First of all, I would like to thank the committee for accepting our brief and for allowing us to make a presentation intended to further clarify our position. I am the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Alliance de la francophonie de Timmins. Sylvain Lacroix is the Alliance's Executive Director.
Our organization serves the 19,000 francophones in Timmins and the region. Essentially, our work is to promote the development of the Francophone community of Timmins through partnership involving the health, education and social services sectors as well as the economy and cultural development.
Radio-Canada is obviously one of the organizations with which we often have to work when we want the public to know our reality, our problems and our positions on some issues. This corporation plays a key role in the development of francophone communities outside Quebec. I'm going to be quite brief on this subject because you have perhaps already read our brief and furthermore, we would like to be able to answer your questions.
Without Radio-Canada it would be almost impossible for our communities to fight assimilation, but above all to develop a Franco-Ontarian culture that is truly dynamic and to ensure that there is appropriate socio-economic development in our communities. What we really want to emphasize here is the perspective of francophone communities outside Quebec. We believe we have demonstrated that the disappearance or partial privatization of the public broadcaster would be disastrous for our communities.
The cutbacks in the 1990s have already had a real and very negative impact on our communities. On the radio side, the corporation has in fact kept up suitably. In fact, we are very well served in that regard. Sylvain will speak to that issue. However, the same thing cannot be said for television.
In the past, we had production capacity in Ontario and the studios were in Toronto. We were appropriately served in that way. Now, it is done through Ottawa, and it is obviously the needs of the francophone community of the Outaouais that has become more important. We are an epiphenomenon, both on the news coverage side as well as reports on what is happening in northern Ontario. We have become much more marginalized than should be the case, given the percentage of population that we in fact represent of the population. I will now give the floor to Sylvain.