CBC’s $100K+ earner club has quadrupled since 2015

The number of CBC employees earning six-figure salaries has more than quadrupled since 2015, costing taxpayers nearly a quarter-billion dollars last year.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The number of CBC employees earning six-figure salaries has more than quadrupled since 2015, costing taxpayers nearly a quarter-billion dollars last year and fueling renewed calls from taxpayer advocates to defund the public broadcaster.

According to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, 1,831 employees at the CBC received salaries over $100,000 in 2024–25, up from 438 in 2015–16—an increase of 318 per cent. The total cost to taxpayers for these salaries was $240 million, averaging $131,060 per employee.

“Taxpayers don’t need all these extra CBC employees taking six-figure salaries,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the CTF. “The government should save money by taking air out of its highly paid bureaucracy, and that includes Crown corporations like the CBC.”

The number of high-earning staff has climbed every year since 2015, including a 17 per cent jump over the past year alone. The biggest increase occurred between fiscal year 2021-22 and 2022-23, when the number of CBC employees earning $100,000 annually or more climbed from 949 to 1,378 — a 45 per cent increase.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has repeatedly urged the federal government to publish a sunshine list, highlighting the salaries of the government’s highest-paid employees. Several provinces, including Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia, have mandatory disclosure requirements for high-earning civil servants.

While these provincial governments often release proactive sunshine lists disclosing top public sector salaries, no such disclosure exists at the federal level.

“Canadians should be able to pick the content they want to pay for instead of the government forcing them to pay for the CBC with their taxes,” said Terrazzano. “And other media organizations shouldn’t be forced to compete with the taxpayer-funded CBC. It’s time to defund the CBC.”

Taxpayers are already on the hook for $1.4 billion a year to fund the CBC. A Fraser Institute report suggested that taxpayers will spend an additional $325 million in support for journalism, totalling $1.7 billion.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation previously sued the CBC for refusing to disclose how much of its taxpayer funding would be spent on advertising over five years.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s April pledge increased the CBC’s annual funding by $150 million, which is how it reached $1.4 billion.

“Carney shouldn’t be dumping more tax dollars into the state broadcaster,” Terrazzano previously told True North. “Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund a bloated, government media corporation; private and independent Canadian media shouldn’t have their tax dollars funding their competitor.”A separate access-to-information request obtained by the CTF shows that over 110,000 federal employees took home six-figure salaries or more in 2023, costing taxpayers nearly $14 billion. The total number of federal employees in 2023 was 356,096, meaning over 31 per cent earned six-figure salaries.