CBC External Legal Fees

Payment of 2011 External Legal Fees.

We wish to have access to and/or a copy of all and/or any records held by CBC which pertain to fees paid by the CBC in 2011 for outside legal services and, in particular, but not exclusive of, the legal costs to the CBC to defend Quebecor's lawsuits against the CBC, M. Rabinovitch, M. Lafrance, M. Clement and/or M. Asselin.

The results?

1,513 invoices - total amount $3,980,615.59

See the full pdf report here.

CBC website outlining External Legal Fees Access to Information  ... click here.

CBC's Tax Dollars Cost Canadians Too Much

When the Access to Information Act was passed in 1985, it was obvious to some that its terms could be used to hide, as well as to disclose information.

So Access to Information legislation is not only no guarantee for increased openness and transparency by government, but can be misused as a formula for concealing or obscuring information.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than within the CBC.

By keeping salaries secret, gratuities secret, entertainment costs secret, travel costs secret, absentee costs secret, the CBC is violating its mandate and should be an embarrassment for every CBC employee.

The CBC is not a private company. We all have a right to know how it spends the money taxpayers provide.

Read the full story here.

CBC has become a gravy train for elites

News media is undergoing a rapid and beautiful process of creative destruction: digitalization means vastly lower costs, fewer barriers to entry, and a wider variety of competing options for consumers to enjoy. Amid this innovation and weeding out stands the too-big-to-fail albatross, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Already costing taxpayers $1.04 billion in 2015 and facing rising competition, the CBC's fiscal burden is set to jump by $75 million in 2016 and $150 million in 2017. Regarding the higher price tag of the state broadcaster, Finance Minister Bill Morneau has deflected by saying that “believing in innovation is also believing in the talent and in the creativity of Canadians.” Apologists further contend this is necessary to save the CBC from "extinction."

That begs the question: if the CBC is growing obsolete and people favour other sources, ones that do not cost the taxpayer, how is that a bad thing?

The truth is that the CBC has become a gravy train for elites, with the backing of government unions.

Read the full story here.

CBC News accused of spreading misinformation and propaganda

On May 17, HonestReporting Canada notified senior editors at CBC News, CTV News, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, about how these media outlets wrongly identified a dead Palestinian as a “medic,” whereas in fact, he wast a member of the Hamas terrorist organization.

Hamas produced an infographic which acknowledges that Abuhassanin is one of their members. He’s pictured on the top row, 2nd from the right identified by HRC with the red circle. (HonestReporting Canada secured an expert translation of the infographic which describes Abuhassanin as being a “Captain” of Hamas’ “Civil Defense Service” which belongs to the Hamas Ministry of Interior which is responsible for all “security” services.)

The individual in question was named Musa Abuhassanin who was reportedly shot and killed (allegedly by Israeli snipers) after having helped Palestinian-Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani, a well known anti-Israel activist.

CBC Radio’s As It Happens program on May 15 featured an interview with Dr. Loubani who described Hamas “medic” Musa Abuhassanin as “my rescuer, he was a very bright guy, an incredible man.” Loubani has also described Abuhassanin as having had “had a great laugh and was a good paramedic”. The CBC As It Happens website describes Abuhassannin only as a “medical volunteer”.

To date, Tarek Loubani has not commented on the revelation that Abuhassanin was a member of the outlawed terror group Hamas, a man Loubani described as being his “rescuer, he was a very bright guy, an incredible man” who “had a great laugh and was a good paramedic”.

In light of this revelation, it’s of paramount importance that our media reserve judgement and do their due diligence to report the facts once they are established, instead of spreading misinformation and propaganda.

Read the full story here.

CBC Anchor Carol Off Accused of Being A “Conspirator with Hamas"

CBC Anchor Carol Off Accused of Being A “Conspirator with Hamas” and “Abettor of Terrorism” by Israeli MK Michael Oren.

Yesterday evening, the CBC Radio program As It Happens featured a blatantly one-sided and bellicose interview conducted by Anchor Carol Off and former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S and current Deputy Minister in the Israeli government, Michael Oren, discussing the recent riots along the Gaza-Israel border.

Anchor Carol Off is known for her animus towards Israel. In the interview, Oren blamed Hamas for the bloodshed at the Israel-Gaza border this week, and said that the media, including CBC Anchor Carol Off, were doing the terrorist group’s bidding and were “complicit”. Oren accused Off of being a “conspirator with Hamas” and an “abettor of terrorism”.

