Thank you.
I will just acknowledge off the bat, in response to MP Waugh's statement, that we have 36 employees at Global Saskatoon who work to produce more than 25 hours of local news every week, and in fact contribute to a 24-7 streaming local news channel, which we have innovated in that marketplace in order to provide news not just on the regulated platform of television but also in the digital space around the clock.
Those have been the kinds of innovative challenges we've had over the last little while as we have tried to reposition this industry for the future. We need to be on new platforms whereby we can reach audiences in all places, but at the same time we have to fulfill the requirements of the outdated broadcasting rules. Our capacity to do that kind of local-service programming, whether in Saskatoon or Regina or Montreal or New Brunswick, is hindered by the fact that we have many other encumbrances put onto the business in the forms of the other kinds of programming we are required to produce and essentially the taxes that are put onto our business. This is at the same time that foreign competitors come into the marketplace and don't operate under any of the same rules.
Mr. Menzies, in his opening statement, referenced the significant growth in the production sector in Canada, and that is true if he cites aggregate economic data from the CMPA. If he looks at what's happened to broadcasting on the other hand, he will see absolutely the opposite story. The CRTC's own aggregate data showed that the vast majority of local over-the-air television stations in Canada now lose money.
Mr. Menzies was a newspaper publisher prior to his tenure as a CRTC commissioner, and we have seen the hollowing out of the newspaper business in this country with the closure of many local papers because of the loss of local advertising dollars that used to support that business. Those dollars have all migrated to Google and Facebook. Now we are seeing the same thing happening in the broadcasting space, as audiences and dollars migrate to platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon.
While, yes, there is an increase in contract production, with U.S. studios making U.S. content in Canada, we are seeing a decline in Canadian content and especially local content, which is the tip of the spear in terms of this loss. As I said, we've already seen a hollowing out of local journalism at the newspaper level, and that is now starting to have an impact across the broadcast platforms as well.