This column first appeared in the Toronto Sun newspaper chain.
It is now FREE for reprinting.

This even weirder than the Masters of the Universe cartoon episode where the hero He-Man teamed up with the villain Skeletor to save Christmas.

The CBC doled out $18.4 million in bonuses. Meanwhile, the state broadcaster was also threatening to eliminate some positions just before Christmas. And that has even its “friends” upset.

A group called Friends of Canadian Media typically functions as a cheerleading squad for the CBC.

The group has praised the state broadcaster for years, comparing people who want it defunded to fans of professional wrestling – as if that’s a grave insult.

But this latest plot twist from the CBC even has its friends delivering a smack down.

In an email to supporters about the CBC bonuses, Friends of Canadian Media stated:

“This decision is deeply out of touch and unbefitting of our national public broadcaster.”

When it comes to these big bonuses, the CBC’s cheer team is now agreeing with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that the bonuses are wrong.

Now, that’s where the agreement ends.

“CBC/Radio-Canada’s per capita funding currently sits at a 60-year low, thanks to decades of neglect from successive governments of all political stripes,” the group writes.

The CBC has “low funding” and is suffering from “neglect”?

The friends might want to lay off the kale smoothies for a bit because it sounds like they’re going fermented and that’s clouding their judgement.

The CBC’s government funding is astronomical and it gets an obscene amount of attention from our government, despite its ratings circling the drain.

The CBC’s taking $1.4 billion from taxpayers this year.

The money we spend on the CBC could pay the salaries of about 7,000 cops and 7,000 paramedics. It could buy more than 3,000 homes in Alberta. It would cover groceries for about 85,000 Canadian families for a year.

What the CBC costs taxpayers is the opposite of low funding.

The CBC has dished out $130 million in bonuses since 2015. There are 1,450 CBC staffers taking home six-figure salaries. Since 2015, the number of CBC employees taking a six-figure salary has soared by 231 per cent.

The Canadian Press reported that latest round of bonuses for executives at the CBC is more than $70,000 per person. That’s more than the average Canadian family takes home in a year.

The CEO of the CBC, Catherine Tait, is paid between $460,900 and $551,600 in salary per year. She’s also entitled to a bonus of up to 28 per cent. For the kids paying attention in math class, that’s a potential bonus of up to $154,448.

That’s a super weird form of low funding and neglect.

It’s got to be tough to land that woe-is-me message when millions get thrown around for bonuses.

Even a CBC news anchor asked her boss tough questions about the bonuses on national television.

“The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, through an FOI request, showed $16 million were paid in bonuses in 2022, can we establish that is not happening this year?” Adrienne Arsenault asked Tait on Dec. 4, 2023.

“I am not going to comment on something that hasn’t been discussed at this point,” Tait replied.

Turns out: those bonuses were in the works and now we know they’re costing taxpayers $18.4 million this year.

Meanwhile, Canadians are tuning out of the CBC while being forced to pay for it.

The CBC News Network’s share of the national prime-time viewing audience is 2.1 per cent, according to its latest third-quarter report.

Put another way, 97.9 per cent of TV-viewing Canadians choose not to watch CBC’s English language prime-time news program.

The CBC needs to be defunded. It’s a huge waste of money, a tiny handful of Canadians are tuning in and journalists should not be paid by the government. It’s a good bet the debate on that larger point will keep getting hotter.

But this part of the debate is down for the count: the outrageous CBC bonuses need to end.

When the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Friends of Canadian Media agree on something, consensus has been achieved and the fight’s over.

Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

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