Ladies and gentlemen, it is clear that the current funding model has limits. First, fundraising campaigns have, to all intents and purposes, no potential for growth. There is only so much money that can be raised through bingo nights, fund matching and other such types of activities. We cannot ask a community to exceed its capacity. They are already stretched to the limit by a great many other organizations. We are non-profit organizations, and there are many others in the communities where our radio stations are located.
Advertising sales are also considerably limited because our stations cover markets or programming niches that private radio stations are not interested in because they are deemed to be unprofitable. So the growth potential for this revenue is limited. And yet community radio offers a diversity of voices and programs to the public, which is why it is in the public interest. We firmly believe that it should thus have access to public funding.
The ARC du Canada, the ANREC/NCRA, that is the Association nationale des radios étudiantes et communautaires, and the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec, represent some 140 community and campus radio stations in Canada, with over 500 employees. I spoke earlier about our volunteers. Well, I'm not talking about 200 or 300 people who volunteer in community radio stations in Canada, I'm talking about 10,000 people. This means that the training and supervision of these volunteers falls squarely on the shoulders of our radio stations. It is for the very purpose of ensuring the development and sustainability of the third sector of radio broadcasting—because there are three sectors: public, private and community, as acknowledged by the CRTC—that these three associations created the Community Radio Fund of Canada. In order to carry out their responsibilities, we estimate that our radio stations should each have access to at least $30,000 per year. So we're not asking for the moon. This would allow each station to have at least one permanent position.