CBC/Radio-Canada president and chief executive Catherine Tait waits to testify before a House of Commons committee in Ottawa, on Jan. 30.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
There was a point during CBC/Radio-Canada president Catherine Tait’s testimony this week, before a House of Commons committee, when you just had to wonder whether she had been coached beforehand by Claudine Gay in how to come off as hopelessly disconnected and obtuse.
Ms. Gay, you’ll remember, is the now ex-head of Harvard University, whose December testimony before a U.S. congressional committee into antisemitism on campus was a mixture of hubris and contempt for politicians she should have known better than to disrespect. Her appearance went viral and set off a chain reaction that led to her resignation a few weeks later.
It is unlikely the fallout from Ms. Tait’s Tuesday testimony at the House Heritage Committee will be as dramatic. This is Canada, after all, and Ms. Tait’s political bosses in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Ottawa are perpetually slow on the uptake on such matters. Besides, Ms. Tait only has 11 months left in her contract.
Still, it is worth dissecting Ms. Tait’s testimony for what it says about the way management at CBC/Radio-Canada thinks or does not think. Ms. Tait and the top executives who accompanied her had plenty of time to prepare, having been summoned to appear before the committee in the immediate aftermath of the CBC’s Dec. 4 announcement that it planned to cut 800 jobs this year.
Given the indignation that followed Ms. Tait’s refusal back then to rule out paying annual bonuses to its managers at the same time it is sending out pink slips to hundreds of staffers, you might think the top honchos would have arrived at the committee with a better story to tell. Instead, a defiant Ms. Tait made an opening statement in bureaucratese that left MPs of all parties in disbelief.
“For the record, CBC/Radio-Canada does not award so-called bonuses,” Ms. Tait insisted, as if to correct any MPs who might argue otherwise. “What we have – like every other Crown corporation – is at-risk or performance pay, which is a key part of the total compensation of our non-union staff, about 1,140 employees.”
Ms. Tait would not commit to personally forgoing a bonus, er, performance pay if the public broadcaster’s board of directors decides, based on her own recommendation, that she deserves one. “If we achieve the results of the current fiscal year, I will recommend that 1,140 unaffiliated, non-unionized employees receive their fair pay, their performance pay.”
Jaws dropped even among Liberal and New Democratic MPs who normally rush to the CBC’s defence. They repeatedly suggested she might want to reconsider.
“You can understand how Canadians react, how I reacted and how many of us reacted, when you have a very important institution that is cutting positions that are vital for providing information to Canadians … and at the same time we see a significant level of performance pay that is provided,” NDP MP Peter Julian said.
“Tone is an important thing during these challenging times, and when Canadians see $16-million going out in bonuses, it’s hard to stomach, especially when they see cuts,” Liberal MP Michael Coteau added, referring to the amount CBC paid out in bonuses in 2022-23. Ms. Tait said bonuses totalled $14.9-million last year.
“I think what people heard you say is that it doesn’t matter that cuts are happening, we may still give people bonuses,” Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed chimed in. “I think it came off, for some people, as callous, and cold, and perhaps – I’m hoping – not what you were trying to say.”
Instead of taking the hint, Ms. Tait just dug in her heels.
What was absent from the two-hour hearing was any discussion of whether the “key performance indicators,” or KPIs, that the CBC uses to set bonuses are the right ones, or aim high enough, much less whether the public broadcaster has too many managers to begin with.
Under Ms. Tait, the CBC has outperformed on diversity. The English network has an official 50-per-cent hiring target for racialized Canadians, Indigenous people and persons with disabilities. In the six months to Sept. 30, those groups accounted for 78.7 per cent of new recruits.
Alas, CBC emphasizes indicators that make it look good, rather than asking whether its content meets the standards for quality implied in its mandate. CBC TV’s The Nature of Things and CBC Radio’s Ideas are good examples of what a public broadcaster is for. But those shows predated Ms. Tait’s arrival. Nothing she has added to the schedule – certainly not Family Feud Canada – comes close to them.
At the hearing, Ms. Tait complained about the CBC’s “chronic underfunding,” as if the $1.3-billion it gets from Ottawa every year is chicken feed. It is not. And unless the public broadcaster starts doing more of what it was created to do, it may soon end up with no taxpayer funding at all.