Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm not used to starting off, but I appreciate the gesture.
Mr. Cauchon, the members of your group and yourself have put forward a lot of solutions and I appreciate that greatly. We are here to find solutions.
Mr. Honderich and the two witnesses have clearly shown that we are going through a crisis and that is very important for us to take considered measures. I want to comment quickly on the five points that Mr. Myles raised.
The first point is about indirect assistance through government investments in newspaper advertising. The value has gone from $20 million to half a million dollars. I am not sure that there is an easy solution. I would not want our government to invest $10 million simply to keep newspapers alive. To be honest with you, I am not very comfortable with that. However, I am interested in your point about tax credits for those who place advertisements in newspapers. That has been mentioned as a strategy on a number of occasions, advertisers who would benefit from a tax credit of that kind could be more motivated to place advertisements in newspapers.
As I said, I am somewhat against your first point because fewer and fewer people are getting their information from newspapers. The video suggestion interests me as well. Points 2, 3 and 4 seem interesting. Point 5 also appears very interesting because we still have to distinguish between large newspapers and large media outlets and the smaller ones. Our study is principally about rural communities. The committee wants to find out what information is available in rural communities. In my opinion, the suggestions in points 2, 3, 4 and 5 are interesting if we want to support the print media, either by exempting them from the GST and the QST, by providing financial assistance for video production, or by granting tax credits to advertisers.
I see all those as possible tools and solutions in rural areas and smaller regions to ensure that the people there have access to good information. What I would like is to find strategies designed to help communicate important Canadian and local content to rural regions. I am ready to put money into that, but less so in urban areas where you certainly have huge resources available.
With that, I await your comments.