CTF says CBC staff with 6-figure salaries has more than doubled in last decade

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The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the number of CBC staff collecting six-figure salaries has more than doubled since 2015 according to access-to-information records.

“Taxpayers don’t need all these extra CBC employees taking six-figure salaries,” said Franco Terrazzano, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s federal director, in a statement.

“The government should save money by taking air out of its highly paid bureaucracy and that includes Crown corporations like the CBC.”

The CTF says in the fiscal year, 2024-25, 1,831 CBC employees took a six-figure salary, according to the records obtained by access to information with those salaries costing taxpayers about $240 million in 2024 for an average salary of $131,060 for those employees.

The federation says a decade ago in the 2015-16 fiscal year, 438 CBC employees took home six-figure salaries, for a total cost to taxpayers of about $59.6 million.

The CTF says the number of CBC staffers with a six-figure salary increased 17% over the last year and since 2015, that number has increased 318%.

The federation says the CBC will cost taxpayers more than $1.4 billion this year, according to the main estimates.

“Canadians should be able to pick the content they want to pay for instead of the government forcing them to pay for the CBC with their taxes,” Terrazzano said the CBC in a statement.

“And other media organizations shouldn’t be forced to compete with the taxpayer-funded CBC. It’s time to defund the CBC.”

The CTF says while most provincial governments proactively publish annual sunshine lists to provide transparency on employee compensation, Ottawa does not.

The federation has repeatedly called on the federal government to proactively publish a sunshine list to disclose the salaries of the government’s highest paid employees.

More than 110,000 federal bureaucrats took home a six-figure base salary in 2023, according to separate access-to-information records obtained by the CTF.
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Here’s CBC sunshine list and cost, per access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation with the fiscal year, number of staff earning $100,000, and total paid to staff earning $100,000:

2015-16: 438, $59.6 million
2016-17: 467, $63.6 million
2017-18: 511, $68.7 million
2018-19: 599, $78.0 million
2019-20: 729, $93.4 million
2020-21: 838, $106.2 million
2021-22: 949, $119.5 million
2022-23: 1,378, $170.4 million
2023-24: 1,566, $192.7 million
2024-25: 1,831, $240.0 million