Read the full story here.

CBC Mideast Bureau Chief inserts personal opinions

On May 8, CBC Mideast Bureau Chief Derek Stoffel and Globe and Mail Senior International Correspondent Mark Mackinnon took to Twitter to tacitly disagree with Israel’s decision to expel Human Rights Watch (HRW) Director Omar Shakir due to his alleged support of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel.

Both reporter’s inserted their personal opinions on this topic and implicitly cast doubt that Israel is the Middle East’s sole democracy. The reporter’s efforts were derisive.

Read the full story here.

CTV trumps CBC in ratings

Including airings on both CBC and CBC News Network, “The National”‘s average minute audience between Aug. 29, 2016 to April 9, 2017 was 866,000 viewers, according to data supplied by ratings agency Numeris. Including all CTV and CTV News Channel broadcasts, the average audience of “CTV National News” during the same period was 1.3 million.

In an age when many viewers consume news all day on social media, some say “The National” needs to focus on in-depth conversation and context to the headlines.

“The only way a newscast like that, I think, is going to work in the future is (if) it’s not going to tell you the news, it’s rather going to make sense of the news,” said Richard Stursberg, a former CBC executive and the new president of the writers’ group Pen Canada.

Stursberg argued the role of news anchors has changed in the digital age and they now have much less influence.

“The idea that there’s a father figure or a mother figure who is the trusted source of all wisdom that comes from the national newscast, I think those days are just gone,” he said.

Read the full story here.

CBC and local news

In the last half-century, waves of budget cuts and consolidations have transformed the CBC into a primarily national broadcaster. Regional directors have relatively smaller budgets and less control over them. Most stand-alone, regionally produced documentary and variety shows have disappeared. 

Local news survived through it all, but barely in some markets, as it went through a bewildering series of Toronto-directed changes in format, length and broadcast times. At one point, CBC headquarters dictated that the local news shows in two of Canada’s most dynamic metropolitan areas — Edmonton and Calgary — be merged into one. You’d be surprised (CBC executives were) how little Calgary residents were interested in Edmonton news. The ratings were so low that a CBC cameraman joked to me that it would save money to shut down the transmission tower and hand-deliver VHS tapes to anyone interested.

Read the full story here.

CBC’s news segment needs overhaul

Change doesn’t seem to come naturally to the cbc, whose strategies remain stuck in the twentieth century. For more than a decade, The National’s ratings have been stagnant, while Canadians’ trust in media has steadily declined. The ‘90s saw an attempt at restructuring the program: the format at the time was a twenty-two-minute-long news segment at the top of the hour and a current affairs program, The Journal, at the bottom. They combined it into an hour-long news and current affairs show, Primetime News. It was a complete failure. Mark Bulgutch, a former line-up editor for The National who was working on the program at the time, says he knew that the merger wasn’t going to work. “The cbc continues to try to find the right format; to find better formats; to find smarter formats,” Bulgutch says. “It turns its back on the audience at its own peril—when looking for new audiences you’ve got to be careful that you don’t turn off the one that you already have.” The National returned to its pre-merger version a year later, and has remained more or less the same ever since.

As Bulgutch points out, it’s not necessarily the structure of the program that needs updating; The National’s competitors have succeeded in spite of, or perhaps because of, their staid format. “ctv has done the same newscast for sixty years,” he says. “They have an average audience bigger than The National’s audience every night and they don’t do anything different than they did in 1965.”

Read the full story here.

CBC tries to hide its happy face

With his ex-broadcaster wife at his side, Justin Trudeau adopted his best “looking into the future” expression and pledged a king’s ransom to Schitt’s Creek and Definitely Not the Opera.

“A new Liberal government will invest $150 million in new annual funding for the CBC,” said the Liberal leader as the Montreal crowd around him cheered

Somewhere among the spectators, a CBC reporter or two tried to look nonchalant: It’s always hard to look objective when a politician has just promised to give you millions of dollars.

And such is the endless quandary faced by the national broadcaster when covering elections. Unlike CTV, Global or pretty much any other media outlet covering the 2015 election, it is empirically in CBC’s best interest if the Conservatives lose on Oct. 19.

Read the full story here.

