JAY GOLDBERG: The time to end the CBC as we know it has come

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Canada’s beleaguered national broadcaster should have been privatized long ago.   

There are endless reasons why. The CBC’s budget is bloated. The organization’s accountability to taxpayers who foot the bill is virtually nil. And journalists shouldn’t have their salaries paid for by the government. Full stop.  

As if Canadians needed to be reminded why the idea of stripping the CBC of taxpayer funding is so attractive to millions of Canadians, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation obtained information — through an access-to-information request — that the CBC handed out a record dollar amount in raises in 2024-25.   

The CBC had previously announced, with much publicity, that it was ending its bonuses program after controversy about bonuses erupted following a round of layoffs back in 2023.  

This, so the logic went, would save taxpayers money and show that the CBC was accounting for the financial realities facing Canadians and even the government.  

So far, so good.  

But, instead of handing out bonuses, the CBC just jacked up raises instead. No less than 6,295 CBC employees received raises in 2024-25, amounting to $37.7 million, or about $6,000 per employee.   

The cost of the raises the CBC handed out last year was more than three times the cost of raises handed out the year before.  

Clearly, the CBC leadership team was trying to have its cake and eat it too. They wanted to look better to the public by ending executive-level bonuses, but at the same time wanted to get all those same folks some extra cash, all the same.   

This “sleight of hand,” as CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano called it, is just another reminder why the CBC should be privatized.  

But Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is heading in the opposite direction.   

Carney pledged to increase funding for the CBC during this past spring’s federal election campaign, rather than recognizing that most Canadians want to see cuts, not more bloat.   

Apparently, the Carney Liberals don’t think $1.4 billion a year is enough in funding, let alone too much.   

Is it because the government thinks millions of Canadians rely on the CBC for vital news information?   

Does it really “strengthen the national dialogue,” as former Canadian heritage minister Pascale St-Onge put it earlier this year? Is it truly “a cornerstone of our sovereignty”?   

To strengthen the national dialogue, people have to actually be paying attention. And the numbers show that most Canadians are tuning the CBC out. They don’t see the CBC as essential to the national dialogue or a cornerstone of Canadian sovereignty.   

If the CBC were as important as the Liberals make it out to be, one would think audiences would be flocking to the network in droves.   

But the opposite is true.   

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For CBC News Network’s flagship prime-time news program, the audience is just 1.8% of available viewers, according to a recent quarterly report.   

That means 98% of Canadians watching TV at that time are watching something else — be it news, sports or entertainment.   

And when it comes to prime-time TV, the CBC’s audience share is just 4.4%. Again, that means over 95% of Canadians watching TV are choosing not to watch the CBC.   

And yet all those TV viewers choosing not to watch the CBC, as well as Canadians who have cut the cord from cable, are stuck footing the bill.   

The CBC needs to be privatized and restructured. Other networks survive without being a Crown corporation, eating up over a billion dollars of taxpayer cash each year. If the CBC genuinely has something to offer Canadians, the organization, once restructured, could be made to stand on its own two feet.   

But the CBC, as it exists now, is bloated, wasteful and divisive.   

It’s time to end the CBC as we know it.