from La Presse.“There’s no way taxpayers should be paying for another round of CBC bonuses,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). “And it’s a little suspicious the CBC chose to quietly publish this news days after Parliament broke for summer and after CBC President Catherine Tait was routinely grilled by MPs on this very topic for months.”In 2023, the CBC allocated $14.9 million in bonuses, according to internal documents obtained by the CTF. This occurred during a period when the broadcaster cut 346 jobs. Since 2015, the CBC has distributed $114 million in bonuses.The CBC’s strategic plan outlines five “key performance indicators” (KPIs) that trigger these bonuses. The details of these KPIs and their results for the 2023-24 fiscal year will be publicly available in the CBC’s annual report, expected later this summer. Among the justifications for future bonuses is the statistic that each unique visitor spends an average of 37.6 minutes per month on the CBC’s website, equating to less than 90 seconds per day.A total of 1,194 non-unionized CBC staff have been approved to receive another bonus. President Catherine Tait’s annual compensation, which includes salary, bonus, and other benefits, ranges between $472,900 and $623,900, according to the CBC’s senior management compensation summary. Tait’s predecessor, Hubert Lacroix, disclosed in 2014 that his annual bonus was “around 20%.”Acknowledging the criticism, the CBC’s annual review mentioned the concerns about awarding bonuses “in times of financial pressures and associated workforce reductions.” Consequently, the CBC is initiating a comprehensive review of its compensation regime, including bonuses, to be conducted by a third-party human resources consulting firm. The cost of this review to taxpayers is currently unknown.“The CBC doesn’t need to waste more tax dollars reviewing its bonus scheme; it needs to end the bonuses for good,” Terrazzano said. “If Tait isn’t willing to do the right thing, then the heritage minister, finance minister, or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must step in and stop these taxpayer-funded bonuses.”This year, the CBC will receive $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding, an all-time high. Additionally, the federal government provided a $42-million funding top-up in Budget 2024 after Tait argued that the state broadcaster suffers from “chronic underfunding.”
