Canada's public broadcaster to cut 10% of workforce

Canada’s public broadcaster was expected to announce Monday that it will cut 600 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce, a source at the corporation told AFP.

Managers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) were told of the cuts earlier Monday before chief executive Catherine Tait was to address all employees on the financial challenges facing the public broadcaster.

The source said 250 jobs will be slashed at CBC, the group’s English-language network, and another 250 at French-language Radio Canada, with technicians and other support staff making up the final 100 jobs to be slashed.

CBC has been particularly hard hit by the drop in television advertising revenues.

In early October, CBC announced that job creation was frozen until further notice, and that those who left the company would not be replaced.

Then last month, Tait indicated that the public broadcaster’s next annual budget would be cut by CAN$100 million (USD$74 million), before suggesting difficult decisions would be made.

Many media outlets in Canada — as in other parts of the world — are currently in dire financial straits, and the public broadcaster is not the first to announce a redundancy plan.

After months of negotiations, Canada and Google struck a deal last week for the tech giant to pay compensation to Canadian media companies in exchange for the distribution of their content.

Google will provide financial support of $100 million a year, indexed to inflation.