Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour to be able to stand in my place to represent the good people of Battle River—Crowfoot and, in particular, to talk about something that is gaining momentum: the conversation surrounding the mismanagement, the abuse of tax dollars and the unbelievable revelations that $18 million in bonuses were paid out to managers and executives at CBC even when that organization decided it would cut frontline workers right before Christmas.
The eighth report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage addressed this very thing and reported back to the House. I will read the motion that we are debating here today. I believe the parliamentary secretary on the other side somewhat acknowledged that Conservatives are far better at getting stuff accomplished than the government is. I think that was what he was admitting in his previous question.
The motion is, “That, given the job cuts announced at CBC/Radio-Canada for the year 2024, it would be inappropriate for the CBC to grant bonuses to executive members.” It is a very simple and straightforward motion, and it cuts to the heart of where there is mismanagement at CBC.
When it comes to the issue at hand, there are well-placed Liberal appointees getting rich from tax dollars. An egregious example is that job cuts were announced just before Christmas. The current president of CBC begged for more money, saying there would be more job cuts if CBC could not get more cash from the government. Unbelievably, CBC, at that same time, was going through the process of approving $18 million in bonuses. We do not have the specifics because the president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada refuses to disclose what her bonus package was proposed to be.
At committee the other week, the president and CEO also refused to tell Canadians what her severance package would be. Further, she refused to rule out accepting a severance package as her term comes to an end. CBC begged for more money and handed out big bonuses, yet had the audacity to lay off frontline workers. It is because of that sort of arrogance and that sort of attitude by the CEO of CBC, Catherine Tait, that the defund argument has gained momentum.
Maybe Ms. Tait did not understand the ATIP process. For the many Canadians who I am sure are watching this very important debate, I will explain that any Canadian can ask for information from government through what is called an access to information request. There is a simple form online, and I believe it costs five bucks, a simple administrative fee. Someone can ask for information, which is virtually unlimited as long as it does not have to do with issues of privacy or national security, and there are a few other areas that are exempt.
In this case, a reporter asked for information about the communications that the CEO of CBC would have had around defunding. The emails revealed that the CEO admitted there was momentum growing to defund CBC television.
Certainly, when Ms. Tait was confronted with her own words at committee this past week, it was quite interesting to hear her response. Instead of acknowledging what she had said in a private email, she continued to defend her failed record and that of the Liberal government to the tune of $1.3 billion in subsidies each and every year and millions of dollars in bonuses. CBC has falling ad revenue, thus requiring more taxpayer subsidy. At the same time, there are fewer Canadians watching CBC television.
There was a number thrown around at the heritage committee; the CBC talks about 20 million people interacting with its services. Many members of this place have a Facebook page, different social media presences or a website. Of course we all have the content that ends up online through ParlVU and other channels. It does not take that big a social media following to have millions of views over the course of a month. CBC, which includes some of the most expensive broadcasting infrastructure in the history of the country, brags that it has 20 million touch points for Canadians. There are those in this place, by comparison, who probably have a similar reach for some of their content, and it is done in a far less expensive way.
Earlier, my colleague made mention about the key performance indicators, the KPIs. When most folks hear an acronym like KPI, it does not necessarily resonate with them. However, what we found very interesting is that in the last full fiscal year, 2022-23, prior to the one we just completed, CBC fulfilled three out of 14 key performance indicators that were the metrics that CBC itself said would determine whether it was successful in fulfilling its mandate. It is a bit like a student's grading their own paper. Even CBC admitted that it was failing at fulfilling its mandate.
I would suggest that what is common sense when someone is failing is that they would make changes. CBC did make a change; I will admit that, but the change was not to improve what it was doing but to change the way it evaluates how it is doing. Therefore the circumstance is that the student was grading their own paper and acknowledged they failed the first go-around, but instead of making changes to ensure that they stopped failing in the future, they simply changed the metric by which they evaluated their poor performance in the past.
The result comes back to this: cash in the pockets of CBC executives, of which there are 43. When I learned that there were 43 executives at the public broadcaster, I thought that must be a typo. Give me a break. The average of the bonuses was $71,000 for each executive, to the tune of more than $3 million. This is at a time when Canadians are hurting, food bank usage has reached historic levels, home prices have doubled and the cost of everything is becoming unaffordable for regular Canadians. The average Canadian makes less than what a CBC executive would have received in a bonus. How out of touch is that?
To add insult to injury, the president and CEO, the executives and the managers who received bonuses at the CBC went to the frontline staff, before Christmas no less, and told them that their efforts there were not appreciated, that the executives would be keeping their job and their bonus but that the staff would lose theirs. They told them to go home and tell their family that. The arrogance is astounding.
The mismanagement is such a reflection of what we see on the benches of the Liberal cabinet, where members take for themselves but literally put out on the street hard-working men and women, the people who actually do the work while those who claim to make the decisions get rich.
After nine years, there has been failing performance virtually across the spectrum at CBC, as well as lower ad revenue and a lower number of viewers. In fact, with the number of viewers the CBC gets, it is going to have to start changing the key performance indicator for that if it is even able to report it. We see increasingly that Canadians are simply not wanting to watch the content that CBC is producing. That is the simple fact of the matter.
Therefore when it comes down to it, it is time for common sense. It is time to defund the CBC and ensure that bonuses are not paid out to rich executives at the same time as they are cutting frontline workers. We get very political in this place as we are politicians in Parliament, but let me conclude by saying that I hope we can find unity in this place with respect to cancelling bonuses for executives when frontline workers are having their jobs cut.