Thank you for your warm welcome, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the members of the committee for their interest in the media that serves official language minority communities.
We do not want to be alarmist, but the situation is nonetheless extremely serious. As you will see, Ms. Gaulin and I are in general agreement about the critical situation of the minority media, and we have a number of joint solutions to offer.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am part of the Coalition pour la pérennité de la presse d'information au Québec, a coalition fighting for the survival of news media in Quebec. Above all, though, I am here as the president of a newspaper that serves francophone Ontario. In other words, I serve the Franco-Ontarian community.
Let me say a few words about Le Droit. The newspaper is a hundred years old, and its first edition was published on March 27, 1913. Its history is closely linked to that of Franco-Ontarians. You will recall Regulation 17 which, at the time, sought to ban French as a language of instructions in Ontario. You will also recall the Montfort hospital. The newspaper Le Droit was directly involved in these fights.
When it comes to the interests and aspirations of Ontario's francophone community, we are there and are listening. You may have read in our newspaper over the past year articles from Ontario's French-language university about making Ottawa a bilingual city and about the revision of Ontario's French Language Services Act. We serve the Franco-Ontarian community.
If you ask Franco-Ontarians today what they think of Le Droit, you might hear something like this: Le Droit is a serious daily newspaper that provides quality information, a daily newspaper that has surprised us by publishing a monthly business magazine, but that focuses too much on Quebec. Money is king, they say. As the City of Gatineau has grown, Le Droit has found readers and business partners on the Quebec side, so much so that nearly three out of four readers are now Quebecers. But we have not forgotten Franco-Ontarians. We were born of the Franco-Ontarians' struggle and we are still focused on it.
The daily Le Droit is part of the Groupe Capitales Médias, whose sole shareholder is Mr. Martin Cauchon. The other dailies in the group are Le Soleil, in Quebec City, Le Quotidien, in Saguenay, Le Nouvelliste, in Trois-Rivières, La Voix de l'Est, in Granby, and La Tribune, in Sherbrooke.
Le Droit is the only daily published in Ontario. Our offices are nearby, on Clarence Street, in the Byward market. That is where 74 of our 78 employees work. We have sales of about $13 million. Le Droit offers the news on several platforms: the print edition, the tablet and cell phone app, and of course the website.
How far does Le Droit reach? Every week, it reaches at least 215,000 individuals, which is more than half the francophone population in the national capital region, on both sides of the river, that is.
When I was asked to be the president of the daily Le Droit, Martin Cauchon specifically told me that I had to recapture Franco-Ontarian readers. We have made a tremendous effort to do this, and Franco-Ontarians have taken note.
It has been a tough period. We are trying incredibly hard, but it is difficult. In the two and half years I have been in the job, we have cut 15 positions, including five in editorial. It is difficult to increase our service to the Franco-Ontarian community when we cut five editorial positions.
Being profitable is a formidable challenge. We are questioning our business model, which is based on two things. A newspaper has two sources of revenue: subscriptions and the advertising space that business partners buy in the newspaper.
As to subscriptions, it is clear that information is available, abundant and free on the Internet. That is why subscription rates have fallen by 10% every year for the past five years.
As to advertising, there is local advertising, which is purchased by our business partners, which has also dropped by 10% every year, and I will explain why. Second, there is national advertising, such as Air Canada, the Royal Bank or Ford, which has fallen by 25% per year in recent years. So money is tight and we have to fight to stay afloat. The problem is that Google and Facebook claim more than 70% of advertising dollars in Canada; that is nothing new to any of you. Their prices are so low that they are sabotaging the value of the market.
How are governments responding to this critical situation? Honestly, I have to say that our concerns are growing. The proof is that we are here before you today talking about it. For my part, I also appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. The concern expressed is real, but there has been no action so far. It is time for action. The government has a very clear responsibility to official language minority communities under the Official Languages Act. Federal institutions have to take positive measures to enhance the vitality of English and French linguistic minority communities and foster their equal status in Canadian society.
What supports the development of a language and culture? It is of course family, friends, school, the workplace and the media. If the media are taken away, a major instrument for the transfer of culture is lost. The media are a mirror; they provide an open forum for people to meet, get to know each other, and talk; they are a meeting point. It is in the media that we discuss our successes and the challenges we face. To be blunt, right now the federal government is not living up to its responsibility for supporting the media that serve official language minority communities. In my opinion, it is failing all media in Canada.
Of course no one wants the government to control the media by controlling their finances. Yet steps can be taken to prevent that from happening. Many countries that are much more generous than Canada are in fact able to prevent the media from being controlled and becoming propaganda tools.
It is primarily the Minister of Canadian Heritage who is in charge of this file. She said the government cannot invest in a business model that is not viable. What business models are viable? Aside from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, which newspapers make money? I do not know of very many that make enough to be worth the effort. Is La Presse a viable newspaper? Without venturing out onto thin ice, I can tell you that community and regional media do not have sufficient sales at this time for long-term profitability.
That said, are we relevant and useful to democratic life? Do we support the cultural life of our communities? We firmly believe so.
As to the solutions, there are several.
The first solution would be for the government to give our media a reasonable share of its advertising. We have been urging the government to do this since this topic has been under discussion. From 2006-2007 to 2014-2015, in eight years, federal spending on advertising in community newspapers fell from $1.9 million to $430,000. The government has divided its budget by four. For radio, spending on advertising fell from $730,000 to $200,000. Once again, the government has divided its budget by four. At the same time, spending for all advertising for federal institutions on the Internet is increasing by millions of dollars.
Do not say that newspapers do not reach their communities. With an equation of a + b = c, I could prove to you that newspapers reach their communities and that the communities read them.
My second point pertains to a tax credit for the production of original Canadian information. This exists in the film world. As you know, we sometimes hear that things are not going well in the aerospace or automotive sector and the government has to step in. Should the government step in when it comes to building strong information technology pillars? Yes, but only tax credits are offered. If the media are not of particular interest to the government, we have serious problems. A tax credit for the production of original information would be another approach.
Would it not be possible to quickly establish a program to partially refund our investments in digital technology?