The CBC awarded itself more than $156 million in pay raises and bonuses despite complaining of “severe” financial challenges. Documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation detail seven years’ worth of payments amid steep declines in CBC ad revenue..“The CBC should stop handing out bonuses and raises instead of taking more money from taxpayers,” Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Taxpayers Federation, said in a statement. Federal funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation totals $1.3 billion a year..Access To Information records show in the period from 2015 to 2021, the CBC paid $73 million in raises and $83.3 million in bonuses for a total $156,344,253. The payments came despite public claims of hardship after the CBC was outbid on Hockey Night In Canada licensing by Rogers Communications Inc..CBC lost its hockey monopoly in 2013. “The challenges that we are facing are severe,” then-CEO Hubert Lacroix testified at 2014 hearings of the Commons languages committee. “We simply can’t be in a position where we have to keep cutting.”.Lacroix said the network was so hard up for cash it would sell off a portion of its real estate holdings. “We take our real estate environment, we’re trying to shrink it,” said Lacroix. “We’re trying to sell some of the places to transform ourselves into tenants. We’re trying to rent out the space that we create. That’s rental revenues.”.“There are only two ways for us to do this,” testified Lacroix. “Either we increase the revenues, or we reduce our costs in an environment where the shrinking pie of advertising revenues that we have access to is smaller and smaller.”.Records show CBC never eliminated pay raises or bonuses that were the equivalent of $16,000 per employee who qualified. “It is tone deaf for the CBC to hand out pay raises and bonuses while many workers in the private sector took pay cuts and lost their jobs,” said the Taxpayers Federation..Rogers in 2013 successfully bid $5.2 billion for a 12-year license on Hockey Night In Canada broadcasts. It was the most profitable programming on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network..“The Department of Canadian Heritage estimated the CBC’s annual advertising revenues decreased by approximately $175 million as a result of losing the Hockey Night In Canada contract,” said a 2019 federal briefing note..A follow-up 2021 briefing note Funding Support For The CBC said the network was under “immense pressure” but made no mention of bonuses and pay raises. “The COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges of covering it put immense pressure on CBC’s workforce, operations, finances and systems,” said the April 20, 2021 briefing note.
