The government could support us in two ways.
It could create programs that would give us tax credits or grants that would help us deal with the challenges we are facing.
During this transition period, our challenge is to maintain the quantity and quality of information. To achieve this, we would need temporary assistance from Canadian Heritage to support content. If we were to spend $150,000 to pay people to create content in a given region, we could receive assistance in the form of tax credits or grants to support content, which is at the very heart of our business.
By the same token, we can't always come to you for help. We must become self-sufficient. We can only achieve that by deploying our content on digital platforms. Moving from a print organization to a digital one is a tremendous challenge. We have to make investments. In the last four years, Transcontinental has invested $40 million to transition to digital platforms. Our sales are $24 million and it will take a long time before we see a return on our investment. We will ultimately need help. The second area of assistance relates to innovation and science.
If we invest, could the government give us a tax credit for our investments? Transcontinental is seen as too large of a company to receive any kind of assistance under federal and provincial programs. Could someone look into this? Ministers, premiers, mayors, and MPs are calling me to say that we don't have the right to close newspapers. That is our second request. This is one way the government could support us.
Here is another way the government could help.
The government advertises a great deal in our print and digital media. The 50% loss in revenues is also due to the fact that the federal, Quebec, and municipal governments are advertising less. Someone would have to tell all the departments that, given the importance of local content in Canada, assistance will be provided over the next three or four years. These Canadian news organizations have innovative print and digital products. Could the advertising purchasers in all departments make a slight effort to be more strategic in order to support these organizations through government advertising dollars? That would be another way of helping us. Right now, there is no strategy at all.