Nearly a thousand CBC employees are paid $100,000 or more, according to Access To Information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The number of six-figure staffers was up 117% in six years, according to Blacklock's Reporter..“Taxpayers don’t need all these CBC employees making six figures,” Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Federation, said in a statement..“What value are taxpayers getting from all these extra CBC staffers with big salaries?”.In 2016 a total 438 employees were paid $100,000 or more for a total cost of $59.5 million..“Since then those numbers have more than doubled,” said Terrazzano. Last year the list of six-figure earners on the CBC payroll totaled 949 employees at a cost of $119.5 million..The figures followed disclosures the CBC continued to pay out bonuses even while claiming financial hardship..“The COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges of covering it put immense pressure on CBC’s workforce, operations, finances and systems,” the Department of Canadian Heritage wrote in an April 20, 2021 briefing note, Funding Support For The CBC..Pandemic bonuses totaled $30.4 million. COVID-era pay raises were another $21.1 million. The network has 143 executive directors including 26 directors of “technology and infrastructure,” nine directors of legal services and eight directors of finance..The Taxpayers Federation said it resorted to Access To Information records in lieu of any federal Sunshine List that would mandate disclosure by name of all Crown employees paid $100,000 or more. Advocates proposed Parliament adopt a federal version of Ontario’s 1996 Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act that requires publication of all pay over six figures..The Commons ethics committee in 2013 rejected a private Conservative bill mandating a federal Sunshine List. Bill C-461 An Act To Amend The Access To Information Act proposed disclosure of all federal salaries over the minimum pay for a deputy minister, then $188,600 a year..“What’s the benefit?” Conservative MP Brad Butt (Mississauga-Streetsville, ON) said at the time. “What would be the benefit to a private citizen of filing a request wanting to know what a middle level bureaucrat in some department was being paid?”.“Potentially hundreds of thousands of information requests will come in every year to find out what Joe Smith makes working in the Department of Public Works,” said Butt..Mandatory disclosure was “completely unworkable,” he said..MP Butt subsequently lost re-election by 4,171 votes. The sponsor of Bill C-461, Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton-St. Albert), quit caucus in protest over rejection of his bill, lost re-election as an Independent and wrote in his 2014 memoirs Irresponsible Government: “Being a backbench MP in a majority government caucus is, without a doubt, the worst job in Canadian politics.”
