Thank you for the question.
Earlier in the proceedings, Mr. Strati, from Bell, remarked that the business model supporting local news has been failing. It has failed.
Collectively, the major broadcasters have had an 8% loss margin for the last eight years, and it's not getting better. It's going to get worse. We've had layoffs. We've had less news coverage. We are in a state of total crisis in terms of local news, so that's just a fact.
In terms of what we're proposing for [Technical difficulty—Editor] advocate for better funding for local news. The CRTC, back in the early teens, after the financial crisis, instituted for three years something called the local programming improvement fund, LPIF, which basically put up an emergency fund of $100 million per year for the broadcasting of local news. What we're proposing is something similar, but as a permanent feature of the ecosystem.
As we advocated, local news is the priority cultural good in the broadcasting system, and it's the most underfunded. Given that there will be, by the minister's estimate, up to $800 million a year as an injection into the broadcasting system...which is shrinking, of course. The pie is shrinking, but this will greatly increase it.
There is room, in our view, to dedicate a steady and sufficient stream of funding to local news that would be available not just to independent television [Technical difficulty—Editor] through a very small fund, but to all local news operations in the country, so that we won't lose this essential feature of our Canadian broadcasting system.