Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
I sincerely thank you for inviting the Coopérative des publications fransaskoises, which has published the Eau vive newspaper in Saskatchewan since 1971. My name is Marie-France Kenny, and I have been the president of this organization since May 2017.
I also thank you for travelling here. This is the first time you've come to Saskatchewan, a province that is usually forgotten, and you can tell Ms. Brais that you met with members of a strong, vibrant and active fransaskoise community.
I had the opportunity to talk about our newspaper when I testified on March 19, as part of your study on minority community media, so I will not talk too much about the newspaper itself. I will focus on the action plan, as you asked, and on what kind of impact this plan and the investments announced in the government's budget will have. The government also announced investments in media in the budget.
When I met with you in March, the Coopérative had accumulated a deficit of just over $40,000 and had one and a half employees. Since then, the government announced in its budget that it would provide funding to help minority community media, and the action plan came out. The additional funding to help minority community media will certainly help us, as these media are in precarious situations, like we were. This was in the budget, not in the action plan. We will soon be getting $50,000 in assistance. The problem with this investment from the government is that we have been told not to hire staff with this money.
We have one and a half employees, or one full-time and one part-time employee who work between 60 and 80 hours a week. One of them is here this morning. We have been told to use the money to develop new markets, and so on. We need a staff member to do that. I recommend that the government at least set a percentage. I would not mind if the government decided that 30% of the money could be used to hire employees, but the media need to be able to use some of this funding to hire staff.
The action plan investments in the young Canada works program have allowed us to hire an intern, an entry-level journalist, for one year. This is a very important resource. We will be growing to two and a half employees, which is very much needed. Next year, we will be allowed to hire another intern. I'm sure you understand that these interns need orientation, training and supervision. In return, they learn and gain experience so that they can find a full-time job at the end of the year. This means that, at the end of the year, when they've finally found their footing and are starting to understand how things work, we'll have to let them leave and find someone new. We start over from scratch.
As an employer, I assure you that if a year of experience can help them get a job, two years of experience would make it even easier for these journalists to join the workforce. I recommend that the government look at allowing newspapers to decide whether they want to keep the same intern for two years, in order to provide more stability and to give new journalists a two-year internship, which would make it easier for them to get a job afterwards.
I want to take this opportunity to remind you that these long-awaited, much-appreciated investments are absolutely essential to the survival of our newspaper, but they are one-time investments, which do not reverse the damage caused by the cuts to federal advertising we've experienced, which are in violation of the Official Languages Act.
One-time financial assistance is certainly helpful, but the annual shortfall is no different. We are talking about $50,000 a year. An investment of $50,000 this year to help us out of a difficult situation will not be renewed next year. We are talking about $50,000 a year for us, and about $2 million a year for all of our francophone minority newspapers. I urge the new Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism, the hon. Pablo Rodriguez, whose mandate is to work with newspapers and manage federal advertising, to right this wrong as soon as possible.
Now, I would like to speak, not as the president of the Coopérative des publications fransaskoises, but as someone who has rather good knowledge of our communities. I have to say that the only part of the action plan I support is the part about the Canadian francophonie. I work with all parties, as long as the work will support the Canadian francophonie.
The action plan reflects the cross-Canada consultations on official languages reasonably well. I say reasonably well, since we were heard, but the investments fall short of the demands and the needs. There were a lot of oversights in Saskatchewan. The topics of women, equality and parity are hot topics now, as are family caregivers, the majority of whom are women, and assistance for seniors, yet the Fédération provinciale des Fransaskoises has not received funding for programming in three years, and its only project was denied.
The Fédération des aînés fransaskois, which submits programming requests, has not received funding for five years because there supposedly is not enough money. This federation has been granted a $30,000 project, but no money for programming. This means that it will not receive the additional 20% that everyone received because it did not have any programming. This may not seem like much, but for an organization that is receiving $30,000, it's a lot.
Since there is more money this year, I recommend that the so-called project granted to the Fédération des aînés fransaskois be converted into programming and that it be granted a substantial increase so that it can develop this programming.
I also recommend that support be given to the Fédération provinciale des Fransaskoises. I'm not necessarily talking about financial support, but the federation doesn't have the material and human resources to submit a detailed programming request for next year.
It takes longer than expected to implement the action plan, and most of our organizations are worried about this. In the past, we sometimes had to wait more than a year for implementation. This meant that we sometimes didn't have access to all of the initiatives and their financing. A lot of time is spent setting the criteria. Once they're set, we're given three months to implement them, but we don't have enough human or financial resources to do so.
The government should not only consult the communities about the criteria, but it should also explain to them how the consultations are factored in. There should be a mid-term evaluation. This was done in the past as part of the roadmap. However, at the time, the evaluations were simply anecdotes. There was no information about where the money had been invested. The money from the last two roadmaps still hasn't been fully invested.
I therefore suggest that at the end, if all of the money announced hasn't been spent, that it be given to all of the organizations according to the formula currently used.
