A giant like Quebecor Media, whose annual turnover is $2.7 billion, already enjoys a very favourable position in the Quebec market where it benefits from a very high level of media concentration that could threaten the diversity of voices. There is Videotron, TVA, JPL Production, Illico, Canoë, the Journal de Montréal, the Journal de Québec, to name a few.
One can surely wonder if a business of that size, so dominant in its market and enjoying such a level of multimedia cross-ownership, is contributing enough to the support of Quebec and Canadian culture from which it draws a great deal of its wealth. Let us not forget that Quebecor Media benefits from tens of millions of dollars per year in direct and indirect public funding, particularly thanks to programming broadcast on TVA.
One thing is clear: the annual contribution that its Videotron subsidiary must remit to the CTF, which represents 0.006% of Quebecor Media's revenues and that it gets back entirely through another subsidiary, TVA, in no way justifies such a business defying the law and putting the entire Quebec independent television production world at risk.
The stability of an entire industry is at stake. If all of the cable and satellite companies were to withdraw their contribution from the Canadian Television Fund, that would represent a loss of 8,500 jobs in Canada, more than 2,500 of which would be in Quebec.