Business
CMHC rubberstamps $102 million in bonuses amid housing affordability crisis
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Ryan Thorpe
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation dished out more than $27 million in bonuses in 2023, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
That pushes the total bonuses at the CMHC to $102 million since the beginning of 2020.
“Why is the CMHC patting itself on the back and showering staff with bonuses when Canadians can’t afford homes?” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “If the CMHC’s number one goal is housing affordability, then it doesn’t make sense to hand out $100 million in bonuses during a housing affordability crisis.”
Ninety-eight per cent of the CMHC workforce took a bonus in 2023.
At least 2,283 CMHC staffers took home a bonus last year, costing taxpayers $27.2 million, with the average bonus coming in at about $11,800.
The CMHC’s 10 executives received $4.1 million in total compensation in 2023. That includes $3.1 million in salary (for an average of $311,000) and $831,000 in bonuses (for an average of $83,000).
The CMHC also paid executives $211,000 in other “benefits.”
More than 2,000 CMHC staffers, representing 89 per cent of its workforce, also got a pay raise last year. Not a single employee received a pay cut.
There are now 1,073 CMHC bureaucrats taking home a six-figure annual salary, a 15 per cent increase over 2022, representing nearly half (46 per cent) of its workforce. Those six-figure salaries cost taxpayers a combined $140 million in 2023.
“The CMHC could do more to end the housing affordability crisis by hiring a thousand carpenters, rather than paying a thousand bureaucratic pencil-pushers six-figure salaries,” Terrazzano said.
The CMHC is “driven by one goal: housing affordability for all,” according to its 2023-2027 corporate plan.
Polling from Ipsos and Global News in 2023 shows 63 per cent of Canadians who don’t own a home have “given up” on ever owning one. Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said home ownership in Canada is “only for the rich.”
In April 2024, the Royal Bank of Canada said it was the “toughest time ever to afford a home as soaring interest costs keep raising the bar.”
The RBC said ownership costs were propelled to a “new summit” in the fourth quarter of 2023, with a “household earning a median income (needing) to spend a staggering 62.5 per cent of it to cover the costs of owning an average home at market price.”
“Affordability worsened in all markets we track,” the RBC said, with the housing in Vancouver, Victoria and Toronto experiencing “the biggest deterioration,” and affordability in Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax being “at or near all-time worst levels.”
In the 2023 Budget, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “the government will also work with federal Crown corporations to ensure they achieve comparable spending reductions, which would account for an estimated $1.3 billion over four years.”
“The feds need to stop rewarding failure with bonuses,” Terrazzano said. “Freeland said she would find savings in Crown corporations and these bonuses should be the first thing on the chopping block.”
Fr0m LifeSiteNews
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been providing massive funds in the name of COVID despite the fact that Joe Biden admitted the ‘pandemic’ was over by 2022.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is withdrawing $11.4 billion in COVID funding to state and local health departments, non-government groups, and international recipients about two years after the U.S. government declared the COVID-19 “national emergency” over.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS director of communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement, NBC News reported.
“HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.“
Despite the fact that former President Joe Biden admitted in 2022 that the COVID “pandemic” was over, Health and Human Services (HHS) has been continuing to allocate funds for COVID testing, “vaccines,” and “global COVID projects,” according to CDC talking points.
The funding cut comes as millions of dollars for other initiatives, including vaccine hesitancy research and HIV prevention, are slashed under new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
HHS has made the greatest funding cutbacks government-wide, according to the Department of Government Efficiency’s website.
Dr. Robert Malone argued in 2023 that the only reason the Biden administration decided to end the national COVID “emergency” when it did is because of the congressional legislation seeking that end.
“The bottom line is that the imperial U.S. administrative state will never give up these unconstitutional powers until forced to do so,” Malone wrote.
For years, major corporations bragged about their wonderful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. They’re good for business and morally correct, they said. So why are they now cutting those programs?
Robby Starbuck says these programs once got a lot of buy-in, because people wanted to be nice! But DEI came to mean much more than just being nice.
Starbuck says what it looked like in practice was “crazy trainings” and “overtly racist hiring practices.” Now lots of people agree with him.
Companies actually take notice when Starbuck tells his many followers about their DEI programs. Often the programs get dropped.
That’s the power of free speech.
After 40+ years of reporting, I now understand the importance of limited government and personal freedom.
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Libertarian journalist John Stossel created Stossel TV to explain liberty and free markets to young people.
Prior to Stossel TV he hosted a show on Fox Business and co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20. Stossel’s economic programs have been adapted into teaching kits by a non-profit organization, “Stossel in the Classroom.” High school teachers in American public schools now use the videos to help educate their students on economics and economic freedom. They are seen by more than 12 million students every year.
Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Other honors include the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award.
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