Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Tait made statements in December while knowing that the performance bonuses had already been handed out in October. It's frustrating, because if you listen to the meeting from December, you hear that Ms. Tait claims that there were no performance bonuses at all. The bonuses were handed out in 2023. They normally do that in the early part of 2024.
Right away, we have found, Madam Chair, that Ms. Tait lied to the committee when she came here in December, and she is head of a major $1.4-billion corporation. She came to committee and misinformed everybody around the table, and that is a real concern.
I like the motion by Ms. Thomas for a couple of reasons. We need to reconvene next Tuesday, March 26, seven days from now, to hear from Catherine Tait. She has misled Canadians. She came here saying that she needed to drop 10% of the CBC staff, over 800 people, and then the Treasury Board, along with the heritage minister, agreed to a $96.1-million gift to the CBC, which brought them from $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion in the budget.
What's interesting is that Ms. Tait has not talked about any more cuts, despite getting $96 million. She hasn't even really talked about whether we are going to reinstate those who were on the chopping block.
It's an interesting dilemma that we have in the heritage committee here, because I definitely think we need to hear, Madam Chair, from the head of the CBC, Catherine Tait, and also because the Liberals at one time talked about a 3.3% decrease to the funding of CBC, and then all of a sudden turned around and gifted the CBC $96.1 million.
That's why I like the updated amendment from Ms. Thomas. Where did this money come from? When CBC went crying that they were going to cut 800 staff and that their bonuses were not coming, we find out that the first 10 months were paid out, so we still don't know about November and December Christmas performance bonuses, which I think we're going to find out about very shortly, either at the end of March or certainly April. It's astounding to me that CBC can cut 800 employees and still give out nearly $15 million in performance bonuses.
I'm here for next Tuesday, March 26. I like the amendment and I will support it wholeheartedly.
Thank you.