Golden West Broadcasting CEO Elmer Hildebrand is among the private broadcast executives who isn’t happy with the CBC’s recent bureau expansion.

The public broadcaster announced in January it was expanding its footprint, with plans to create 11 new local bureaus and hire 33 journalists, increasing its presence to 77 bureaus and stations, including three additional locations in Saskatchewan, and two each in the Yukon, Manitoba and Quebec.

Among the new communities it’s hired reporters in are Swift Current and Moose Jaw, SK, cities in which Golden West already operates a total of six radio stations between them, as well as SwiftCurrentOnline.com, and DiscoverMooseJaw.com that already carry local news and information.

In an open letter sent to CBC/Radio-Canada President Marie-Philippe Bouchard late last month, Hildebrand wrote that when funding to support hiring reporters in underserved areas was announced “the expectation was that these resources would be directed toward communities lacking meaningful local news coverage. However, many of the communities CBC has targeted already have strong local news operations in place.”

Hildebrand takes exception, in particular, to CBC approaching and recruiting Golden West’s News Director in Swift Current, “by offering compensation approximately $20,000 higher than his current salary.”

“This raises an important question,” wrote Hildebrand. “…should government-supported funding intended to expand local journalism be used to recruit staff away from existing local broadcasters that are already serving these communities effectively?”

The seasoned executive, who oversees 38 Western Canadian radio stations and 20 online portals, said Golden West would be happy to collaborate with CBC – and even discuss news sharing – which he plans to raise at a future meeting with the public broadcaster.

Pattison Media is also exploring opportunities to collaborate with CBC, following President Rod Schween’s appearance in late April before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Schween, who chairs the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) CEO Radio Council, acknowledged that Pattison has also lost reporters to CBC’s bureau expansion, including in Medicine Hat, where the public broadcaster moved in following Pattison’s closure of CHAT-TV in 2025.

“We decided to keep two news people. And sure enough, they come to town and one of the people they hire is one of our two remaining newspeople,” Schween told Broadcast Dialogue. “Medicine Hat is a great community, but it’s a town we have a hard time getting people to go to…it’s a little smaller…and of course, they want to hire people that have connections to the community. The hard part for us is broadcasters is…we spent a ton of time and energy building his talents, and then CBC comes along and offers a wage that we can’t touch.”

“In those so-called news deserts, there are people that are working hard, that are doing a great job under some extreme circumstances in some cases. And having the CBC come in, the way that they’re coming in, actually may not be the best thing,” said Schween. “Yeah, maybe a unique story gets told, and that’s a good thing, but I worry that if it starts to impact some of the people that are there and truly service those communities on a day-to-day basis, that some of the stories that those platforms are telling maybe don’t get told, because the CBC isn’t gonna tell them. And that would be a tragedy, if that ends up happening.”

Schween said he is encouraged that CBC executives have been willing to sit down and have some hard conversations with commercial broadcasters as of late.

“Up until recently, I would say that CBC has been a bigger pain for us than they’ve been a partner,” Schween continued. “I think all of us, as media in Canada, need to work together. We are facing a way bigger fight than the battle between each other…the threat of foreign media totally taking over the media landscape in our country. And if Canadians aren’t concerned about that, then I’m worried for our future.”

In a statement provided to Broadcast Dialogue, CBC said its recent local service expansion “targeted communities where CBC has had little or no presence, in most cases adding one or two journalists to these new bureaus.”

CBC News Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon wrote in an editor’s blog earlier this year that the expansion “aims to position the national public broadcaster closer to where people live, to their stories, their concerns and their perspectives in order to build relevance, trust and a relationship with Canadians everywhere.”

“To be clear, we are committed to preserving and improving on the diversity of trusted news sources that local communities can rely on,” he wrote. “As we set up these new bureaus, we will continue to champion the work of other community news organizations and seek opportunities to support and partner with them when we can. We believe a healthy media environment composed of private, community and publicly funded news organizations is essential for Canadian democracy and culture.”