Juno News - Bank of Canada hands out $23 million in bonus cheques

00:00:00.000 I am not a sports fan, but I can share in the joy that sports fans in the audience have that

00:00:14.200 the Edmonton Oilers have made the Stanley Cup final. And what was interesting is that CBC

00:00:20.540 decided it was going to sit this one out in a way. Chris Sims is our regular Monday correspondent.

00:00:26.320 She is the Alberta director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chris, always good to talk

00:00:30.980 to you. Thanks for coming on today. Well, thanks for having us on. This is fun. Okay. So what the

00:00:35.340 heck did CBC do here? Okay. So off the top, I'm not quite sure what happened here. So I am going to

00:00:41.300 be asking some questions of our state broadcaster. Maybe there is a jurisdictional or fee for carriage

00:00:47.260 explanation here. All that being said, I wasn't alone in my frustration of not being able to watch

00:00:53.100 the Oilers versus the Dallas Stars game. So Andrew, the Edmonton Oilers were in the Western

00:00:59.080 Conference finals against the Dallas Stars. If they won this series, they would then go on to the

00:01:04.080 Stanley Cup finals. So just as a bit of an explainer for background. And they did, they won last night.

00:01:09.380 But on the, for game, I think it was game four or game five, I think it was game five, two games ago,

00:01:15.480 we go to watch the game and it's not on CBC. Now to be clear, it's Sportsnet that is producing and

00:01:23.300 filming and streaming the actual game. The CBC has rights to carry it. And as far as we know,

00:01:31.460 they had the option, we think of choosing to simulcast it, choosing to bring it over onto their

00:01:37.280 main net station, but it was nowhere to be found. They were playing some old just for laughs show or

00:01:43.580 something like that. Something that was not NHL hockey, to be clear. And so you had to rush around

00:01:49.200 and scramble. And even then you had to upgrade to this like super duper level Sportsnet package in

00:01:54.420 order to be able to watch it. The reason why I raised this is because Hockey Night in Canada would

00:02:00.380 be far and away the top rated show that Canadians would want to watch at that moment, especially on

00:02:07.740 our state broadcaster, which by the way, we pay $1.4 billion for every single year. So the question

00:02:14.720 then is, what were the folks who are on super fixed income who couldn't afford the extra few dollars it

00:02:20.840 was to upgrade their Sportsnet package? What about the folks who are in remote areas that weren't able

00:02:26.240 to watch it? Why couldn't they watch the game? Again, taxpayers are paying for the CBC. They're the

00:02:33.080 ones that try to use Hockey Night in Canada to promote themselves all the time. It's the show

00:02:37.860 that everybody would want to watch that evening. So why did they do this? And they did it again,

00:02:42.400 as far as I can tell, last night. So last night was a big win. The Edmonton Oilers won. They beat

00:02:48.560 the Dallas Stars. And now they're going to the Stanley Cup final against the Florida Panthers. But what's

00:02:53.760 weird here, Andrew, is that they were still carrying the New York Rangers versus Florida Panthers game

00:03:00.120 on the CBC main net channel just the other day. So it's a real head scratcher why they chose,

00:03:07.220 we think, to not air the two Edmonton games. Now, again, I want to be clear, there might be some

00:03:12.100 weird fee or broadcast carriage agreement or something where they weren't allowed to. But

00:03:17.680 we don't have answers on that yet. As a taxpayer and a hockey fan, I wanted to flag that for people

00:03:22.860 because I wasn't alone. I was seeing it all over Twitter.

