Despite all the obstacles, it is our duty to safeguard our democracy, protect the public's right to information and ensure the survival of our weekly newspapers. Through local and regional news coverage, weekly newspapers reflect their communities, conveying a wealth of actions, events and reactions in every field of human endeavour.
Without these local voices, there is no coverage of regional achievements, municipal news, community organizations or public debate around projects or citizen-led initiatives; no platform for provincial and federal representatives or community figures; and no visibility for cultural organizations, sports groups or business associations.
At the same time, we wish to thank the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance for inviting us to participate in this forum, as part of its study on COVID-19 spending and programs.
The federal budget delivered by the Minister of Finance nearly two weeks ago contains no new funding specifically for our industry. We are, of course, eagerly awaiting measures to reduce the power of the web giants, as previously mentioned, and we believe the federal government can and must play a vital role in levelling the playing field.
We welcome the introduction of a 3% tax on revenue from digital services that rely on data and content contributed by Canadian users. We are, however, anxious for the details of the $300 million over two years in pandemic recovery funding for the Department of Canadian Heritage, and we hope the money will support community newspapers trying to find their way out of the crisis. The same is true of the proposed funding to potentially help more than 160,000 businesses cover the costs of the new technologies they need to compete with Facebook, Google and the other web giants.
Lastly, the extension of the Canada emergency wage subsidy to September 25, 2021 is absolutely vital, in our view, although the subsidy rates would gradually be phased out starting on July 4, 2021, under the budget.
In conclusion, we believe that the $96 million over five years to enhance the competition bureau's enforcement capacity is very much needed. It is important to point out that, in 2018 and 2019, Ottawa spent $52 million to place ads with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other digital giants. During that same period, the federal government spent $11.6 million on online advertising with other, mostly Canadian, platforms. In those years alone, the federal government's online ad buys totalled more than $24 million on Google and nearly $16.5 million on Facebook. Without spending a cent more, the government could have easily allocated some of that money to regional media, directly contributing to their future.
A 2020 survey by the Centre d'études sur les médias revealed that the number of newspaper titles in our industry went from 200 to 113, as a result of mergers, closures and shifts to semi-monthly or monthly publication. In short, the pandemic has hurt revenues, which have dropped by 30% to 40%, and workforces, which have shrunk by at least 20% since 2016. The recent budget offers up a few lifelines, but we are waiting for the real support to materialize.
Thank you. Sylvain and I will be available to reply to your questions, especially about the war that we want to fight against Facebook and Google.