CBC and Liberal Ties Exposed

I always thought that the CBC was biased towards Justin Trudeau for ideological reasons: they're left-wing, he's left-wing.

I thought it was also for reasons of class: they're Eastern Canadian elites who prefer Trudeau because he's one of their own.

Kind a spoiled trust-fund playboy as opposed to a middle-class Calgarian like Stephen Harper

And most of all I thought it was for pure financial self-interest.

Justin Trudeau promised the CBC a 150 election pretty much a taxpayer bribe to thousands of journalists

While every other media company in Canada is laying off hundreds of employees, Trudeau offered every CBC employee a job guarantee if he won.

Question: Is the CBC biased?

This is just the first answer ... see more at the link below and maybe add your comment there.

CBC has a reputation in Canada as being very progressive/left wing. Supporting left wing political parties may actually be self-serving for the public broadcaster. Liberal governments have consistently offered support for CBC, while Conservative governments have generally cut their budget. Supporting the CBC was in fact one of Justin Trudeau's campaign promises when he came to power with the Liberals during the last election.

For their part though, CBC has, like any good journalistic establishment should, done its best to remain unbiased, but they definitely have a reputation in Canada for being friendly with Liberals and harsh with Conservatives.

Read more comments here.

A New Role for CBC/Radio-Canada

When it was created 80 years ago, CBC/Radio-Canada was meant to give a voice to Canadians in the new world of radio broadcasting. It did the same later when television became a mass media.

At the time, there were only a few private channels. There was an obvious role for a public broadcaster trying to reach all Canadians in big cities or small and remote communities; to connect them to the rest of the country and the world; and to bring them together through a shared expression of ideas and culture. It worked very well for several decades and had a profound influence on how we see ourselves and the world.

Fast forward to 2016. The media landscape, with its hundreds of channels and its millions of sources of information and culture, is radically different. Yet, CBC/Radio-Canada seems frozen in time.

It tries to occupy every niche, even though it doesn’t have and will never have the means to do so, with the result being lower-quality programming. The viewership for its English service in particular has reached new lows. To stay relevant, it reinterprets its mandate every few years, going from crisis to crisis.

Read the full speech here.

CBC warns of lawsuit over efforts to control salary negotiations

The CBC is warning the federal government that its efforts to control salary negotiations at the Crown agency could be at odds with the Broadcasting Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, leading to litigation.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. chief executive Hubert Lacroix sent a letter to the Commons finance committee Wednesday, pleading for an amendment to the budget implementation bill to ensure the broadcaster's independence.

But when Liberal MP Scott Brison read parts of the letter to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, the minister stiffly dismissed any possibility of changes to the bill.

"The CBC may think it is a special, independent, Crown agency. This is wrong," Mr. Flaherty said.

"All Crown agencies have a responsibility through ministers, back to Parliament, to the people of Canada. They can't do whatever they want, particularly with taxpayers' money. They can't just go off and pay their executives and pay everybody else whatever they want to pay them."

Read the full story of what happened here.

CBC allowed a tumor to grow

“CBC failed to live up to its obligations to provide its employees a workplace that is free from disrespectful and abusive behavior”

With the news, the public broadcaster has further cemented it’s notoriety in becoming the “poster child” of what not to do when handling workplace harassment issues. 

As I read through the report, 2 questions stuck in my head, and that is.…

1. How does a large sophisticated organization like CBC commit such workplace blunders?  
2. How did Mr. Ghomeshi’s troubling behaviour go unchecked for so many years?

I believe corporate politics and workplace culture has a lot to do with it.

This is common in many workplaces as well as in life - money, power and greed can lead to intentional blindness.  Senior executives at CBC chose to turn a blind eye because frankly, Mr. Ghomeshi was a money-maker.   

This is the downside of corporate politics whereby personal interests prevail with a disregard for the greater good.  Without the right values instilled and modeled from the top, the wrong ones will permeate throughout an organization at the expense of personal integrity and the well-being of employees who work there. 

In essence, CBC allowed a tumor to grow with ferocious power in the workplace.   A culture of fear, silence, disrespect and mistrust was then created. 

Read the full story here.

CBC Radio's audience share is a mathematical illusion

CBC is like a crazy, old aunt, unwilling to accept the reality of her circumstances.

In CBC's case it is the reality that its radio audience is comprised mostly of older Canadians.

CBC senior managers have recently boasted about the record high audiences of CBC Radio.

