Juno News - What is the CBC trying to hide？

00:00:00.000 all of that aside we were very well looked after last week with chris sims regularly our monday

00:00:15.860 guest but last week she took the reins in my taiwanese absence chris welcome back thank you

00:00:21.440 so much for holding down the fort last week well it was an honor to be asked andrew truly and thank

00:00:26.100 you so much to yourself and the team and all of your viewers and listeners they were very kind on

00:00:29.880 their youtube comments so thanks so much for that i i'm glad i i didn't get a chance to i didn't get

00:00:34.480 a chance to watch any whole shows because of the uh the time difference but i saw some clips you did

00:00:38.020 a bang up job as always and let me ask you about this cbc business so i woke up uh franco terrizano

00:00:44.820 your colleague and our regular guest here uh from the cdf has decided to put the gears to cbc

00:00:51.980 for uh shockingly not being transparent about the money it's dishing out what's going on there

00:00:57.220 yeah for sure franco actually just went home because his mom famously lives around the corner

00:01:01.100 from me here in lethbridge so he actually did an interview from this chair like last week so that

00:01:06.780 would have been a little bit funny for people to see but yeah uh franco terrizano and our team there

00:01:11.380 at the ottawa bureau for the canadian taxpayers federation we are quite often uh demanding

00:01:16.880 transparency and accountability from the state broadcaster from the cbc because of course they

00:01:22.820 take about 1.4 billion dollars from us every year that's a heck of a ton of money and quite often

00:01:28.800 we find a lot of funny answers right they're playing fast and loose with some numbers quite often

00:01:35.480 especially at the ceo and the managerial level so we wanted to know andrew how much the seven top

00:01:43.740 executives were paid out in bonuses so we filed an access to information request now they were due

00:01:51.980 to release that information within a certain window of time but what the cbc did is they filed a 30-day

00:01:58.780 extension that extension just so happened to kick that information down past ceo catherine tate's 1.00

00:02:06.100 appearance at committee we wonder why but it's worse than that andrew because when they did finally

00:02:11.960 cough up some information about the executive pay scale on may 10th they didn't mention how much of

00:02:19.780 this was bonuses which is exactly what we were asking for all they gave us was this overall number

00:02:26.140 so out of the seven executives at the cbc we paid around 3.7 million dollars with an m that works out

00:02:35.900 to about 540 000 per person but we don't know how much of that is bonuses like we don't have the actual

00:02:43.600 details so we have launched a legal challenge with the office of the information commissioner

00:02:48.800 and we hope the cbc will be much more forthcoming now yeah i mean the problem with the the access to

00:02:56.020 information system in canada is that it's incredibly incredibly broken it's incredibly backlogged and

00:03:01.800 because so many government departments are terrible at managing their a tip request the oic the office of

00:03:07.180 the information commissioner is uh typically i mean i i more often than not when i file complaints with

00:03:12.460 them about uh these issues uh they'll respond like six months later after the department i was

00:03:18.140 complaining about has responded and said oh it seems like it's all sorted out now okay great so

00:03:22.520 are you gonna let them off the hook is what i'm asking no this is one of those things that i think

00:03:27.640 our supporters uh with the taxpayers federation and i'm guessing a lot of your viewers uh we don't have

00:03:33.260 patience for that so the cbc is not a private company okay if they were a private company the

00:03:39.100 taxpayers federation wouldn't care what the ceos are making bonuses or salary this is not it is

00:03:44.940 government-funded media to the hilt so again taxpayers are handing over 1.4 billion for that could build

00:03:52.220 like a state-of-the-art super fancy hospital that could pay for like 7 000 paramedics and 7 000 cops

00:03:59.260 every year on our streets but instead we're handing it to the cbc which by the way of course is tanking

00:04:05.740 in its ratings so a tiny little fraction of canadians are now watching their supper hour news

00:04:11.740 they won't even come clean frankly about their ratings that way do you remember

00:04:15.480 andrew the last time that tate was at committee she said something to the effect of oh yes we know

00:04:20.920 that the tv ratings are are nose diving that we're really losing viewers there but we're making up for

00:04:26.940 it in gem subscriptions which is their online app or something and it's like okay how many gem

00:04:32.780 subscriptions do you have oh we don't share that information like it's so secretive and they have

00:04:38.860 no right to be because this is taxpayers money so that is again why we are going kind of elbows up here

00:04:44.780 like we asked nicely there was an extension and even then when they coughed up some information they

00:04:50.780 didn't give us the exact amount of the bonuses which is what we want and to be clear this isn't

00:04:56.860 just the cbc right the cbc is the one that is not behaving properly here when we asked canada mortgage

00:05:02.700 and housing corporation this kind of information they told us when we asked the bank of canada

00:05:07.740 another crown this sort of information they told us but it's the cbc that is playing funny with these

00:05:13.580 numbers i remember years and years ago you you'd probably remember better than i am cbc had given

00:05:20.060 because they were really getting dragged for not being transparent about salaries and they

