Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
OTTAWA — The CEO and president of CBC/Radio-Canada says she believes members of the parliamentary heritage committee have been using her appearances to “vilify and to discredit” her, along with the public broadcaster as a whole, as she defended bonuses paid to executives.
Catherine Tait was called to testify about $18 million in bonuses the corporation approved paying out to executives and other managers for the last fiscal year, while it cut 141 jobs and eliminated another 205 vacancies, citing a $125 million financial shortfall.
Monday marked Tait’s third appearance to discuss bonuses and job cuts.
During her testimony, the outgoing CEO repeatedly defended the pay as being “performance” or “incentive” compensation, which is outlined in the contracts of non-unionized employees, including its executives, who received around $3 million during the last fiscal year.
Tait’s term is due to expire in January 2025, with the government planning to announce her replacement this fall. Both Radio-Canada and Le Devoir have reported that Marie-Philippe Bouchard, a Quebec television executive, will be named in her place.
Not only are non-unionized employees entitled to receive performance pay according to their contracts, Tait said cutting them would not have saved any jobs. Furthermore, Tait testified it is critical for the corporation’s independence to be respected in terms of how it manages its finances and operations, including when it comes to paying bonuses.
The committee heard Tait herself has not received such compensation for the past two fiscal years and that the issue of the corporation’s use of performance pay remains under third-party review.
She declined to say whether she would accept such compensation when repeatedly pressed by Conservative MPs, saying she considers it to be a “personal matter.”
More important than questions over CBC/Radio-Canada’s use of performance pay was the “narrative” that the public broadcaster ought to be defunded, Tait argued.
She also rejected a suggestion from Conservative MP Jamil Jivani that the corporation paying out millions in bonuses was contributing to Canadians believing its funding ought to be slashed.
Tait also pushed back on the question itself.
“Having experienced now the third appearance at this committee, I would say that there is a clear effort on the part of members of this committee to vilify and to discredit me and to discredit the organization.”
“Not one question has been asked about the accomplishments of the public broadcaster over the last six years and how we have served Canadians,” Tait added, which Jivani said was untrue, pointing to how Liberals on the committee had asked just that.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Tait said she believes the tone and questioning she has experienced as a witness, “has not been always very welcoming or fair.”
Although Tait didn’t name names on Monday, Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has vowed to “defund” the broadcaster, should his party form government. His office has said it would plan to maintain Francophone news services, but has yet to outline a plan how, given how its English and French programming wings belong to the same corporation.
The corporation itself has said cutting funding to its English services while maintaining French programs would require a change to the law.
In 2023, Poilievre accused Tait of making a partisan attack when she said in an interview that the Tory leader was responsible for stoking the “CBC bashing” she was seeing across the country and accusing him of sloganeering to raise money.
After Monday’s appearance, Tait denied any suggestion she entered into a fight with Poilievre when asked by reporters about her comments, saying she was fulling her job as corporation CEO. “It’s written in the job description … to defend a strong public broadcaster.”
Earlier this year, Tait warned in a private email, obtained by the National Post, that she worried about how “the ‘defund’ narrative has picked up momentum — especially as it relates to CBC television.”
She told reporters on Monday she believes that to be the case “because it is being used to build support for people who do not believe in the value of public broadcasting.”
“A very small, quite frankly, vocal group in this country.”
Tait testified that not only has the push to axe the broadcaster’s roughly $1.4 billion it receives in annual public funding brought damage to its reputation, it has created a “highly demoralizing” environment for its journalists, who are facing constant criticism.
She told the committee that eliminating its English services would result in 3,500 job layoffs. Cutting its funding would also reduce Canadians’ access to coverage of amateur sports and music, as well as impact the preservation of Indigenous languages, since it has broadcasts in eight different ones.
Millions also tuned in to watch its coverage of the Summer Olympics, she added.
“We would be impoverishing this country.”
National Post
Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.
English