They gush over CBC Radio's audience share in speeches and public appearances, such as last month's appearance before a Senate Committee, but never acknowledge that loyal, senior citizen listeners are responsible for creating a mathematical illusion.

Read the full story here.

CBC: Not the public’s broadcaster after all

With the CBC’s TV ratings down 40% to a specialty channel-like 5% share of viewers even before it lost its NHL contract, according to Canadian Media Research, it’s worth asking again what has gone wrong with the Mother Corp and what should be done about it?

Someone recently observed that the CBC is not about Canadian programming but programming Canadians to its enlightened view of how the world should work. Look at the litany of in-house CBC stars and ask if any are representative of ordinary Canadians and their values?

The result is a chorus of CBC reporters and producers affirming their assumed superiority by churning out a constant stream of intellectual bigotry that alienates its listeners.

Read the full story here.

CBC Pushes For Website Blocking In Piracy Fight

Canada's media industry is lining up behind an effort to institute mandatory blocking of websites accused of piracy.

Consumer advocacy group OpenMedia said the proposal "would essentially create an official internet censorship committee within the federal government, and open the door for overreaching censorship in Canada."

The proposal "is like using a machine gun to kill a mosquito," OpenMedia executive director Laura Tribe said. "It will undoubtedly lead to legitimate content and speech being censored online, violating our right to free expression and the principles of net neutrality, which the federal government has consistently pledged support for."

Read the full story here.

Is this a potential conflict of interest?

Canada's national broadcaster has asked its ethics commissioner to review its use of a journalism job board run by one of the country's top oil and gas industry lobbyists, in search of potential conflict of interest.

For years, CBC/Radio-Canada has advertised on Jeff Gaulin's Journalism Job Board, a go-to resource for journalists and media companies looking for both jobs and employees.

The website started in 1995, when Jeff Gaulin graduated from journalism school at the University of Western Ontario. But since 2014, Gaulin has risen to public relations prominence as the vice-president of communications at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) — the largest and most influential oil and gas lobbying group in the country.

Marc Barrette, director of talent acquisition at CBC/Radio-Canada, said he wasn’t made aware of Gaulin’s work at CAPP until recently.

“We’re talking to our ethics commissioner to see if there’s an issue there,” said Barrette. “We’re still waiting for an answer back.”

Read the full story here.

Discrimination complaint against CBC

The CBC admits it's not happy with its progress in hiring Natives and other visible minorities.

But it's been tough to find openings for them, because thousands of jobs have been lost to corporate belt tightening over the last five years, said CBC spokesman Richard Chambers.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission filed a discrimination complaint against the CBC and Bell Canada last month after both failed to meet a deadline for agreeing to a joint

review of their employment practices.

"We're not happy but out record has been good. We have not consciously gone out of our way to discriminate against the targeted groups," said Chambers.

Read the full story here.

Appearance of conflict of interest at CBC

The CBC hired an external investigator to probe two top television executives after receiving complaints that at least 13 contracts were handed to production companies owned by their spouses. Although the investigator found no breaches of the public broadcaster’s conflict of interest policy, the legal counsel for one anonymous complainant said the findings are “inconsistent with the facts” and the contracts present the appearance of conflict of interest.

“Of course, if the CBC gives lots of contracts to the husbands of senior managers, that’s the appearance of conflict of interest,” he added. “And if that’s the standard of the CBC — that the spouses of managers one after the other is having contracts given to them — it is so seemingly inappropriate and smells so badly that it’s something the CBC should not be permitting in any event.”

Read the full story here.

Is CBC partnered with CNN?

According to CNN, they are a “Partner” of state broadcaster CBC.  Is this true? Are Canadians allowed to see the partnership agreement we end up paying for?

CBC journalists now going where they have never gone before

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is touting Ottawa's investments in the CBC as one remedy to the financial crisis that has hit Canadian news organizations, forcing newspaper closures and newsroom cutbacks.

He said his government has invested $675 million in the CBC and its French language arm, Radio-Canada, that has meant journalists now cover “areas where they had never served before.”

Read the full story here.

Concerns About CBC Upheld

On April 18, CBC Ombudsman Esther Enkin released a review at the behest of HonestReporting Canada subscriber David Levy which found that The Current’s February 7 broadcast (which HRC critiqued as having demonized Israel) fundamentally “lacked balance” and “fell short” of the CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices.

