Official Languages committee  I agree with you. For a newspaper, the sinews of war is advertising sales. However, our reality is different. For example, between 5,000 and 6,000 people speak French at home in Saskatchewan, whereas the total number of French mother tongue residents is between 16,000 and 17,000

Official Languages committee  I don't have any statistics on that. In any case, we encourage our members to make an application. Many of them do, and they normally secure one employee.

Official Languages committee  It varies. In some communities that are 80% francophone or more, the newspaper is delivered to every door. However, if the community is only 5% francophone, it is not financially viable to distribute the newspaper to everyone. In those cases, the newspaper is paid for by means of

Official Languages committee  I will try to answer some of those questions. With respect to funding, I would say that, when it comes to newspapers, adapting to new media is a major challenge, given the limited resources available. It is not only a major challenge for us, but also a serious threat to francop

Official Languages committee  We develop projects. I will give you an example. We are trying to launch initiatives to support the student press in minority francophone universities and colleges. We are discovering that it's really complicated, because there is a major problem of continuity among the stakehold

Official Languages committee  Yes, recurring funding is always more attractive than one-time grant. It is rare for a problem to be resolved in one year.

Official Languages committee  I would say it is gradual. We discovered that the people who read our local newspapers tend to invest in their community and that homeowners were more likely to read the local newspaper because that reality affected them more. In terms of when someone becomes a regular newspaper

Official Languages committee  There were a number of consultations, including about everything having to do with the Summit of Francophone and Acadian Communities. We were expecting the government to take inspiration from that to develop its Roadmap. I believe Mr. Lord held consultations at that time. We made

Official Languages committee  Our readers are as much as 18 years old. We really have any data on this, although we could probably look at it. A survey will soon be released, but it deals with adult readers. At the same time, I can tell you that almost all of our members have youth projects on the go, whethe

Official Languages committee  Are you talking about legal downloading?

Official Languages committee  There aren't many. I believe it's possible for L'Express Ottawa, La Liberté and Le Franco. Four or five of them publish their full version of the news for online subscribers. In other cases, they may publish excerpts and other items that do not appear in the newspaper on a databa

Official Languages committee  Yes. When it comes to the Internet, newspapers are proceeding by trial and error. I believe there is a strategic aspect to this, in that we want to be available via mobile technology, but we are not there yet. So, there is a strategy which is taking us in the direction of provid

Official Languages committee  Like any media organization, we are always in favour of as much transparency as possible. We would expect an evaluation carried out by the government to be made public. We would cover it in order to inform the public.

Official Languages committee  Where newspapers are concerned, APF members have been on the Internet since the year 2000. However, having a presence there doesn't mean you're effective. There is a difference. As with every other medium, you have to learn to be an interactive medium, in addition to being a pape

Official Languages committee  There was, in fact, a meeting—consultations. There were workshops and discussions around certain themes. For us, the theme was culture in a broad sense. I did not see it as the end of the process. I saw it as the beginning of a process being undertaken by the department. It laste