They could have hired 200 reporters, or opened new foreign bureaus on every continent
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This week, it emerged that CBC spent $14.9 million on bonuses even as they finalized plans to cut 800 jobs. When Catherine Tait announced the layoffs in a December appearance on CBC’s The National, she awkwardly dodged questions from host Adrienne Arsenault about whether she would be foregoing her own bonuses for that year. And in a January grilling before the House of Commons heritage committee, Tait even claimed that bonuses “don’t actually exist” (she called it “incentive pay”).
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But the $14.9 million figure was derived in an access-to-information request made by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And that figure is only current to Oct. 26, 2023, meaning that the final tally for 2023 might be higher. All told, the federation has tallied up $114 million in bonuses paid out by CBC since 2015.
While $100 million over nine years is a rounding error as far as federal spending goes, it’s a gigantic sum of money in the realm of journalism or Canadian media generally.
Below, a cursory review of what CBC could have done with all that bonus money.
They could have hired more than 200 entry-level reporters (for 2023 alone)
CBC salaries are public knowledge, and according to their latest collective agreement a typical reporter can expect to make $66,447.34 in their first year. That’s the entry-level rate for a “senior writer,” a “provincial affairs reporter” or a “video-journalist.”
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