Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s motion to ban all bonuses for CBC executives after the state broadcaster’s president Catherine Tait confirmed the Crown corporation would lay off 10% of its workforce was foiled by the Liberals in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
Poilievre, who attempted to introduce the motion to the floor, was shouted down by the Liberals, in turn, preventing the motion’s consideration.
According to parliamentary procedure, motions presented in this way require the unanimous consent of the House, which the motion did not receive given the governing Liberals’ opposition.
“Given that, the CBC announced it is cutting 600 jobs and 250 of those jobs are across the broadcaster’s French language services and the CBC has paid nearly $100 million in bonuses to executives and talking heads since 2015,” the motion reads.
“The President of the CBC, Catherine Tait, refused to rule out bonuses for CBC staff this year, despite the announced job cuts, and the CBC President received a salary increase of $60 thousand in July of this year, more than a typical Canadian makes in a year, the House instructs the CBC to immediately ban all executive bonuses.”
Despite CBC being one of the main beneficiaries of a $100 million deal negotiated with Google by the federal government in compliance with the Online News Act, the state broadcaster confirmed approximately 600 to 700 jobs were on the line to mitigate “financial challenges.”
As per a recent report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, it was discovered that taxpayers were on the hook for $16 million in bonuses for up to 1,142 full-time employees at the public broadcaster.
Tait, as the company’s president and CEO, makes up to $521,000 in salary and is entitled to a bonus of up to $145,880.
When questioned by CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault whether the broadcaster would continue to hand out bonuses this year, Tait refused to answer.
“I’m going to presume, no bonuses this year? Can we establish that is not happening this year?” asked Arsenault.
“It’s too early to say where we are for this year, we’ll be looking at that like we do for all our line items in the coming months,” said Tait.
