The total budget reduction for 2014-2015 is $ 130 million.

CBC-Radio-Canada’s financial challenges are the result of:

• A changing media environment;
• An industry-wide softening of the television advertising market;
• Disappointing schedule performance in the key 25-54 year-old demographic on CBC Television;
• The loss of the NHL contract;
• Much lower-than-expected ad revenues from Espace Musique and CBC Radio 2; and
• Government and regulatory announcements that affect our funding.

The equivalent of 657 positions will be affected over the next two years. We are evaluating what we can do through the elimination of vacancies and attrition.

The solutions contained in our 2014/2015 budget are the results of informed choices that were made with an eye to the future. As decisions were made, the following key principles were followed in order to protect CBC/Radio-Canada’s ability to make future strategic choices:

• National – TV primetime has to perform; talk programming has to resonate and national news must continue to be a service of record;
• Regional – Our focus and commitment to the regions remain; however there is an urgent need to modernize/rationalize how we deliver programs and services in light of budget realities; and
• Digital – 5 % of media programming budgets will continue to be allocated to digital.

CBC/Radio-Canada can’t keep resizing itself every second year to meet yearly budgetary constraints. It needs to be a more flexible and more focused public broadcaster, one that can evolve as rapidly as the media consumption habits of the audience it serves, while still fulfilling its mandate.

We have no intention of introducing advertisement on CBC Radio One and ICI Radio-Canada Première.

Senior Management saw signs of lower-than-expected revenue as early as November. From then on, we froze discretionary spending and worked to reduce, postpone or cancel as many expenses as possible. Our goal was to generate one-time money that we will use to help manage the shortfall in 2014/15 and cover severance costs.

Despite the financial challenges, our focus on regions will be protected. All decisions were made with the criteria of maintaining our regional presence. However, there is an urgent need to modernize/rationalize the "how we deliver" our services in light of budget realities. We will also continue to deliver programming that originates from and reflects Official Language Minority Communities (OLMCs).

Unfortunately, some shows will be cancelled. We are no longer able to entirely protect regional programming. We will reduce local programming in some communities and replace it with regional, network or syndicated programming.

CBC/Radio-Canada needs to be a leaner and more focused public media company; one that is more agile and can adjust as the media consumption habits of our audience change, while still fulfilling the spirit of the mandate that we were entrusted with more than 75 years ago. Informing, enlightening and entertaining Canadians will always be at the forefront of CBC/Radio-Canada’s operations.