CBC's properties across Canada worth at least $444 million

CBC's Canadian Broadcast Centre in downtown Toronto (left) and Vancouver Broadcast Centre in downtown Vancouver (right). (Shutterstock)

Canada’s national public broadcaster is sitting on a not insignificant amount of real estate that it owns.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s (CTF) new findings, based on the federal government’s released details triggered by an access to information request, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) owns 12 properties across the country, worth $444.4 million.

About 71% or $314 million of this total assessed value comes from CBC’s largest facility at 250 Front Street West, located near the CN Tower in downtown Toronto.

The Canadian Broadcasting Centre, the name of the Toronto facility, is a 1992-built, 13-storey office building with over 1.5 million sq ft of leasable space.

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Most of the Toronto building is used for CBC operations, while other spaces are leased to other parties. This not only includes retail/restaurant businesses on the ground level, but also segregated office spaces leased to companies such as architectural firm Dialog and video game maker Zynga. Up until recently, some of the upper levels of the building were leased to competitor Rogers Sports & Media for Sportsnet Studios’ original facilities for their NHL coverage needs.

A report in 2012 stated 33% or 500,000 sq ft of the Toronto building’s leasable space was sitting empty at the time, following significant rounds of budget counts starting in the mid-1990s that shrunk CBC’s workforce. In 2006, a City of Toronto committee denied the CBC’s application to lease up to 30% of the building to third party businesses.

cbc canadian broadcasting centre toronto

CBC’s Canadian Broadcasting Centre at 250 Front Street West, Toronto. (Shutterstock)

The next largest property asset held by the CBC is its city block-sized complex at 700 Hamilton Street in downtown Vancouver, carrying a value of $99 million or 22% of the public broadcaster’s total real estate assessed value.

The Vancouver Broadcast Centre was built in 1975. A significant renovation and expansion completed in 2009 at a cost of $65 million was funded by Concord Pacific’s condominium development of the parking space at the southern end of the block fronting Robson Street.

Two residential towers — aptly named TV Towers, reaching 36 storeys and 26 storeys — with about 300 condominium homes were also completed in 2009.

CBC’s Vancouver Broadcast Centre at 700 Hamilton Street, Vancouver. (Shutterstock)

TV Towers, a pair of condominium towers, built on the former parking lot of CBC’s Vancouver Broadcast Studio. (Francl Architecture)

CBC’s next largest major asset based on worth is its Winnipeg studio at 541 Portage Avenue, which has an assessed value of $11.7 million.

Other facilities owned by CBC include 95 University Avenue in St. John’s, Newfoundland (worth $4.4 million), 5002 Forrest Drive in Yellowknife (worth $3.2 million), 1160 Regent Street in Fredericton (worth $2.8 million), and 430 University Avenue in Charlottetown (worth $2.6 million), as well as various other properties with a lower value in Saguenay, Whitehorse, Rankin Inlet (Nunavut), Thunder Bay, and a secondary property in the Winnipeg area.

A total of 72 CBC facilities in other communities across Canada are leased properties. The rent of the leases were not disclosed. Most of these leased properties are in smaller communities, but the CBC notably operates within leased spaces for its presence in some of Canada’s largest urban centres. This includes the Alberta broadcast centres of Calgary at 105-1000 Veteran’s Place NW and Edmonton at 10062-102 Avenue NW, and CBC’s main headquarters at 181 Queen Street in downtown Ottawa.

In Montreal, CBC is now using brand new facilities. In 2022, Radio Canada’s headquarters — the main hub for CBC’s French-language services — was relocated to a new office building complex at 1000 Avenue Papineau, where the public broadcaster has a 30-year lease, with rent currently set at $20 million annually.

The new Montreal broadcast centre is significantly smaller than Radio Canada’s previous 1973-built home at the 24-storey Maison Radio Canada office tower at 1400 Rene-Levesque Boulevard. Its floor area is about 30% of the previous 1.3 million sq ft complex, which was sold by the public broadcaster to developer Groupe March for $42 million in 2017.

CBC’s former Maison Radio Canada office tower at 1400 Rene-Levesque Boulevard, Montreal. (Shutterstock)

cbc radio canada new headquarters montreal

CBC’s new Maison Radio Canada headquarters at 1000 Avenue Papineau, Montreal. (Broccolini)

It is also noted by CTF that CBC leases its space for its international bureaus, including prominent, highly central locations in London (UK), Mumbai, New York City, Paris, and Washington, DC. Up until recently, it head a leased presence in Beijing and Moscow.

“It sure seems the CBC is spending way more on its buildings than competitors spend, but what value do taxpayers get for all these properties?” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director, in a statement. “Taxpayers have every right to question why we’re paying for all these CBC buildings in Canada and in other countries.”

However, it is not uncommon for major international news agencies to have bureaus worldwide. For example, CNN, Al Jazeera, and British public broadcaster BBC each have dozens of bureau locations, exponentially more than CBC’s international presence. But major cuts are possible for the BBC later this decade, when its mandatory annual license fee for each household in the United Kingdom ends.

In response to the CTF’s released findings today, federal Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre quipped the idea of turning CBC’s Toronto building into housing.

“It warms my heart to think of the families that will move into a home they can afford, at the former headquarters of the CBC,” Poilievre wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Poilievre also previously suggested CBC, with the exception of Radio Canada, should be defunded.

This appears to be a reference to part of the Conservative party’s recently announced housing plan, which calls for compiling a list of 15% of the federal government’s 37,000 buildings and properties, based on the suitability of turning the federal assets into affordable housing.

CBC’s Canadian Broadcasting Centre at 250 Front Street West, Toronto. (Craig S./Foursquare)

This is not the first time a suggestion has been made to dispose of a significant portion of CBC’s real estate assets. In fact, in 2015, just ahead of that year’s federal election, the suggestion came from inside CBC, when the public broadcaster’s leadership informed staff of their plan to sell all of CBC’s property across the country, including the major production facilities in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. It was reported that a significant portion of the Vancouver studio was unused.

At the time, the CBC faced immense financial challenges following major budget cuts made by the previous Conservative leadership under Stephen Harper, forcing it to eliminate 2,800 positions since 2008. After Justin Trudeau’s Liberals took power, the CBC saw some of its public funding restored, with its annual public funding increased by $150 million.

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