By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The head of CBC came to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on Tuesday proudly declaring that the public broadcaster’s “financial outlook has improved” since last December when it announced plans to cut 600 jobs to offset an estimated shortfall of $125 million, and had been reduced to about $20 million, resulting in no need for further payroll cuts to balance the books at CBC/Radio Canada.
But several members of the committee, which has been scrutinizing the employment reduction at the English-French broadcaster, were more focused on executive bonuses when questioning president and CEO Catherine Tait, who repeatedly told Members of Parliament that a decision on the 2023-24 fiscal year would be made on what she has called “performance pay” for non-unionized employees when the board of directors meet next month.
“Executive bonuses, layoffs of workers, cuts to local broadcasting, the use and abuse of nondisclosure agreements to silence and intimidate employees,” said Manitoba New Democrat MP Niki Ashton, who serves as her party’s Canadian Heritage critic. “Canadians may be wondering if we’re talking about a major media conglomerate. Perhaps Bell Media. But no, we’re talking about the publicly funded CBC.”
“To many Canadians, the CBC – an institution we have built – is increasingly acting like a private corporation putting profit ahead of everything else,” said Ashton, who represents the federal riding of Churchill—Keewatinook Aski in the House.
“We are aware in recent months about the back and forth on whether or not CBC executives, like yourself Ms. Tait, will be taking a bonus. Potentially $15 million spent on executive bonuses while jobs disappear is wildly irresponsible. Rewarding oneself for failure while families and communities pay the price of job losses and loss of local programming is unacceptable,” said Ashton, who asked Tait to “commit to cancelling executive bonuses to save as many jobs as possible.”
CBC’s CEO reiterated that it would be up to the board to make that decision.
However Alberta Conservative MP Rachael Thomas, the Official Opposition shadow minister for Canadian Heritage, reminded Tait that she told the committee when she last appeared before it in late January that board members “make that decision based on the data that we present to them.”
“Ultimately then, you have a voice at the management table and you have a voice at the board table,” said Thomas, who represents the federal riding of Lethbridge in the Commons and asked CBC’s top executive whether any recommendations have been made regarding performance pay, which Tait noted, she would not receive as a governor-in-council appointment.
“No recommendation has been prepared as yet,” said Tait. “We are still reviewing our final results.”
At the committee’s Jan. 30 meeting, she told MPs that the management team assesses whether “key performance indicators” have been met by both an individual and the corporation to provide the performance or “at risk” pay withheld from CBC/Radio Canada’s some 1,040 non-unionized staff.
“Performance pay is pegged against targets and it’s measured, and at the end of the fiscal year, which will be the end of March, the board of directors will decide,” Tait said, but later added, that “normally, we would present the results to the board at our board meeting in June.”
Thomas, however, focused on the March-end point and told CBC’s CEO: “Either you lied on Jan. 30 or you’re lying now,” said the Conservative MP, referring to the fact that “no decision has been made” regarding performance pay for 2023-24.
“I really take objection to being called a liar,” responded Tait. “This is not the first time that I’m being called a liar by certain members of this committee.”
As a CBC letter to Liberal chair Hedy Fry highlighted, two Conservative MPs made that accusation directly or indirectly at the committee’s March 19 meeting.
Thomas said that Tait “misled” the committee about performance pay during her January appearance, while Saskatchewan MP Kevin Waugh, a former CTV sports broadcaster said the CBC president had “lied” to the committee, according to the March 26 letter from Shaun Poulter, executive director of strategy, public affairs and government relations at CBC/Radio-Canada, which was made public on Tuesday.
“These deliberately false accusations are damaging to the reputation of the president and to the corporation,” wrote Poulter, a former CTV News reporter.
The attacks against her also eclipsed the prime message she sought to deliver to the committee.
Since December, there were fewer than expected budget-balancing job cuts – 141 employees – Tait told the committee at the top of Tuesday’s meeting, and the $42 million investment in CBC/Radio Canada for news and entertainment programming from this year’s federal budget “will allow us to maintain our services,” she said.
