The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is using your tax dollars to hire more middle managers and fewer reporters, according to newly released access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).

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“CBC defends its very existence based on its journalism, but its number of journalists is going down while its bureaucracy keeps getting bigger,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF’s federal director. “Why does the government keep giving CBC more taxpayer money if barely anyone is watching and the number of journalists keeps going down?”

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2021, CBC employed 745 staff with “journalist” or “reporter” in their job titles. By 2025, that dropped to 649, even as the broadcaster’s total headcount hit over 6,100 employees. Only about 11 per cent of CBC staff are journalists.

Meanwhile, management and bureaucratic positions ballooned — from 935 managers in 2021 to 949 in 2025. Roles like “administrator,” “advisor,” “analyst,” and “sales representative” all increased. Titles such as “national director,” “project lead,” and “senior manager” saw some of the steepest growth.

Separate records reveal CBC now has more than 250 directors, 450 managers, and 780 producers making over $100,000 per year. Even job titles like “adviser,” “analyst,” and “project lead” top six figures, with over 200 employees’ roles redacted entirely from public disclosure.

Despite this bureaucratic expansion, CBC News Network captures only 1.8% of Canadian TV audiences, according to its own data. Yet the public broadcaster will receive $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding this year alone — part of over $5.4 billion spent in the last five years.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has defended the spending, claiming the CBC is “underfunded” and promising a $150-million annual increase to its budget. This comes after the broadcaster paid out $18.4 million in bonuses in 2024 — the same year it cut hundreds of jobs — and then handed out $37.7 million in raises following public backlash.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for an office full of middle managers pretending to be reporters,” said Terrazzano. “The CBC’s own records prove it has fat to cut. If Carney were serious about saving money, he’d start by defunding the CBC.”