CBC Reports Billions, but Not Local Station Spending

The Senate wants CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate rewritten around local communities, with public station-level reports showing whether the money follows the promise.

At Gaspé city council, Mayor Daniel Côté had learned to notice an empty chair.

Reporters from other outlets came regularly, he told a Senate committee. A Radio-Canada journalist rarely did, even though Gaspé was the region’s largest city. Côté said the broadcaster’s coverage had improved over the previous seven years. It still missed most council meetings.

“Is the reason that city councils deal with local issues and Radio-Canada has a broader, regional or national, mandate?” he asked.

The question runs through the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications’ new report, Local News Matters: Rethinking CBC/Radio-Canada’s Role in a Changing Media Landscape.

CBC/Radio-Canada operates 27 television stations, 88 radio stations and several digital platforms. Its governing law tells it to reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences. It does not require the broadcaster to target local audiences or provide a set amount of local programming.

The committee wants that changed. It also found that the public cannot see enough local financial data to know where service is thin, where the money goes or where it is needed most.

The promise is local. The ledger stops at the region.

The mandate never reaches city hall

The study spanned two Parliaments. The committee held 10 meetings between October 22 and December 11, 2024, heard approximately 60 witnesses and received 30 briefs. It concluded in October 2025 with testimony from CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard.

Witnesses kept returning to the same distinction. Regional coverage was not always local coverage.

Francophones on the island of Newfoundland receive regional news and programming from Moncton and Halifax. Those in Labrador receive service from Quebec. Martin Théberge, president of the Société Nationale de l’Acadie, said this deprives the province’s francophone community of a common platform.

In rural Alberta, independent journalist Jen Gerson said people discuss housing, crops and daily concerns in farming communities without seeing those subjects reflected by CBC Calgary. Amélie Hinse of the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec said Radio-Canada fulfilled its regional role well but provided inadequate local coverage.

The Broadcasting Act permits that gap. It requires CBC/Radio-Canada to reflect Canada and its regions while serving those regions’ special needs. The committee found no instruction to reflect local communities and audiences.

Broadcasting licences fill only part of the gap. The CRTC requires at least seven hours of English-language local television programming each week in non-metropolitan English markets and five hours in non-metropolitan French markets. Most CBC Radio One and ICI Première stations face no minimum number of local programming or news hours. The French-language CBEF station in Windsor is the exception.

The committee’s first recommendation is seven quoted words long: add “the reflection of local communities and audiences” to the mandate.

That would put local service into the law. It would not show whether CBC/Radio-Canada delivered it.

Public money, regional totals

CBC/Radio-Canada received $1,407.4 million in parliamentary appropriations in 2024-25. Advertising brought in $343.9 million. Subscriber fees and other income added $244.8 million.

Those broad figures are public. The local ones are not.

The corporation’s annual reports list major categories of revenue and spending. CRTC filings provide partial data for five large areas: Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and the territories, and the Prairies. Neither source breaks staffing, revenue or expenses down by local station. The regional figures also exclude CBC/Radio-Canada’s digital services.

This makes some available numbers hard to read. Quebec and Ontario received more than 75 per cent of the parliamentary appropriations assigned to conventional television and radio between 2012 and 2024. The report says that share reflects the Ottawa head office and the main English and French networks in Toronto and Montreal. It does not show what any station received.

The same regional data show 3,581 fewer employees in CBC/Radio-Canada’s conventional television and radio services in 2024 than in 2012. They do not show how those losses fell across communities.

The committee recommends stable, multi-year funding for local programming. It pairs that request with another demand. At the next licence renewal in 2027, the CRTC should require public reports on local programming and spending across traditional and digital platforms.

The recommendations work together. More money would increase local capacity. Public reports would show where that capacity went.

Eleven bureaus and no common measure

Bouchard acknowledged a “lack of connection in some areas with the public,” which she attributed in part to limited resources.

CBC/Radio-Canada’s plan through 2030 includes enough journalists to serve 15 to 20 communities with populations above 50,000 that have little or no local presence. In January 2026, it announced 11 new bureaus and 33 journalists, from Richmond, British Columbia, to Châteauguay, Quebec.

The report commends the expansion. It also shows why a bureau count cannot settle the matter.

For official language minority communities, presence depends partly on whose lives reach the screen. Denis Simard of the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise said that when young Fransaskois do not see people like themselves anchoring Téléjournal and other programs, they conclude that only Quebeckers and Montrealers can hold those jobs.

Some communities still lack all of CBC/Radio-Canada’s conventional services. Marie-Nicole Dubois of the Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique said the provincial Radio-Canada signal is unavailable in parts of British Columbia.

Digital distribution does not solve the problem. Online sources are now the primary source of information for 73 per cent of Canadians, according to figures in the report. But witnesses from the North and several francophone communities described gaps in broadband access. Annick Forest of the Canadian Media Guild said Whitehorse can lose phone service when its only supplier fails.

The committee’s sixth recommendation calls for CBC/Radio-Canada’s television production investments in official language minority communities to respect substantive equality. Its seventh asks the corporation to examine its emergency role and provide full coverage in remote and isolated places with few alternative broadcasters.

The station, signal, journalist and emergency connection are all parts of local service. The public accounts do not join them into a picture that can be tested.

Collaboration without displacement

The committee also wants CBC/Radio-Canada to work more closely with private and community media in every region.

Witnesses described a possible exchange. Small outlets could provide reporting from communities where the public broadcaster has few people. CBC/Radio-Canada could share its reporting, reach and training. Matthew Hatfield of OpenMedia proposed releasing CBC journalism under Creative Commons licences. Christopher Waddell of Carleton University suggested free distribution of CBC’s domestic and foreign reporting through The Canadian Press, along with greater exposure for stories produced by small news organizations.

But local collaboration has a local labour market.

Corey Larocque, managing editor of Nunatsiaq News, said his outlet competes with CBC for journalists and cannot match its pay. Kevin Desjardins of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters said CBC expansion in a small or mid-sized market can raise the cost of hiring reporters beyond what some private stations can afford.

The committee accepted the warning. It supported a larger CBC/Radio-Canada presence but said growth should not come at the expense of established local media.

The report does not treat CBC/Radio-Canada as the only answer to declining coverage. Since 2008, Professor April Lindgren’s Local News Research Project had counted 521 local outlets closed in 347 communities. Only about half as many had opened. Small communities, she said, were hit hardest.

The committee proposes a stronger public broadcaster within a broader local media system, with enough disclosure to measure the effects.

It also recommends regular outside analysis of CBC/Radio-Canada news and current affairs for fairness and balance. Trust in CBC News among anglophones fell from 76 per cent in 2018 to 62 per cent in 2025. For ICI Radio-Canada and ICI RDI among francophones, it fell by 14 percentage points over the same period, to 71 per cent.

Witnesses said local reporters could help. Lindgren said journalists who know a community and its issues earn trust. Gerson argued that a newsroom concentrated in Toronto cannot expect people in Lethbridge or the North to see it as present in their lives.

The committee has recommended more money, a clearer mandate, outside review, new partnerships and full emergency coverage where alternatives are scarce. Before Canadians can judge whether any of it restores the missing connection, they need to see past the regional total.

Back to the station. Back to the newsroom. Back to the empty chair at city hall.

Hansard Files follows the public record from the national promise to the local result. Subscribe for calm, source-based reporting on what the documents show.

---

Source Documents

• Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. (2026, June 17). Local news matters: Rethinking CBC/Radio-Canada’s role in a changing media landscape. https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/451/TRCM/Reports/TRCM_45-1_SS-1_CBC_Report_final_e.pdf