The Alliance des radios communautaires du Canada, the National Campus and Community Radio Association and the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec, which together represent 140 community and campus radio stations across the country and are supported by more than 500 employees and 10 000 volunteers, have already made a step in the right direction.
Indeed, it is out of a desire to ensure the development and sustainability of the third broadcast sector that the three associations established the Community Radio Fund of Canada in November of 2007. The three associations estimate that the sector as a whole requires more than $20 million. Thus far, the fund has generated approximately $1 million, which represents less than $5,000 per station, an amount that is obviously inadequate.
It is our belief that, in order to fulfill their responsibilities, our radio stations must be able to count on a guaranteed annual amount of at least $30,000, which would at least allow them to maintain one permanent position per station.
Given that the current funding model has reached the limit of its usefulness and that fundraising does not actually allow for any growth, community media organizations must possess twice the ingenuity just in order to survive. Advertising sales are considerably limited, because our stations operate in markets or programming slots that are not targeted by private radio, given that the latter has determined them to be unprofitable. So, the findings are clear: revenue growth is limited.
In our opinion, a federal government contribution would support the following statement from the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality 2008-2013:
Measures are also planned to support community radio and other local media that promote cultural and community activities among youth. For young Canadians, this will mean greater availability of local media and activities in the minority official language.
Without recurring government funding, we are concerned that the status of our radio stations will steadily worsen and that this will have disastrous consequences for official language minority communities.
I should mention in passing that we would like to extend our thanks to the government of Canada for including the Franco Médias 2010 project in the Roadmap. This initiative enabled francophones and Acadian communities to also contribute to the success of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. However, it is important to keep up the momentum.