OPINION: The CBC is a bloated and unaccountable blob

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Remember the classic sci-fi movie The Blob, and how the blob keeps getting bigger and bigger, while oozing over everything, heedless of the screams around it?

That’s what’s happening at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In 2023, the CBC said it was issuing layoffs and cutting costs.

“CBC/Radio-Canada … will reduce its English and French programming budgets for the next fiscal year and cut about $40 million,” CBC wrote about itself in December 2023.

But its taxpayer costs went up anyway.

The CBC cost taxpayers $1.3 billion in 2022-23.

The CBC cost taxpayers $1.4 billion in 2023-24.

Despite claims it’s shrinking, the CBC’s blob is getting bigger.

Documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation show the CBC handed out huge pay raises while doing away with bonuses.

Its layers of management have also swollen to monstrous proportions.

The CBC caught heat for handing out bonuses last year. It paid $18.4 million in bonuses, including $3.3 million to 45 executives for 2023-24.

Former CBC CEO Catherine Tait was grilled about the bonuses by the House Heritage Committee and on the CBC’s own news program.

The CBC fan group, Friends of Canadian Media, said the bonuses were “deeply out of touch and unbefitting of our national public broadcaster.”

The CBC caved and did away with the bonuses, earning praise in headlines.

Not so fast.

After cancelling bonuses, CBC handed out record-high pay raises of $38 million in 2024-25. The raises went to 6,295 employees for an average raise of about $6,000 each. No employees received a pay cut, according to records.

These raises are much higher than raises in previous years, as the CBC spent $11.5 million on raises in 2023-24.

The CBC blob is also growing bigger.

Currently, 1,831 CBC employees take a six-figure salary, costing taxpayers about $240 million, for an average salary of $131,060 for those employees.

In 2015, 438 CBC employees took home six-figure salaries, costing taxpayers about $60 million.

That’s a 318% increase since 2015.

The CBC quadrupling the size of its top payroll blob is scary enough for taxpayers, but the roles these employees play will also raise eyebrows.

There’s a journalist anecdote that says for every reporter working in a regular newsroom, there are about a dozen CBC managers.

Documents obtained by the CTF show that the narrative checks out.

The CTF asked the CBC for a list of employees paid more than $100,000 per year.

The list is 65 pages long, depicting offices full of managers and support staff.

The CBC has more than 250 directors, 450 managers and 780 producers who are paid more than $100,000 per year.

The CBC also employed 130 advisers, 81 analysts, 120 hosts, 80 project leads, 30 lead architects, 25 supervisors, among other positions, who were paid more than $100,000 last year, according to the access-to-information records. The CBC redacted the roles for more than 200 employees.

Let’s tally the CBC blob’s body count so far.

The state broadcaster is costing taxpayers more than $1.4 billion this year. Its new CEO, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, is paid at the same level as Tait, at about $500,000 per year.

The CBC said it would cancel its bonuses but jacked up salaries.

The CBC has swelled its ranks of highly paid employees by 318% since 2015.

The CBC is blacking out data on documents and refusing to tell Canadians how much it’s spending on advertising.

Plot twist finale: Next to nobody is watching the CBC.

CBC News Network’s share of prime time is 1.8%, meaning 98% of TV-viewing Canadians choose not to watch it.

No CBC entertainment show cracked the Top 10 in the latest Canadian ratings.

The Murdoch Mysteries, which isn’t produced by the CBC, has the CBC’s biggest audience with about 734,000 viewers — about 1.7% of the population.

In the movie, The Blob was stopped by freezing it and dropping it in the Arctic.

The CBC blob can be stopped from eating taxpayers’ wallets by defunding it.

Franco Terrazzano is the federal director and Kris Sims the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation