The number of CBC employees earning six-figure salaries has more than quadrupled since 2015, with taxpayers now footing a $240 million bill for the broadcaster’s top-paid staff, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).

In 2024–25, 1,831 CBC employees collected salaries of $100,000 or more, up 318% from just 438 employees in 2015–16. The average salary among this high-paid cohort is now $131,060.

“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 rise in CBC’s sunshine list has been relentless: the number of six-figure earners increased 17% in just the past year, and the total cost has ballooned from $59.6 million in 2015 to $240 million in 2024.

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Meanwhile, the CBC’s overall cost to taxpayers this year is set to exceed $1.4 billion, according to federal estimates.

“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,” Terrazzano added. “And other media organizations shouldn’t be forced to compete with the taxpayer-funded CBC. It’s time to defund the CBC.”

2015–16	438	$59.6 million
2016–17	467	$63.6 million
2017–18	511	$68.7 million
2018–19	599	$78.0 million
2019–20	729	$93.4 million
2020–21	838	$106.2 million
2021–22	949	$119.5 million
2022–23	1,378	$170.4 million
2023–24	1,566	$192.7 million
2024–25	1,831	$240.0 million

Source: Canadian Taxpayers Federation

While many provinces publish annual “sunshine lists” disclosing public-sector salaries over $100,000, the federal government does not. The CTF has long called for Ottawa to adopt similar transparency standards.

Separate access-to-information records obtained by the CTF also reveal that over 110,000 federal bureaucrats across all departments earned six-figure base salaries in 2023.