The CBC’s Ombud said that The Current and Host Anna-Maria Tremonti “did not convey an accurate reflection of the reality on the Israeli side and required balance.”

Read the full story here.

Netflix more influential brand than CBC

Netflix is changing the way people consume television, and this year, the streaming service entered Canada's top 10 brands for the first time.

Sitting at ninth place, Netflix now ranks as a more influential brand than the CBC, which fell four spots to 14th in this year's survey.

The most influential brands in Canada

RANK	BRAND
1	Google
2	Facebook
3	Apple
4	Amazon
5	Microsoft
6	YouTube
7	Walmart
8	Visa
9	Netflix
10	Samsung
11	MasterCard
12	The Weather Network
13	Canada Post
14	CBC
15	PayPal
16	Tim Hortons
17	Canadian Tire
18	Shoppers Drug Mart
19	President's Choice
20	Instagram

Read the full story here.

CBC News Network: 329 employees, average salary: $100,707

There might be more than 500 channels to choose from, which cater to pretty much every interest imaginable, but the vast majority of people who watch them have one thing in common: We can’t help but wonder how much money the people who get to do this for a living are paid.

The figures released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday for 2013 provide an indication of how much the channels have spent each year on programming and how much money is going to salaries, among other things.

News and Information

BC News 1 Vancouver: 23 employees, average salary: $88,541

Business News Network: 77 employees, average salary: $86,118

CBC News Network: 329 employees, average salary: $100,707

CP24 Toronto: 87 employees, average salary: $90,021

CTV News Channel: 88 employees, average salary: $122,923

Sun News Network: 128 employees, average salary: $83,234

The Weather Network: 198 employees, average salary: $80.237

Read the full story here.

CBC compensation ranges for upper management

Four employees involved in CBC broadcasts earn more than $300,000 a year, taking home on average about $485,667 annually in total compensation. But the public broadcaster won’t identify who they are.

The numbers are contained in a document sent to a Senate committee that is studying the challenges facing the CBC. The document includes the salary ranges and total compensation ranges for upper management, as well as how much those executives could earn in the private sector.

Those four make up less than one per cent of the 1,286 on-air personnel at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio-Canada, as of April 1. About 83 per cent of on-air talent at Canada’s public broadcaster earn less than $100,000, not including overtime.

Read the full story here.

PS - as per the numbers above, this means that 17 per cent of CBC on air talent earns MORE than $100,000 a year!

Air Canada Attacks CBC ‘Bias’

Air Canada has taken to social media to air a grievance with the CBC, and the airline is pulling no punches.

In a Facebook post and Tweet on Friday from its corporate accounts, the airline presented what it called "confirmation" of biased reporting at the CBC.

The confirmation appears to be an internal email in which CBC Sunday Edition host Michael Enright tells a CBC producer that Air Canada's reply to a series of questions about boarding procedures was "bullshit."

Read the full story here.

CBC management thinks commercial sponsorship is right thing to do

Here is the good news: the CRTC has ordered CBC/Radio-Canada to end paid advertising on Radio 2 and ICI Musique. The ban begins immediately.

The bad news is that CBC management still seems to think it was doing the right thing when it opened the two radio networks to commercial sponsorship three years ago, with the CRTC's wary approval.

A corporate spokesperson said Wednesday the withdrawal of permission shows "a lack of understanding about the reality of public broadcasting," and "does not help CBC/Radio-Canada serve Canadians."

But the "reality" of public broadcasting, in principle at least, is that it exists precisely in order to provide a service that is not a commercial, for-profit undertaking. It is intended to be distinctive, to be free from the influence of vested interests either commercial or governmental, and to serve its audiences as citizens rather than as consumers.

Read the full story here.

CBC paid an actor to sell racist shirts

It seems that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Marketplace show was unable to find a racist Trump supporter. Instead, they hired an actor named Mike to portray one as you shall see. Mike's job as a racist Trump supporter was to sell a couple of White Power T-shirts along with a "Make Canada Great Again" T-shirt. It was their laughably unsubtle attempt to link Donald Trump to racism.

The CBC paid an actor, using your tax dollars, to sell racist shirts (that you also paid for). 

Marketplace used to uncover scams in business, like unscrupulous contractors, and bring them to justice. Now Marketplace is the one perpetrating scams.

Read the full story here.