The Internet of course has been a boon to be able to reach different communities and different groups from around the province and in the various centres of the province. However, it does not necessarily trickle down to the individual. In the regions in particular, access to broadband is difficult in many areas, impossible in some, and expensive everywhere.
If you look at the demographics of our population, somewhere in the vicinity of 25% of people are seniors. Not all seniors are comfortable with technology. Technology has basically invaded our space, whether we were ready or not. Some were ready, some were not. Putting all the emphasis on broadband or on digital media will necessarily respond to the needs of the individuals.
There is an important feature to the digital aspects, if you like, or the digitization of information, the digital media, but it requires a support mechanism to be able to do what it needs to do. Our big concern is with the notion of local news and local information and being able to provide information that is analyzed from the perspective of the English-speaking minority. That capacity has been eroded to the point where it has almost disappeared. That is the area we're looking at most.
Our recommendations, when you have a chance to see the report, point to directions that we as spokesmen for the English-speaking minority feel require attention: moving towards ensuring that we have quality information available to our communities; moving towards ensuring that we protect some of the services we have now; and moving towards also engaging in not the protection necessarily of the media outlets that are there, but protecting the capacity-building, to ensure that as we move forward in time, young journalists, young entrepreneurs, young people have the resources to be able to experiment, to put forward new ideas, to make mistakes, to learn from mistakes, and to go forward.
That capacity right now is not there. The capacity of our existing media sources is diminishing quickly and disappearing quickly.