Source : Globe & Mail

by Christopher Harris

After years of budget cuts, CBC Radio employees had just begun to breathe a  little more easily, when news came yesterday of an "unexpected" shortfall that  is sure to bite into news and current-affairs programming. Layoffs will be  announced next week.

Harold Redekopp, the CBC's vice-president of English radio, confirmed that  the public radio service is facing a "serious" financial problem in network news and information, but he said he could not reveal the dollar figure or  number of positions to be cut until formal notification of staff and unions, probably on Monday. He said no programs will be cancelled.

Several sources put the amount of the shortfall in the $3-million range.  CBC English radio, over all, has an operating budget of about $100-million; it would not disclose the news and information budget.

Redekopp blamed "the delayed impact of previously planned budget reductions .... These are cuts that should have been taken and weren't taken."

In other words, CBC Radio says it thought it had absorbed the cuts a year  or more ago – and has now found out that it hadn't. Between 1994-95 and 1997-98, the CBC's federal funding was reduced by more than $400- million.

"No one knows how this could happen," said Lise Lareau, a CBC employee and president of the Canadian Media Guild, a major CBC union. "The CBC is blaming  this lost money on the financial-control reporting system – that it let us down ... but you have to wonder. This is a serious miscalculation. It doesn't inspire a lot of trust by us or anybody else in how the finances are maintained. This is a public corporation."

Redekopp said that finding out how the situation developed and what broke down within the financial reporting system is now being analyzed. He said a plan will be put in place to ensure "that this never, ever happens again."

The shortfall affects only news and information, with no impact on arts and  entertainment, music or regional programming, he said. "It's a serious problem that's being dealt with quite aggressively and creatively by the folks in the information area."

A secondary factor in the shortfall, he added, is the impact of the low Canadian dollar on foreign news-gathering and bureau operations, which often use U.S. currency. He said no domestic bureaus will be closed because of the shortfall, but that foreign operations will be reassessed.

Some sources suggest that the shortfall amounts to about $2.5-million this year and to an additional $1-million next year.

Lareau was one of several people who raised the issue of CBC Radio's proposed youth network, Radio Three, wondering whether money reportedly earmarked for that project is connected to the shortfall. At the very least, she suggested, funds waiting for Radio Three's development could go instead toward saving jobs in radio news and information.

Redekopp said there is "absolutely no connection" between the shortfall and Radio Three. "If we ever were to have another initiative, there would be money for that .... Any funding for Radio Three is targeted to that initiative and nothing else," he said.

Lareau said the budgetary revelation has thrown employees into a state of shock. "After years of cut, cut, cut, cut, we had finally come to the point of stable funding from Parliament – we had come to this plateau of a much smaller corporation, but nonetheless on an even keel, with no more cuts. And all of a sudden, this happens."

Ian Morrison, speaking for the advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, noted that the news comes just as the federal cabinet is meeting at a retreat to discuss the so-called fiscal dividend.

"The Liberals promised in 1993 that they would not cut the CBC. They then broke that promise to cut $400-million .... Now, whether some accountant got it wrong or not, there's another $3-million shortage at CBC Radio, and Canadians are going to lose radio service."

Lareau said even if programming is not cancelled, it will be affected. There will be fewer staff doing the same work, more repeat shows and some news bureaus will probably close, she said. "Programming may not go off the air, but we can do our job less and less ably every time a cut like this happens."

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