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
Taxpayers release Naughty and Nice List
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
CBC President and CEO Catherine Tait tops the Taxpayer Naughty List for dishing out executive bonuses that cost more than the average Canadian worker makes in a year.
“Santa doesn’t like it when girls and boys are greedy, and forcing struggling taxpayers to pay for Santa-sized executive bonuses is as greedy as it gets,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “And Canadian diplomats are on the Naughty List too because Santa likes eggnog as much as the next guy, but even he knows Global Affairs Canada is sipping on a little too much Christmas spirit.
“For billing taxpayers $51,000 a month on booze, Global Affairs Canada bureaucrats find themselves on Santa’s Naughty List.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford made the Taxpayer Naughty List for extending political welfare after promising to scrap it. And for breaking his promise to cap property tax increases, Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham is also on the Naughty List.
For resigning over wasteful spending and saving taxpayers’ money in the process, former Kensington mayor Rowan Caseley tops the Taxpayer Nice List. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey also made the Nice List for cutting gas taxes and fighting the federal carbon tax.
“Santa is getting hammered by carbon tax bills on his reindeer barn, so Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lands on the Naughty List for making everything more expensive with his carbon tax,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe made Santa’s good books for taking action against Trudeau’s carbon tax.”
You can find the entire 2024 Taxpayer Naughty and Nice List here.
Taxpayer Naughty List:
- CBC President & CEO Catherine Tait
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
- Ontario Premier Doug Ford
- Global Affairs Canada
- Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham
- The entire federal bureaucracy
Taxpayer Nice List:
- Former Kensington Mayor Rowan Caseley
- Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe
- Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith
- Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux
Business
Biden announces massive new climate goals in final weeks, despite looming Trump takeover
From LifeSiteNews
Outgoing President Joe Biden announced a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions from 61-66% over the next decade, even though President Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.
Outgoing President Joe Biden announced December 19 a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions of more than 60% over the next decade, even though returning President Donald Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.
“Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions,” the White House announced, the Washington Free Beacon reports. The new target will be formally submitted to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat.
“President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished,” Biden climate adviser John Podesta added, “and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.”
The announcement may be little more than a symbolic gesture in the end, however, as Trump is widely expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement upon resuming office in January, in the process voiding related climate obligations.
Trump formally pulled out of the Paris accords in August 2017, the first year of his first term, with then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stating that the administration would be “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its business, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.”
Such terms were never reached, however, leaving America out until Biden re-committed the nation to the Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency, obligating U.S. policy to new economic regulations to cut carbon emissions.
In June, the Trump campaign confirmed Trump’s intentions to withdraw from Paris again. At the time, Trump’s team was reportedly mulling a number of non-finalized drafts of executive orders to do so.
Left-wing consternation on the matter is based on certitude in “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) or “climate change,” the thesis that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, is primarily responsible for Earth’s changing climate and that such trends pose a danger to the planet in the form of rising sea levels and weather instability.
Activists have long claimed there is a “97 percent scientific consensus” in favor of AGW, but that number comes from a distortion of an overview of 11,944 papers from peer-reviewed journals, 66.4 percent of which expressed no opinion on the question; in fact, many of the authors identified with the AGW “consensus” later spoke out to say their positions had been misrepresented.
AGW proponents suffered a blow in 2010 with the discovery that their leading researchers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, East Anglia Climate Research Unit, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had engaged in widespread data manipulation, flawed climate models, misrepresentation of sources, and suppression of dissenting findings in order to make the so-called “settled science” say what climate activists wanted it to.
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