CBC said it is cutting 244 jobs from local news services across the country, shrinking its French and English offerings as it grapples with ongoing budget woes.

The cuts include 144 positions from English-language services and 100 job cuts on the French side, which include 20 vacant positions and retirements.

"Of a $15-million cut to local services across the country, Ontario's share is $1.6 million," CBC senior managing director Susan Marjetti said in an email to The Record. "That's approximately 27 to 30 positions which will be eliminated across Ontario.

"All of our Ontario stations, including Kitchener-Waterloo, will be impacted financially, with the lion's share from Toronto. At the same time, a reinvestment in digital will create a dozen new jobs in the Ontario region as we continue to position our operation to best serve audiences across our platforms and province."

Marjetti couldn't predict how the Kitchener station, called CBC Kitchener-Waterloo, will be affected.

"As planning is completed within the coming months, we'll be able to provide more detail on the impact per station."

The station at 117 King St. W. in downtown Kitchener employs seven full-time people and a few part-timers. Its website lists two reporters, an online host, an on-air host, an associate producer, an associate producer/technician and an executive producer.

CBC Kitchener-Waterloo first went on air in March 2013.

Jennifer McGuire, editor-in-chief of CBC News, announced the English layoffs in a note to staff, which stressed that no stations would close and all local radio programming maintained.

But there will be significant job losses, including 37 positions in Alberta, as many as 30 in Ontario and 25 in British Columbia.

McGuire said that "local services will be smaller overall," but says the relative size of each region remains the same.

"It's a significant change in our delivery of local news and information — perhaps the largest transformation ever undertaken by CBC in local," McGuire said in Thursday's letter.

The CBC cuts are part of a five-year strategy announced last June by CEO Hubert Lacroix in a bid to increase digital offerings by 2020.

The strategy included plans to cut up to 1,500 jobs, and the CBC announced it would shorten all local supper-hour newscasts to 30 or 60 minutes and broadcast Radio One morning shows on TV beginning in the fall.

McGuire said the cuts should shave $15 million from operating costs and will still leave more than 1,100 people in 29 stations across the country, plus CBC's service in the North.

But union leader Marc-Philippe Laurin questioned a plan that he feared would cripple the public broadcaster's ability to serve smaller communities.

"According to their 2020 strategic plan, their intention is to move heavily into the digital world but they're effectively dismantling other areas of the company," said Laurin, president of the Canadian Media Guild's CBC branch.

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