CBC laying off 10% of workforce example of news industry “crisis”: minister

Bloc Québécois MP Alain Therrien said during question period on Monday that Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) and Radio-Canada cutting approximately 600 jobs demonstrated that “things are not going well in the world of media,” adding that this means a cultural sense of belonging and the quality of information “will suffer.”

Heritage minister Pascale St-Onge said that her thoughts are with “all employees of CBC [and] Radio Canada” during their corporate meeting, and that she is aware of “a significant crisis” in the media sector but that the federal government will continue to support the industry.

The public broadcaster says CBC and Radio-Canada will eliminate about 600 jobs in total, each cutting about 250 positions, with the balance of the layoffs coming from its corporate divisions like technology and infrastructure. An additional 200 vacancies will go unfilled, as it contends with $125 million in budget pressures.

Along with the job cuts, CBC will be reducing its English and French programming budgets, resulting in fewer renewals and acquisitions, new television series, episodes of existing shows and digital original series. It attributed the cuts to rising production costs, declining television advertising revenue and fierce competition from the digital giants.

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