00:03:25.280 So I do have the statement from CBC on this. It sounds like they could have played it if they

00:03:31.400 wanted. So the statement, which I got from Lindsay Finneran-Gingris, who is, I believe,

00:03:38.100 a journalist on Twitter, we set our schedule long before the playoffs are determined. And that

00:03:43.580 schedule includes Canada's ultimate challenge on Sunday nights, as well as the Canadian Screen Awards

00:03:49.220 Gala. With that context, we knew there would be occasions during the playoffs when CBC would not be

00:03:55.020 carrying certain games. So their answer is that, well, they didn't know Edmonton was going to be

00:03:59.000 in the playoffs. So they decided they were going to put the Canadian Screen, Canada's ultimate

00:04:03.840 challenge on. And no one thought, oh, wait, me, that Canadian team is in there. Maybe we should

00:04:08.660 just preempt that a little bit. You are smashing my rose-colored glasses, Andrew, because I don't give

00:04:14.960 them the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve it. I was honestly, this last little shred of hope

00:04:20.040 inside me was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. But you know what makes this even

00:04:24.640 worse, Chris? They paid for the rights and aren't even using them. Those rights are not cheap. These

00:04:30.240 things cost, I would presume, in the millions and millions of dollars. And they're not even playing

00:04:35.040 all the games. Oh, yeah. We're going to find out, brother. I'm putting in Freedom Information

00:04:39.520 requests to find out how much we paid for those rights and for them to choose to not air the Edmonton

00:04:46.260 Oilers playoff game. Again, something that the vast majority, like every hockey fan in Canada,

00:04:52.400 would want to watch that, even if you're not a huge Oilers fan. A lot of people, if their team

00:04:57.220 doesn't make it, they go for the last Canadian team that's still in the playoffs. So they would

00:05:02.140 have had tons of eyeballs on their screen. But instead, they decide to play some awards show that

00:05:07.680 I would argue few people outside of the arts community want to watch and some other old show.

00:05:12.480 Like, that's bizarre. So yeah, that's, that's terrible. I was giving them the benefit of the

00:05:16.340 doubt. And that's even worse. So yeah, we should find out exactly how much we paid for the game

00:05:20.660 they didn't air. Now, I one thing that's kind of interesting here is I mentioned this, I believe

00:05:26.220 earlier on. So we have at True North a pool for the playoffs, where you decide, you know, which hockey

00:05:32.940 player is going to get the most touchdowns or something. I don't know. But I don't like feeling

00:05:37.260 left out. So I did, I made what's called a parenthesis, sorry, not a parenthesis, a bracket.

00:05:42.600 And I, you did the bracket and you have to like pick who's going to win and in how many games they're

00:05:46.960 going to win. And by the way, so after round one, guess who was winning the True North NHL

00:05:52.100 playoff pool? It was yours truly. All of these hockey fans were, were put to shame because they

00:05:57.940 had no idea what they were doing. And I had no idea what I was doing, but they thought they knew

00:06:01.780 what they were doing. So I came up with like a very weirdly mathematical way. I nailed the Eastern 0.81

00:06:07.180 Conference and I got like all the games, right. You know, I, you know, I had, you know, Florida and

00:06:11.820 five and Boston and seven and Rangers and four and Carolina and five. I got all the winners right in

00:06:17.200 the Western Conference, but I didn't get the number of games right on Dallas and Colorado. So I, I eat

00:06:23.220 that with, I completely screwed up the second. So I had the Canucks beating the Oilers. So

00:06:27.180 Oh, okay. Okay. Well, you know, I was a little torn because I'm from BC, but Alberta has embraced

00:06:33.380 me. So I was definitely cheering for the Oilers against the Canucks and I still haven't gotten

00:06:37.380 over my 1994 playoff hopes being dashed by the Rangers. So I, I still have. Yeah. I, I had the

00:06:44.360 final being a Colorado versus Carolina, which is, is not happening. So, but again, I knew nothing

00:06:50.360 and I'm still in second place overall. That's how much that's not far off. Like that's pretty

00:06:56.280 impressive for not knowing what you, did you just like cover your eyes and pick or what

00:07:00.340 did you do? No, no. I, I looked at, so there, there, I, it was, I came up with like my own

00:07:05.080 little system where I looked at the win, win loss record from this general season. And

00:07:11.100 I just picked whichever one had the highest in the regular season of the two. Okay. That's

00:07:16.720 good. So I, again, I, I, I separated emotion from it because I don't have a team. I actually

00:07:21.440 didn't care. I think, I think the emotional attachment to teams is what gets people making

00:07:26.260 bad decisions on these picks. But anyway, uh, speaking of bad decisions, let's talk about

