Good afternoon one and all. Thank you very much for inviting me to appear this afternoon.
My name is Alain Bessette, and I am the paid Executive Director of L'Aquilon newspaper and the volunteer Director of the Société Radio Taïga.
I would like to begin by giving you some brief background information about these two media.
L'Aquilon newspaper celebrated its 25th anniversary last week. It was published for the first time in February of 1986, as a monthly paper, but has been a weekly paper since 1993.
The newspaper is on a solid financial footing, even though, like any other company, it does suffer the adverse effects of Canada's economic cycles.
It is a non-profit organization. Éditions franco-ténoises/L'Aquilon is a company whose members are Francophone associations in the Northwest Territories.
The radio station CIVR 103.5 FM Radio Taïga began broadcasting in September of 2001 and will be celebrating its 10th anniversary next September. The station is still controlled by the Association franco-culturelle de Yellowknife, but it will be on its own in a few months. A new non-profit organization has been set up to take over control of the Société Radio Taïga.
These two media are important to the community. According to a poll done in 2009 for L'Aquilon newspaper, 100% of subscribers believe the newspaper plays an important role within the Francophone community. That statistic is perfectly understandable if you consider that it was the Francophone community itself that took the initiative of creating these media. They are seen and perceived, not only as instruments that reflect the vitality of the Francophone communities, but also as partners within the broader Francophone constituency of the Northwest Territories.
Both media are associate members of the Fédération franco-ténoise and members of the Conseil de développement économique des T.N.-O., an organisation affiliated with the Coordinating Group on Economic Development and Employability.
The small size of the community and staff represent two challenges.
Unlike the situation in other provinces, where there is a larger concentration of Francophones, the two media, L'Aquilon and Radio Taïga, serve a small population, both in terms of numbers and density. L'Aquilon serves mainly some 1,200 Francophones in the Northwest Territories, whereas the Radio Taïga signal only covers the Yellowknife area and its 700 Francophone residents.
It should be mentioned, however, that both media also serve French speakers, for a population of more than 3,000. As a result, they act as very effective bridges between the Francophone minority community and Francophiles in the Territories.
In that respect, radio, through its extensive cultural and musical productions, is an incredible tool in terms of bringing the cultures closer together. The two media reflect their community through their content, but also in the fact that their staffs are small: the newspaper has two to three employees, while the radio has one or two employees.
They are both non-profit organizations. Now that does not mean that sales do not have an impact on their financial health. For the 25 years the newspaper has been around, it has been a tough battle to secure equity in terms of advertising, in those areas where official languages legislation make that an obligation for the various governments.
We have to take our hat off to the federal government for establishing guidelines that now mean it is very rare for an ad published in English in a majority language newspaper not to also be published in L'Aquilon. When that happens, it's often because there is a new employee at the office in question. One phone call is all it takes to rectify the situation.
We also resolved this with the territorial government through legal action against the government in 2001.
The situation is fairly similar for Radio Taïga when it comes to advertising by governments in French. The major problem for Radio Taïga has to do with the fact that radio is a medium that is not often used by governments for their marketing strategies.
The weakness of these two media has mainly to do with the problems involved in selling advertising to the private sector. There are two reasons for that. First of all, there are not many Francophones and, when business owners have to make a choice, we may not necessarily be the audience they are interested in. Second of all, our staffs are very small. As a result, we rarely have employees who are able to do everything, including looking after sales.
Past experience with respect to selling advertising showed that the salesperson's salary was higher than the revenues he or she was able to raise. There has been ongoing contact with business owners in the years since then. However, you have to have adequate financial resources to be in a position to absorb the losses associated with this kind of experience.
Even if the two media are non-profit organizations, that shortcoming directly affects their financial viability.
Another issue is the difficulty of accessing funding sources, in terms of priorities.
For years now, both media organizations have relied on grants to ensure their survival. Although it is sometimes possible to access various funding sources, that access remains extremely limited.
Let's take the example of Radio Taïga. There is no federal grant program to support the operations of community radio stations aimed at the Francophone minority. As a result, we turn to other sources of public funding, notably grants in support of community and cultural development projects. Unfortunately, the goals of such programs are rarely compatible with our needs. When they are, Francophones living in minority communities are rarely the target population.
We also face the serious problem of programs whose priorities are perfectly in line with the situation of Francophones elsewhere in the country, but not so well suited to that of a group which, not only is a very small minority, but also has a different day-to-day reality: long distances between communities, an exorbitant cost of living, a high degree of labour mobility and difficulty recruiting locally.
One example I could give you occurred last fall. The Radio Taïga radio station has had a tough time financially for years, ever since it was first created. An analysis done in early 2010 drew the same conclusion as in past years: the radio station is not generating enough revenues. Because expenses have been cut to the bare minimum, there is only one possible solution, which is to raise the station's revenues.
The first step in the plan to raise revenues was to identify potential sources: revenues from grants and revenues from sales. While recognizing the importance of securing core funding for the station for the first time in its history, we decided to apply for grants for own-source revenue development projects, as well as a small project to celebrate the radio station's 10th anniversary. What is amazing is that the only development project that Canadian Heritage considered acceptable was the one to celebrate the station's 10th anniversary. The one aimed at organizing an advertising sales campaign, as well as the one to produce radio programming that could be exported and sold, were both rejected. Those two projects would have allowed us to take action to correct the organization's primary weakness, which is revenue generation.
In your opinion, what should be the priority be? To develop tools that enable us to sell and develop our product, or to continue to be a financially unstable organization which receives an occasional grant that has no real connection to its development needs?
Now I would like to talk about our expectations. We expect more understanding from funders when it comes to the reality in small regions. It is really important that federal government departments—not only Canadian Heritage—understand that the situation in the different regions of Canada is very diverse and that the main development thrust identified at the national level cannot be the basis for assessing every single project, without considering the reality in each of the individual regions. Not only is that reality different in every region, but even within a region, organizations are not all at the same stage of development.
That should also be considered when the government is aiming to support the development of Francophone communities and their institutions.
We would also like fewer value judgements regarding the strategies that are developed. It's unfortunate that we occasionally deal with officials who pass judgement on an internal development strategy relying only on a questionnaire, with lots of boxes to check, but often with too little opportunity to provide as many details as we would like with respect to the relevance of a project.
It is deeply offensive to be told that the objectives of a project are not valid, when they are the result of extensive thought regarding the gaps to be filled. It is also offensive for someone to conclude, after spending one hour assessing an application, that the hours spent analyzing the situation and developing a strategy to resolve it have no value.
Should the assessment process not provide someone with a chance to challenge a committee's decision, if you believe the committee is mistaken and that its decisions could jeopardize the survival of an organization?
As far as Radio Taïga is concerned, we would like to see a fund created to support community radio stations. For Radio Taïga, it is very important that Canadian Heritage create a special fund to support the everyday operations of radio stations, particularly small radio stations providing service in very limited markets. Those stations really live from hand-to-mouth without ever knowing whether they will be able to survive the next few months. That is the situation Radio Taïga finds itself in. And before volunteers find themselves in the difficult position of having to lock the door, we dearly hope that the federal government will make the needed adjustments when it comes to funding.
Once again, thank you very much for listening to my concerns.