The CBC is a huge waste of money. Nearly nobody is watching it and journalists should not be paid by the government.

With former employees testifying before a Parliament Hill committee, it’s easy to get lost in the drama.

SIMS: Ratings and spending show why CBC should be defunded Back to video

But bias and blacklists aside, the numbers are damning enough to defund the CBC.

The CBC costs taxpayers more than $1.4 billion per year.

That money could pay the full-time salaries of about 7,000 police officers and 7,000 paramedics instead of going to a state broadcaster with abysmal ratings.

In its latest ratings report, CBC News Network posted an audience of 1.7%.

That means about 98.3% of Canadians are choosing to watch something other than CBC’s national news channel.

The main channel of CBC TV, the one with entertainment programming such as the “menopause comedy” Small Achievable Goals, also has low ratings with an audience share of 3.6%.

That means 96.4% of Canadians are choosing to watch something other than CBC. These ratings are based on prime-time TV, when stations are trying to attract viewers after the evening news.

News ratings worse than entertainment programming

CBC’s TV shows don’t crack the top five for viewers. Its top show, Saint-Pierre, ranked seventh with about 1.5% of Canadians watching.

CBC’s local news ratings are worse than its entertainment programming.

In Toronto, data shows local CBC news is watched by about 49,000 people, or 0.74% of the population of the city. In Calgary, the news had 4,000 viewers, or about 0.25%. In Vancouver, just 0.4% of the population is tuning in to watch the news.

These are rounding errors of viewership for CBC.

Let’s look at who’s running this rounding-error-ratings, taxpayer-funded media corporation.

Marie‑Philippe Bouchard is the new CBC CEO.

The current pay for government CEOs has not been posted this year. Last year’s data shows the CBC CEO was paid between $478,000 and $562,700 per year with a bonus of up to 28%.

The president and CEO isn’t the only high-paid manager at the state broadcaster.

Currently, 1,831 employees collect six-figure salaries, costing taxpayers about $240 million, with an average salary of $131,060 each.

In 2015, 438 CBC employees took home six-figure salaries, costing taxpayers about $60 million. That’s a 318% increase in the number of six-figure CBC employees since 2015.

CBC has more than 250 directors, 450 managers and 780 producers who are paid more than $100,000 per year.

The CBC also employed 130 advisers, 81 analysts, 120 hosts, 80 project leads, 30 lead architects, 25 supervisors, among other positions, who were paid more than $100,000 last year, according to the access-to-information records. The CBC redacted the roles for more than 200 employees.

CBC refuses to be transparent with taxpayers

Despite taking more than $1.4 billion from taxpayers every year, the CBC refuses to be transparent with the people who pay its bills.

After saying it was going to cancel its unpopular bonuses, CBC handed out record-high pay raises of $38 million in 2024-25 instead.

While pushing its streaming channel, Gem, during championship games on TV, the CBC refuses to tell taxpayers how much money it’s spending on the ads.

The CBC claimed in committee hearings that “millions of Canadians” subscribe to its Gem streaming service. However, it refuses to tell taxpayers how many subscribers exist and it is suing to keep that information secret.

And this is about more than the money because there’s a principle at play: Journalists should not be paid by the government.

A free press means the news media is free from government interference and that includes funding. Government-funded media is a conflict of interest and it is a contradiction to a free press.

Journalists are supposed to hold the government to account and they cannot do that when they are counting on that government for their paycheques.

Canadians can’t afford to be bankrolling a government-funded media company that nearly nobody watches and refuses to be transparent.

It’s time to defund the CBC. Kris Sims is the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former long-time member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery 

© Edmonton Sun