00:07:30.380 government bonuses. What happened? So very quickly, Andrew, um, they do have entire lottery systems

00:07:35.320 based on sports ball games. And even if you don't like sports ball games, you should probably try

00:07:40.600 this because it's not rather, I'd rather bet on like political outcomes. This is, it gets you money

00:07:45.500 though, man. Okay. Um, speaking of money, uh, remember the bank of Canada? Yeah. Them. So one of

00:07:51.320 their main jobs is to keep interest rates low. And so they really failed on that. So usually

00:07:59.360 when somebody really, really, you know, screws up their job and they fail, they don't get

00:08:03.660 a bonus. Not so fast for government employees, uh, access to information requests, uh, by our

00:08:09.840 team there in Ottawa, Franco Teresano and Ryan Thorpe. They dug this up. Apparently the

00:08:14.560 bank of Canada handed out around $23 million in bonuses last year in 2023. So that whole time

00:08:22.860 that people were, you know, sweating and having their interest rates going up and all this stuff

00:08:26.560 happening end of the year before that they gave them out bonuses. So it doesn't look like they've

00:08:30.960 missed one year of bonuses Andrews at the bank of Canada. So you can continue to fail upwards as long

00:08:37.980 as you have a government job, apparently. Yeah. And I mean, we're, we're seeing this

00:08:42.060 across departments. I mean, CBC, I know has been notoriously evasive on this and actually

00:08:47.480 was, was a little bit snarky about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation last week. I don't know if

00:08:51.360 you saw that they were upset about, uh, basically misinformation circulating about their refusal

00:08:56.240 to hand over data. But this is a problem in other government agencies and departments as

00:09:01.340 well. There's just this general chasm between the way ordinary people in the private sector

00:09:05.680 are and the way people who work for government in some capacity are.

00:09:09.720 Yeah, exactly. And what's weird is that the government will often show us like their performance

00:09:15.520 like metrics. And even what's strange is that they'll show us this stuff. They'll show us these

00:09:21.680 numbers and like where they're trying to hit their target and the targets will be something really

00:09:26.120 middle of the road, super vanilla, really easy to do. And most of the time, these employees still

00:09:32.220 aren't meeting their targets and they're still getting bonuses. Like, for example, even at the

00:09:37.700 top of the CBC, and I didn't see that misinformation thing, I'll have to dig that up because that's

00:09:41.580 actually a pretty loaded word right now in federal politics. With the CEO of the CBC, Catherine Tate,

00:09:47.640 their viewership is just tanking. Like by most normal people's metrics, she is not succeeding at her job.

00:09:55.980 So their viewership, their ratings are tanking. They're taking a nosedive. They're taking more

00:10:00.480 and more taxpayers' money. They're choosing to not air hockey night in Canada when there's a single

00:10:05.440 Canadian team left in the playoffs. Like bonehead moves like that. But they still hand out bonuses.

00:10:10.600 So regardless of how they're actually performing and what kind of job they're doing, they're still

00:10:15.260 handing out bonuses. Again, if this were a private company, a few would care. Who cares? But this is

00:10:21.080 taxpayers' money because these are crown corporations. Well, and the thing too is that

00:10:26.400 the government, I mean, the Bank of Canada has, there's an argument to be made that they shoulder

00:10:31.140 a lot of the blame for the inflation crisis. That they are responsible, at least in a way,

00:10:37.060 for what Canadians are dealing with as far as this cost of living and inflation issue is concerned.

00:10:41.940 So when they're cashing out tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, it's a particular sting,

00:10:47.060 even more than if, you know, I don't know, Department of Fisheries bureaucrats were getting

00:10:51.200 big bonuses.

00:10:52.520 Yeah, great point. It's not just interest rates. It's the fact that they printed hundreds of billions

00:10:56.760 of dollars during the lockdowns and all of that. And that was used largely to buy up government debt.

