UPDATED for 2025
Get the widget right here! Put it on your blog or website. If your blog or website accepts the “iframe” tag (most do), simply copy this code and paste it where you’d like the CBC Waste-o-Meter to appear on your site or blog.
If you’re using it in a WordPress widget, post, or page, do it in TEXT mode, and simply place the code below into the location of your choice.
<iframe src=”https://cbcwatch.ca/wastewidget/widget.php” width=”200″ height=”250″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe>
It should look like this:
The CBC Waste-o-Meter uses an algorithm that calculates the ongoing amount spent on the CBC by taxpayers from January 1st of each year.
We’ve been doing this for years, and an unknown number of websites use our widget now. Get it yourself!
Our Waste-o-Meter algorithm starts the year with an estimated annual amount of $1.9 billion per year of taxpayer support, which represents “official” direct annual “government” (taxpayer) funding of that government operation that we know of. Plus we know there are untold subsidies and various other such state entitlements that they receive directly or indirectly.
We could add $200 million in taxpayer funding to account for the “arts” and “entertainment” and “documentaries” and other individually taxpayer-paid grants and subsidies that pay for the programming that the state-owned, state-funded CBC then throws onto their multiple radio and TV channels.
The CBC boasts of presenting lots of made-in-Canada programs but using reasonable assumptions based on sober analysis and observation and anecdotal evidence, it seems nearly no such programming is created in Canada without itself getting Canadian taxpayer funding in the form of loans, grants, tax credits, or other such subsidies. It adds up to hundreds of millions, on top of the “official” CBC annual bailout.
If you are a Canadian television or movie producer who has not received any government funding or tax breaks or loans or grants, etc., we’d love to hear from you. (SPOILER: in our many years, we’ve never heard from anyone. They don’t exist.)
So the taxpayer-subsidized programs and contractors get bought with taxpayer dollars to be put on the taxpayer’s subsidized broadcaster’s channels. What kind of economy do you call that?
We could also add the additional value of legal, regulatory, and other anti-competitive protections given to the CBC (such as mandatory carry) — it is simply incalculable, but would surely have to be measured in the many millions.
Beyond the direct federal funding (currently at least $1.9 billion), and the maybe $200 million (at the very least) of subsidized programming, and the subsidized contractors and staff — all of which we really should add to that — this still does not represent the total cost to Canadian taxpayers by any means. There is also the incalculable cost to the state-owned CBC’s competitors in terms of their loss of advertising dollars and profits. And the loss of competitors entering the industry in the first place (who would enter this industry under these conditions?). There is also the cost of competitive bids to secure programming such as NHL games and the Olympics and other special events, which the CBC bids up using taxpayer dollars. This dollar value is impossible to estimate but is surely mammoth in scale.
All of that notwithstanding, we will stick with the $1.9 billion yearly amount this year. We just hope Canadians’ eyes are wide open. Most eyes are not, and some Canadians are covering their eyes.
What kind of government competes against its own citizens this way — particularly in the forum of ideas, and politics, and the delivery of news, which informs citizens as to their voting preferences? Think about it. And make no mistake, that is what is happening here.
We feel state-owned and state-funded media should simply be banned in Canada, and that notion should be enshrined in our constitution. Canada is supposed to be a free and democratic country. But with a state-owned media, state-funded media and news media, a free market does not exist, and so that is all but impossible. The CBC and its “business model” sound more like something belonging to a different kind of country. One that isn’t strong and free.
—Joel Johannesen: entrepreneur, investor, and
Executive Editor of ProudToBeCanadian.ca – a website founded in the year 1999.