00:05:23.500 had published this ridiculous like fake list of salaries that had like their top people making

00:05:28.860 like you know four and a half dollars a year it was not that bad but it was like they were basically

00:05:33.100 saying that everyone was working for i think it was like eighty thousand dollars a year yeah exactly

00:05:37.340 including like people like peter mansbridge yeah like he was making under two hundred thousand dollars

00:05:42.300 based on this scale i remember that coming out i think that was just after sun news networker shut down

00:05:47.180 or around that same time it was laughable because of course anyone who's worked in the news industry

00:05:53.340 knows for a fact that that's not true okay especially back in the day of when anchormen and

00:05:59.340 i use that term affectionately when anchormen were paid the big bucks okay that included in both private

00:06:05.900 and in government funded uh news media if you anchored the evening news you were pulling in the dough now that

00:06:12.620 has changed dramatically of course especially in the private sector as viewership has completely fallen

00:06:18.220 off of a cliff from what i understand uh anchors are now making a fraction of what they used to back

00:06:24.380 in the day and by the day i mean like 10 years ago and interesting i would love for and so i know that

00:06:30.780 there's some people who watch your show for fun who probably still hold down jobs within the mother corp i really

00:06:37.020 want to know andrew how much their at issue panel is paid because we've asked several different ways

00:06:42.780 and of course they try to say oh that's commercially sensitive blah blah blah we can't let that out

00:06:47.580 because it's kind of like a talent fee but back when i worked at ctv a billion years ago the rumor was

00:06:54.060 that those ad issue panel hits were between 250 and 350 per hit meaning every time they open their mouths

00:07:03.820 on like a weeknight show they were getting paid that amount of money i would love to know if that's

00:07:08.780 still the same or if it has declined no and i i recall that because i know someone that went on that

00:07:14.460 didn't want money and they literally didn't have a mechanism to let them do it for free and it was

00:07:20.780 because they're a union shop that was basically why so it's like guests are getting like like i'm typically

00:07:25.900 lucky like i'll like i've never paid to be a guest but you know getting paid to be a guest is an

00:07:30.540 incredible rarity i'm not even sure if it's ever uh come to think of it happened so i'm getting

00:07:34.620 paid what i'm worth i guess in that sense but uh it's it's brutal and i'll ask you chris about this

00:07:39.900 do you think it's time for a federal sunshine list oh yeah yeah big time so here in alberta

00:07:46.060 all of these issues would go away if the federal government did what say they're doing in ontario

00:07:49.900 every year yes exactly so ontario does it well alberta has a version of a sunshine lift i

00:07:55.900 list i think it's at 125 000 it used to be at 100 000 but you know inflation and so now i believe

00:08:03.180 it's 125 000. in fact andrew it's funny you should mention that uh the ctf just finished presenting at

00:08:08.620 committee a few weeks ago where the ndp opposition here in alberta was pushing really hard to have

00:08:16.460 unionized jobs within the government within the provincial government exempt from the sunshine list

00:08:22.220 so you know that's just basically all of them like you could just imagine basically they want

00:08:26.780 managers only not these bureaucrats at the lower level that are cashing 150 000 a year salaries

00:08:32.780 exactly you're working for ahs and just pulling in the dough you know sitting at a desk and handing

00:08:37.020 paper around to your other four friends all day yeah they want them exempt from the sunshine list as

00:08:41.580 if right and normal people don't go after like a super hard working frontline paramedic like that just

00:08:48.300 doesn't pass the taste or smell test with most people what people want to know is exactly to your

00:08:54.140 point are there there's this huge glut of middle management right that is raking in the money so yes

00:08:59.900 we definitely need a federal sunshine list and it should cover all these sort of things but again

00:09:05.580 we want the granular data here especially when it comes to the executive pay at the cbc and again it's

00:09:11.500 really simple there's seven of them okay how much of that was bonuses like to give you an idea okay

00:09:18.380 ceo katherine tate of the cbc is listed as ceo level seven okay in federal government talk they

00:09:26.300 have a grid okay you can find it on the treasury department website she's number seven as of right

00:09:31.900 now 2024 to 2025 budget year she is now making between 468 000 and 551 000. she's also entitled to up to

00:09:46.220 28 percent bonus they call it performance pay but it's a bonus so again that's an awful lot of money

00:09:53.900 and taxpayers want to know how much of that money is she paid and how much of that money is bonuses 1.00

00:10:00.300 especially because again their viewership is going downhill so few people are watching it you usually

00:10:05.420 just get a bonus when you're doing a good job brutal and uh no one on cbc can say that would

00:10:12.540 at all be a term we'd use to describe them well uh great work keep us posted if you get an update on

00:10:18.380 that uh i expect it'll be any time in the next decade that you'll get that information there

00:10:22.860 uh chris sims always good to talk to you thanks again for last week and thanks for coming on today

00:10:27.980 you bet thanks andrew thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:10:32.380 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 01, 2024

What is the CBC trying to hide？

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