UPDATED for 2026

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, use TEXT or HTML 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 then appear on your site 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 or freely point to this page!

Our Waste-o-Meter algorithm starts the year with an estimated annual amount of $1.9 billion per year of taxpayer support, which represents the annual “government” (really the taxpayer) funding (bailout) of that government operation — funding that we know of, that is. For example we know there are untold millions in subsidies and various other such state entitlements that they receive directly or indirectly for various programming. We could probably add $200 million in taxpayer funding to account for the “arts” and “entertainment” and “documentaries” and other taxpayer-paid grants and subsidies that pay for the individual programs that the state-owned, state-funded CBC throws onto their multiple radio and TV channels.

The CBC boasts of presenting lots of made-in-Canada programs but any reasonable assumptions based on even casual 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: over our many years,
we’ve never heard from one. 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, which are forced to be carried by cable carriers. What kind of economy do you call that? Is that a free market? Of course not. And that means there’s a government intrusion into the market. And that means politics. But more on that later.

We could also add the value of legal, regulatory, and other anti-competitive protections given to the CBC (such as what was mentioned just above — “mandatory carry” which forces cable providers to carry the state-owned CBC even if they don’t want to, while not forcing them to carry competitors) — it is simply incalculable, but it would surely have to be measured in the many millions or hundreds of millions.

And again, any government intrusion into the free market distorts the market. Wrecks it. On purpose!

Beyond the direct federal funding (currently at least $1.9 billion), and the maybe $200 million (at the very least) of subsidized programming, and now the additionally subsidized “news” staff — all of which we need to add to that growing dollar total —  this still does not represent the total cost to Canadian taxpayers. There is also the incalculable cost to the state-owned CBC’s competitors in terms of their loss of advertising dollars and profits or even sustainability when forced to compete against their own government. And the loss of competitors entering the industry in the first place (would you enter this industry with your own investment dollars under these conditions?). There is also the cost of competitive bids to secure programming such as NHL games and the (massively taxpayer-subsidized) Olympics and other special events, which the CBC bids up — using those same taxpayer dollars — and often wins. This dollar value is impossible to estimate but is surely mammoth in scale.

Most Canadians’ eyes are evidently not open to the cost problem, and we hope to open more eyes with our waste widget. But some Canadians are covering their eyes, rendering them willfully blind, because on a philosophical or political level, they know it helps advance a political agenda or dogma they favor; a whole other — perhaps equally massive — problem, which we’ll finally very briefly discuss because it is tangential to our lil waste widget.

What kind of government competes against its own citizens — particularly in the forum of ideas, information, entertainment, and politics, and in the delivery of news, all of which help to formulate a culture. It sets or changes narratives or perceptions, and it informs citizens as to their voting preferences. Think about it. And make no mistake, that is what is happening here. Ask yourselves why a government should formulate or foster a culture, as it does here, instead of letting it develop organically, i.e., in a free market. What kind of country’s culture is established or guided by the state and politicians and bureaucrats through its state media? There are examples in the world where this is done, and none of them are positive or are on a positive trajectory.

And in doing this, they knowingly distort or wreck the free market economy vital to progress and a high standard of living. It — the yummy politics-pushing and culture-formation-to-their-liking and all the sundry mind-bending — is so worth it to them that they will risk distorting and diminishing the very freedom of the people and its organic free markets and what those markets provide, and risk democracy itself.

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 particularly a state-funded news media, a free market economically and in the forum of ideas and information does not exist; thus freedom and democracy are both diminished — and moreover, what remains is put at considerable risk of further erosion. The CBC and its “business model” (it’s no business) sound 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.