Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here.
I represent the riding of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, north of Montreal. It includes Deux-Montagnes, Saint-Eustache, Boisbriand et Rosemère.
I have an anglophone community there. They publish North Shore News up there. I'm sure you know, you're one of the 40.
I understand very well when you say that, in the Montreal area, you don't exist in the suburbs to make news. You need local media, and you don't need to convince me of that.
There are two local newspapers in my riding. The Groupe JCL publishes a French-language newspaper, and the North Shore News covers the anglophone communities. Actually, 20% of the population I represent is anglophone. It's a hub.
As for news and advertisers, you mentioned the Journal de Montréal earlier. If people in Saskatchewan read the Journal de Montréal, the advertisers won't reach consumers. Given the population base, if advertisers want to reach clients, it takes social media.
As a small aside, if you want to add anything you didn't say, anything that would help the committee with its report, you can send it to the clerk in writing.
I had a discussion with the Groupe JCL. Yes, it's media in a majority community, but here's what it's done recently.
You always talk about turning to a digital version. The digital platform needs to be fed, provided, of course, that people have high-speed Internet. Even in the northern suburbs of Montreal, there are some places where people don't have access to high-speed Internet.
A digital platform is expensive because you have to constantly feed it news. We were told here that it was more expensive than publishing a paper version of the newspaper every two weeks or every week.
The Groupe JCL has changed the way it does business. It has decided that if the content isn't in the paper version, it won't put it on its digital platform. The North Shore News publishes everything at the same time.
What do you think about that?