A taxpayers group is suing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for refusing to disclose how much taxpayer money it spent on advertising over five years.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation applied with the Federal Court on Friday to review the CBC’s decision to withhold dollar figures in a heavily redacted document provided in response to a FOI request on the broadcaster’s advertising expenditures.
The lawsuit aims to compel the state-funded broadcaster to be transparent about its use of taxpayer dollars.
Ryan Thorpe, an investigative journalist with the CTF filed an access-to-information request on Jan. 26, 2024, asking the CBC to disclose its annual spending on advertising for the previous five years.
By the middle of March last year, the CBC shared a heavily blacked-out spreadsheet with the information requested, the dollar figures, redacted.
To do this, the CBC invoked section 18(b) of the Access to Information Act, which exempts the information request if it could “reasonably be expected” to “prejudice the competitive position of the institution” or if it interferes with contracts or other negotiations.
Disagreeing with the exemption application, the CTF filed a complaint with the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. The office is a government agency charged with investigating complaints about federal institutions’ handling of FOIs.
On Jan. 14, 2025, the commissioner released a report supporting the CBC’s position, prompting the CTF to seek judicial review.
The notice of application states the CTF wants the court to declare that the CBC improperly used the exemption in the Act, to quash the decision and to order the state broadcaster to disclose the full and unredacted documents.
“We weren’t even looking for so much as you know which companies got the contracts which, we think we’re still should be entitled to,” Devin Drover, General Counsel for the CTF told True North. “They wouldn’t even give us something as simple as how much the dollar figure of the aggregate expenditures on advertising each year.”
Drover said that because taxpayers fund the CBC – it received $1.4 billion in taxes last year – Canadian taxpayers are entitled to know how much of their money is being spent, including on things such as advertising.
“When you look at all of the ratings right now with the CDC, a lot of their programs have abysmal ratings, and at the same time, they’re asking for more money every year,” Drover said.”We think taxpayers have a right to know why or how their money is being spent at the CBC, and because they failed to provide it, we’ve had no choice but to start an action in federal court requesting that the court force the disclosure of this information.”
He said the CTF’s ultimate goal is to uphold the principle of Canadians’ right to transparency and accountability in government institutions.
Drover said there’s nothing particularly special about what they hoped to discover from the advertising expenditures, especially when compared to the CTF’s earlier discoveries of executives receiving fat bonuses.
In August, a survey commissioned by the CTF, conducted by Leger, found that 69% of Canadians opposed the CBC paying out $18.4 million tax dollars to bonuses in that year.
He said this is just one of many discrepancies the CTF has had with the CBC regarding access to information requests. Drover said there are “a number” of requests the taxpayer advocate group have made which now lay in various stages of appeals.
“Whether that’s early stages with arguing with the CBC on getting the information disclosed to things under review by the OIC to what we’ve now reached on this particular complaint, which is a court action,” Drover said.
He said in general, the requests are an attempt to gain clarity on how the CBC is operating, especially since funding the CBC is a “live issue” in the next general election. He said that, on the one hand, the Conservatives vowed to defund the organization, while the Liberals pledged an increase and even double its funding for the state-sponsored broadcaster.
“Voters have a right to be informed and express their opinion on how their tax dollars are being used,” Drover said. “Without this information, Canadian citizens are being devoid of that right to freedom of expression.”
Chuck Thompson the head of public affairs at the CBC, told True North that it stands by its use of the exemption in the Access to Information Act, citing it can be done if it’s reasonably expected to cause harm to the corporation.
“That exemption was properly applied in this instance, as confirmed by the Office of the Information Commissioner,” he said. “We are reviewing the application filed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and will respond to it in due course.”