00:11:03.500 Government debt, of course, if people don't know, has now doubled since 2015. We're now at about 1.2

00:11:09.960 trillion dollars. And during the lockdowns, especially, they just fired up the printing press

00:11:14.700 and they used that newly printed money to buy up government debt. Franco explains this very well

00:11:20.820 because he does have an economics degree or two. And so it again, it has caused a lot of these

00:11:26.380 critical problems. And again, leading people to think that interest rates will be low for long.

00:11:31.520 No worries. Don't worry about it. And then all of a sudden they erupted. And this is particularly

00:11:35.980 interesting. And I did earnestly want to warn people they're going to have the rate announcement

00:11:41.180 this Wednesday. So I know that causes a lot of stress for a lot of people for various reasons

00:11:46.420 with lines of credit and variable mortgages and all that stuff. It's super important. They are going

00:11:52.260 to be making a rate announcement on Wednesday. No prediction which way that's going to go. But it

00:11:56.560 does add sting to it when we see them still taking in these massive bonuses when by most normal people's

00:12:01.940 metrics, they're not doing a very good job.

00:12:05.300 So is there a policy solution to this? Could the government and is this something that the

00:12:10.020 Taxpayers Federation is advocating for? Just say, hey, bureaucracies don't get bonuses?

00:12:14.460 Yeah. Yeah, for sure. If they super want to argue that they deserve it, then maybe we could start

00:12:20.620 from there. But yeah, this should start back at zero for sure. And then if we want to argue years

00:12:25.700 later that, hey, we are doing an awesome job. Look at all these metrics. Look at all these performances

00:12:29.780 that we've been hitting. Maybe we can have a discussion after that. But as a baseline, yeah,

00:12:34.400 we shouldn't be handing out bonuses to bureaucrats and to crown corporations.

00:12:37.700 Well, we're going to be talking with Aaron Woodrick in a few moments about the work from

00:12:42.320 home edict, which has become this like incredible source of offense for much of the public sector.

00:12:48.620 But one of the things that Aaron's raised, and I think would apply here as well, is have

00:12:52.120 pretty clear, clearly delineated performance metrics. Not things that are done because you

00:12:58.360 know you can clear the bar, but things that actually involve it. I mean, I'd be fine with bonuses

00:13:03.100 based on how much money you're saving. Like if, hey, for every $10 of taxpayer money you save,

00:13:07.860 you get a dollar. Okay, fine. We save a dollar less for every 10, but we're still saving the nine

00:13:12.320 buck. Like, I'm not proposing that as a policy, but something like that, because there's right now

00:13:16.780 no incentive to actually pay for things to use taxpayers' money responsibly anywhere in government.

00:13:23.840 That's a great point. Reagan had something very similar to that in the 1980s when he was trying

00:13:28.960 to tackle their deficits. So he brought in people, if I recall correctly, who were specialists from

00:13:33.780 their field, begged them to come in and take a government job for a year and find savings. And

00:13:39.280 I think bonuses were given based on the dramatic amount of savings that were found in different

00:13:43.520 departments. In a reverse way, that's often what's balanced budget legislation does. So for a long

00:13:49.240 time, the province of British Columbia, for an example, had balanced budget legislation where

00:13:53.900 the minister's department came in with a deficit, meaning they're spending too much money, that

00:14:00.660 minister took a 10% pay cut. Yeah. So if they're not doing their job, they get money clawed back.

00:14:07.640 So it's kind of, you know, a different direction from what you're talking about, but the same sort

00:14:11.460 of incentive structure. So that sounds really smart. If that's something that MLI is looking into,

00:14:16.280 that'd be great. It's interesting. You're speaking with Aaron Woodrick, who of course was with the

00:14:19.780 Taxpayers Federation for many years. They just put out, I'm sure you saw it because I think you signed

00:14:24.260 it, the Ottawa Declaration on not giving government money to media organizations, which is an excellent

00:14:30.100 thing to see. If people kind of team up on this stuff and really take a stand, we might actually

00:14:34.920 get some work done here. Well, that's certainly the hope. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers

00:14:40.020 Federation. Always a pleasure, Chris. We will talk to you next Monday. You bet. Take care.

00:14:43.540 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True

00:14:48.080 North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 09, 2024

Bank of Canada hands out $23 million in bonus cheques

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