Business
Even CBC’s friends are big mad about the big bonuses

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Kris Sims
This even weirder than the Masters of the Universe cartoon episode where the hero He-Man teamed up with the villain Skeletor to save Christmas.
The CBC doled out $18.4 million in bonuses. Meanwhile, the state broadcaster was also threatening to eliminate some positions just before Christmas. And that has even its “friends” upset.
A group called Friends of Canadian Media typically functions as a cheerleading squad for the CBC.
The group has praised the state broadcaster for years, comparing people who want it defunded to fans of professional wrestling – as if that’s a grave insult.
But this latest plot twist from the CBC even has its friends delivering a smack down.
In an email to supporters about the CBC bonuses, Friends of Canadian Media stated:
“This decision is deeply out of touch and unbefitting of our national public broadcaster.”
When it comes to these big bonuses, the CBC’s cheer team is now agreeing with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that the bonuses are wrong.
Now, that’s where the agreement ends.
“CBC/Radio-Canada’s per capita funding currently sits at a 60-year low, thanks to decades of neglect from successive governments of all political stripes,” the group writes.
The CBC has “low funding” and is suffering from “neglect”?
The friends might want to lay off the kale smoothies for a bit because it sounds like they’re going fermented and that’s clouding their judgement.
The CBC’s government funding is astronomical and it gets an obscene amount of attention from our government, despite its ratings circling the drain.
The CBC’s taking $1.4 billion from taxpayers this year.
The money we spend on the CBC could pay the salaries of about 7,000 cops and 7,000 paramedics. It could buy more than 3,000 homes in Alberta. It would cover groceries for about 85,000 Canadian families for a year.
What the CBC costs taxpayers is the opposite of low funding.
The CBC has dished out $130 million in bonuses since 2015. There are 1,450 CBC staffers taking home six-figure salaries. Since 2015, the number of CBC employees taking a six-figure salary has soared by 231 per cent.
The Canadian Press reported that latest round of bonuses for executives at the CBC is more than $70,000 per person. That’s more than the average Canadian family takes home in a year.
The CEO of the CBC, Catherine Tait, is paid between $460,900 and $551,600 in salary per year. She’s also entitled to a bonus of up to 28 per cent. For the kids paying attention in math class, that’s a potential bonus of up to $154,448.
That’s a super weird form of low funding and neglect.
It’s got to be tough to land that woe-is-me message when millions get thrown around for bonuses.
Even a CBC news anchor asked her boss tough questions about the bonuses on national television.
“The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, through an FOI request, showed $16 million were paid in bonuses in 2022, can we establish that is not happening this year?” Adrienne Arsenault asked Tait on Dec. 4, 2023.
“I am not going to comment on something that hasn’t been discussed at this point,” Tait replied.
Turns out: those bonuses were in the works and now we know they’re costing taxpayers $18.4 million this year.
Meanwhile, Canadians are tuning out of the CBC while being forced to pay for it.
The CBC News Network’s share of the national prime-time viewing audience is 2.1 per cent, according to its latest third-quarter report.
Put another way, 97.9 per cent of TV-viewing Canadians choose not to watch CBC’s English language prime-time news program.
The CBC needs to be defunded. It’s a huge waste of money, a tiny handful of Canadians are tuning in and journalists should not be paid by the government. It’s a good bet the debate on that larger point will keep getting hotter.
But this part of the debate is down for the count: the outrageous CBC bonuses need to end.
When the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Friends of Canadian Media agree on something, consensus has been achieved and the fight’s over.
Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Business
Canada urgently needs a watchdog for government waste

