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.
Artificial Intelligence
Lawsuit Claims Google Secretly Used Gemini AI to Scan Private Gmail and Chat Data
By Ken Macon
Whether the claims are true or not, privacy in Google’s universe has long been less a right than a nostalgic illusion.
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When Google flipped a digital switch in October 2025, few users noticed anything unusual.
Gmail loaded as usual, Chat messages zipped across screens, and Meet calls continued without interruption.
Yet, according to a new class action lawsuit, something significant had changed beneath the surface.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Plaintiffs claim that Google silently activated its artificial intelligence system, Gemini, across its communication platforms, turning private conversations into raw material for machine analysis.
The lawsuit, filed by Thomas Thele and Melo Porter, describes a scenario that reads like a breach of trust.
It accuses Google of enabling Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received.”
The filing argues that the company’s conduct “violates its users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”
Until early October, Gemini’s data processing was supposedly available only to those who opted in.
Then, the plaintiffs claim, Google “turned it on for everyone by default,” allowing the system to mine the contents of emails, attachments, and conversations across Gmail, Chat, and Meet.
The complaint points to a particular line in Google’s settings, “When you turn this setting on, you agree,” as misleading, since the feature “had already been switched on.”
This, according to the filing, represents a deliberate misdirection designed to create the illusion of consent where none existed.
There is a certain irony woven through the outrage. For all the noise about privacy, most users long ago accepted the quiet trade that powers Google’s empire.
They search, share, and store their digital lives inside Google’s ecosystem, knowing the company thrives on data.
The lawsuit may sound shocking, but for many, it simply exposes what has been implicit all along: if you live in Google’s world, privacy has already been priced into the convenience.
Thele warns that Gemini’s access could expose “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, [and] the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children.”
In other words, the system’s reach, if the allegations prove true, could extend into nearly every aspect of a user’s personal life.
The plaintiffs argue that Gemini’s analytical capabilities allow Google to “cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights” about users’ private relationships and behaviors.
The complaint brands the company’s actions as “deceptive and unethical,” claiming Google “surreptitiously turned on this AI tracking ‘feature’ without informing or obtaining the consent of Plaintiffs and Class Members.” Such conduct, it says, is “highly offensive” and “defies social norms.”
The case invokes a formidable set of statutes, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s constitutional right to privacy.
Google is yet to comment on the filing.
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Business
Nearly One-Quarter of Consumer-Goods Firms Preparing to Exit Canada, Industry CEO Warns Parliament
Standing Committee on Industry and Technology hears stark testimony that rising costs and stalled investment are pushing companies out of the Canadian market.
There’s a number that should stop this country cold: twenty-three percent. That is the share of companies in one of Canada’s essential manufacturing and consumer-goods sectors now preparing to withdraw products from the Canadian market or exit entirely within the next two years. And this wasn’t whispered at a business luncheon or buried in a consultancy memo. It was delivered straight to Parliament, at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, during its study on Canada’s underlying productivity gaps and capital outflow.
Michael Graydon, the CEO of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, didn’t hedge or soften the message. He told MPs, “23% of our members expect to exit products from the Canadian marketplace within the next two years, because the cost of doing business here has just become unsustainable.”
Unsustainable. That’s the word he used. And when the people who actually make things in this country start using that word, you should pay attention. These aren’t fringe players or hypothetical startups. These are firms that supply the goods Canadians buy every single day, and they’re looking at their balance sheets, their regulatory burdens, the delays in getting anything approved or built, and concluding that Canada simply doesn’t work for them anymore.
What makes this more troubling is the timing. Canada’s investment levels have been falling for years, even as the United States and other competitors race ahead. Businesses aren’t reinvesting in machinery or technology at the rate they once did. They’re not modernizing their operations here. They’re putting expansion plans on hold or shifting them to jurisdictions that move faster, cost less and offer clearer rules. That’s not ideology; it’s arithmetic. If it costs more to operate here, if it takes longer to get a permit, and if supply chains back up because ports and rail lines are jammed, investors will choose the place that doesn’t make growth a bureaucratic mountain climb.
Graydon raised another point that ought to concern anyone who cares about domestic production. Canada’s agrifood sector recorded a sixty-billion-dollar trade surplus last year, one of the brightest spots in the national economy, but according to him that potential is being “diluted by fragmented interprovincial trade and logistics bottlenecks.” The ports, the rail corridors, the entire transport network—choke points everywhere. And you can’t build a productive economy on choke points. Companies can’t scale, can’t guarantee delivery, can’t justify the costs. So they leave.
This twenty-three percent figure is the clearest evidence yet that the problem isn’t theoretical. It’s not something for think-tank panels or academic papers. It is happening at the level that matters most: the decision whether to continue doing business in Canada or move operations somewhere more predictable. And once those decisions are made, they’re very hard to reverse. Capital doesn’t boomerang back out of patriotism. It goes where it can earn a return.
For years, Canadian policymakers have talked about productivity as if it were a moral failing of workers or a mystical national characteristic. It’s neither. Productivity comes from investment—real money poured into equipment, technology, training and expansion. When investment stalls, productivity collapses. And when a quarter of firms in a major sector are already planning their exit, you are not looking at a temporary dip. You are looking at a structural rejection of the business environment itself.
The fact that executives are now openly warning Parliament that they cannot afford to stay is a moment of clarity. It is also a test. Either this country becomes a place where people can build things again—quickly, affordably, competitively—or it continues down the path that leads to empty factories, hollowed-out supply chains and consumers who wonder why the shelves look thinner every year.
Twenty-three percent is not just a statistic. It’s the sound of a warning bell ringing at full volume. The only question now is whether anyone in charge hears it.
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