The Canadian public broadcaster CBC announced this Monday (04/12/2023) that it would eliminate 10% of its staff, or around 600 workers, and that it would cancel some of its programs after recording a deficit of around 125 million of Canadian dollars (85 million euros).

CBC, one of the cultural institutions of Canadastressed in a press release that in addition to the elimination of 600 positions, it will not fill another 200 positions currently vacant.

The English-language services unit, CBC, and the French-language unit, Radio-Canada, will each cut 250 positions. The rest of the lost jobs will come from other departments of the public company.

In addition, CBC will eliminate 25 million Canadian dollars of programming, while Radio-Canada will do the same, to the tune of 15 million Canadian dollars. Another $40 million will be cut from independent productions.

budget hole

These measures are the consequence of a budget hole of 125 million dollars due to rising production costs, falling advertising revenues and “fierce competition from digital giants”, explained the company created in 1936 .

During the 2022-2023 fiscal year, Radio-Canada received a state budget allocation of 1.3 billion Canadian dollars.

CBC president Catherine Tait said in a statement to workers at the public entity that she hoped to minimize the “impact” of the cuts.

In February this year, Tait made controversial statements saying he was considering CBC abandoning traditional television and radio broadcasts to convert the public media outlet to an entirely digital platform.

This Monday, the Canadian Minister of Heritage, Pacale St-Onge, declared during a press conference that “like all media in Canada, CBC is facing difficulties due to the media crisis and revenue problems” .

St-Onge added that the Canadian government “believes” in the need for public broadcasting to make its services accessible to all Canadians in all regions of the country.

jc (efe, afp)