This article supplied by Troy Media.
By Ian Madsen
From overstaffed departments to subsidy giveaways, Canadians are paying a high price for government excess
Canada’s federal spending is growing, deficits are mounting, and waste is going unchecked. As governments look for ways to control costs, some experts say Canada needs a dedicated agency to root out inefficiency—before it’s too late
Not all the Trump administration’s policies are dubious. One is very good, in theory at least: the Department of Government Efficiency. While that
term could be an oxymoron, like ‘political wisdom,’ if DOGE proves useful, a Canadian version might be, too.
DOGE aims to identify wasteful, duplicative, unnecessary or destructive government programs and replace outdated data systems. It also seeks to
lower overall costs and ensure mechanisms are in place to evaluate proposed programs for effectiveness and value for money. This can, and often does, involve eliminating departments and, eventually, thousands of jobs. Some new roles within DOGE may need to become permanent.
The goal in the U.S. is to reduce annual operating costs and ensure government spending grows more slowly than revenues. Washington’s spending has exploded in recent years. The U.S. federal deficit now exceeds six per cent of gross domestic product. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the cost of servicing that debt is rising at an unsustainable rate.
Canada’s latest budget deficit of $61.9 billion in fiscal 2023-24 amounts to about two per cent of GDP—less alarming than our neighbour’s situation, but still significant. It adds to the federal debt of $1.236 trillion, about 41 per cent of our estimated $3 trillion GDP. Ottawa’s public accounts show expenses at 17.8 per cent of GDP, up from about 14 per cent just eight years ago. Interest on the growing debt accounted for 9.1 per cent of
revenues in the most recent fiscal year, up from five per cent just two years ago.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) consistently highlights dubious spending, outright waste and extravagant programs: “$30 billion in subsidies to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt. Federal corporate subsidies totalled $11.2 billion in 2022 alone. Shutting down the federal government’s seven regional development agencies would save taxpayers an estimated $1.5 billion annually.”
The CTF also noted that Ottawa hired 108,000 additional staff over the past eight years, at an average annual cost of more than $125,000 each. Hiring based on population growth alone would have added just 35,500 staff, saving about $9 billion annually. The scale of waste is staggering. Canada Post, the CBC and Via Rail collectively lose more than $5 billion a year. For reference, $1 billion could buy Toyota RAV4s for over 25,600 families.
Ottawa also duplicates functions handled by provincial governments, often stepping into areas of constitutional provincial jurisdiction. Shifting federal programs in health, education, environment and welfare to the provinces could save many more billions annually. Poor infrastructure decisions have also cost Canadians dearly—most notably the $33.4 billion blown on what should have been a relatively simple expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Better project management and staffing could have prevented that disaster. Federal IT systems are another money pit, as shown by the $4-billion Phoenix payroll debacle. Then there’s the Green Slush Fund, which misallocated nearly $900 million.
Even more worrying, the rapidly expanding Old Age Supplement and Guaranteed Income Security programs are unfunded, unlike the Canada Pension Plan. Their combined cost is already roughly equal to the federal deficit and could soon become unmanageable.
Canada is sleepwalking toward financial ruin. A Canadian version of DOGE—Canada Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Team, or CAETT—is urgently needed. The Office of the Auditor General does an admirable job identifying waste and poor performance, but it’s not proactive and lacks enforcement powers. At present, there is no mechanism in place to evaluate or eliminate ineffective programs. CAETT could fill that gap and help secure a prosperous future for Canadians.
Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
The views, opinions, and positions expressed by our columnists and contributors are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of our publication.
© Troy Media
Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.
Business
Trump says he expects ‘great relationship’ with Carney, who ‘hated’ him less than Poilievre

From LifeSiteNews
‘He called me up yesterday and said, ‘Let’s make a deal,’’ Trump said on Wednesday about Carney. ‘I actually think the conservative hated me much more than the so-called liberal.’
U.S. President Donald Trump implied that he was satisfied with Mark Carney winning the 2025 Canadian federal election, calling him a “nice gentleman” who “hated” him less than Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
“I think we are going to have a great relationship. He called me up yesterday and said, ‘Let’s make a deal,’” said Trump on Wednesday when asked about Carney and Monday’s election results.
Trump then said that Carney and Poilievre “both hated Trump,” but added, “It was the one that hated Trump I think the least that won.”
“I actually think the conservative hated me much more than the so-called liberal, he’s a pretty liberal guy,” he said.
Trump said that he spoke with Carney already, and that “he couldn’t have been nicer. And I congratulated him.”
“You know it’s a very mixed signal because it’s almost even, which makes it very complicated for the country. It’s a pretty tight race,” said Trump.
Trump then called Carney a “very nice gentleman and he’s going to come to the White House very shortly.”
Monday’s election saw Liberal leader Carney beat out Conservative rival Poilievre, who also lost his seat. The Conservatives managed to pick up over 20 new seats, however, and Poilievre has vowed to stay on as party leader, for now.
Back in March, Trump said at the time he had “an extremely productive call” with Carney and implied that the World Economic Forum-linked politician would win Canada’s upcoming federal election.
He also said before the election that he would prefer Carney to continue as Canada’s prime minister instead of Poilievre, who he said was “no friend” of his.
Trump, mostly while Justin Trudeau was prime minister, had repeatedly said that Canada should join the United States as its 51st state. This fueled a wave of anti-American sentiment in Canada, which saw the mainstream press say Poilievre was a “Trump lite” instead of Carney.
Poilievre at the time hit back at Trump, saying that the reason Trump endorsed Carney was that he “knows” he would be a “tough negotiator.”
Trump’s comments regarding Carney were indeed significant, as much of the debate in the mainstream media ahead of the election was about how the prospective leaders will handle tariff threats and trade deals with America.
Many political pundits have said that Carney owes his win to Trump.
Carney’s win has sparked a constitutional crisis. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, as reported by LifeSiteNews, said that her province could soon consider taking serious steps toward greater autonomy from Canada in light of Carney’s win.
Under Carney, the Liberals are expected to continue much of what they did under Trudeau, including the party’s zealous push in favor of abortion, euthanasia, radical gender ideology, internet regulation and so-called “climate change” policies. Indeed, Carney, like Trudeau, seems to have extensive ties to both China and the globalist World Economic Forum, connections which were brought up routinely by conservatives in the lead-up to the election.
Poilievre’s defeat comes as many social conservatives felt betrayed by the leader, who more than once on the campaign trail promised to maintain the status quo on abortion – which is permitted through all nine months of pregnancy – and euthanasia and who failed to directly address a number of moral issues like the LGBT agenda.
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