If your neighbor earns a high salary, has a large retirement fund, just built a nice big house BUT tells you he is struggling to make ends meet, how will you react?
• Also read: 800 jobs cut at CBC/Radio-Canada: “Dark day for Radio-Canada”
• Also read: Radio-Canada cuts: Elected officials cry out about injustice
Will you feel sorry for him…or will you advise him to be better with his money?
That’s pretty much how I felt when I learned that CBC/Radio-Canada was cutting 600 jobs (and downsizing 200).
I think we can both regret the job losses and recognize that CBC/Radio-Canada doesn’t have its priorities in the right place.
- Listen to the interview with Quebec senator, journalist and civil servant Julie-Miville Dechêne on Sophie Durocher’s show QUB radio :
A little discomfort
The scene is surreal. The CBC/Radio-Canada CEO was asked by The National’s Adrienne Arsenault whether the Crown corporation would eliminate bonuses to employees this year given the announced cuts.
“It’s too early to say,” replied Catherine Tait. Even the veteran CBC anchor was surprised by this reaction!
“We will be looking at this as well as all of our expenditure items in the coming months,” Tait replied.
PARDON? You’re not ruling out the possibility of paying Canadian radio stations millions of dollars in bonuses while they starve? When I saw this statement from Catherine Tait, I looked on the Radio-Canada website.
Under the heading “Executive Compensation for 2023,” I found the following numbers.
The “total cash compensation range” for the CEO position (hence Ms. Tait’s position) is between $472,900 and $623,900.
Photo agency QMI, JOEL LEMAY
The “total financial compensation range” for the two senior vice-president positions (CBC and Radio-Canada) is between $311,000 and $686,500. The “total cash compensation range” for the five vice president positions is between $282,000 and $637,700.
We also find some interesting information in the “On-Air Personality Compensation Summary” section as of April 1, 2023.
We learn that six “on-air personalities” earn more than $300,000 per year, for an average salary of $342,587. Three “on-air personalities” earned between $250,000 and $299,000 and had an average salary of $280,616. Ten “on-air personalities” have an average salary of $225,662. 23 “on-air personalities” earn between $150,000 and $199,000, for an average of $167,924.
And that doesn’t include overtime (average 10.5%).
$23 million per year
In March of this year, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation released its analysis of Canadian radio bonuses. “Since 2015, $185 million in bonuses and raises have been paid out to employees, an average of $23 million per year,” we read in Le Journal. “Over the past eight years, the number of Radio-Canada employees receiving bonuses has more than doubled, from 546 in 2015 to 1,142 in 2022.”
Given these staggering figures, isn’t Catherine Tait ruling out the possibility of paying bonuses to people who keep their well-paid jobs when she just announced layoffs a few days before Christmas?