Skip to content

Opinion: ‘Reality has caught up to the CBC’

'They will have to find a way to move on with only about two-thirds of their operating budget paid by the government or $1.2 billion in federal money every year.'
cbc-logo
The CBC logo.

The good old CBC has a problem: they have a revenue shortfall of about $125 million and are laying off about 600 people.

Continually paying top bosses large bonuses while the news world around them crumbles with new technology and younger people looking at alternative news sources, the CBC advertising revenue is drying up.

Let's face it, technology is a double-edged sword, things change and when most regular industries are confronted with revenue problems and technological change, they ask employees to do more with less or they downsize their business. The CBC has been shielded by this fact by running to Justin Trudeau and asking for more money from the government to shield employees from the real world.

Well, the reality has caught up to the CBC, Mr. Trudeau has run the resource sector in Canada into the ground. There is no more money for the CBC. They will have to find a way to move on with only about two-thirds of their operating budget paid by the government or $1.2 billion in federal money every year.

I should feel sympathy for those 600 employees losing their jobs, but living in the resource community of Fraser Lake, I have seen the hardship of job losses up close too many times.

The Endako Mines has curtailed production twice in the past 40 years and both times about 600 people lost their jobs. I did not hear any national outcry about this when 600 people lost their jobs in one small community of about 2,000 people.

At least the CBC job losses should be spread across Canada and no one community will be severely impacted.

Wayne Martineau

Fraser Lake