Official Languages committee  Mr. Godin, I'm going to make an advertisement here. For those who don't know, I've brought copies of La Liberté for them to read. I'm not authorized to distribute them officially because my newspaper isn't bilingual. I'd also like to immortalize your western tour in pictures. I don't know how you'd like to go about doing that.

Official Languages committee  I come from Quebec, and I arrived in Manitoba in 1990. I've been here for 17 years, and I work in journalism and community development, in one way or another. In my opinion, the greatest achievement I've seen in the past 17 years is that so many things and so many projects have been carried out in all areas that Manitoba Francophones are now seen as a value-added.

Official Languages committee  Yes, that's true. The attitude has changed. I believe that, for someone who comes from elsewhere...

Official Languages committee  What I'm going to say is important.

Official Languages committee  All right. Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Official Languages committee  ...for youth initiatives. We also get money under the Dion Plan which is paid to the province for the education sector. One of the things limiting us in the Dion Plan right now is that, in education, the emphasis is largely placed on immersion schools. These programs are presented in the immersion schools, but we're given no grants to do it in the French schools.

Official Languages committee  Right now, we're taking the money out of the Francofonds initiative funding, the Canadian Heritage funding that was invested in the communities...

Official Languages committee  This is an example in the communications field. Most of the papers in the APF network, the Agence de presse francophone, are in the same situation, that is to say that there's significant staff turnover. In the communications field, we're experiencing exactly what the health people described earlier, that is to say problems training people here and recruiting them in their community so that they can work there.

Official Languages committee  Yes, we already have that. We have an agreement with the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine. Every week, we offer two pages of content on students' activities in the schools. We call that the “Dans nos écoles” pages. That automatically enables all the families that have children in a French school to subscribe.

Official Languages committee  I can't speak for Maclean's because I don't know its budget.

Official Languages committee  The Francophone minority newspapers, whether or not they're for profit—because there are both kinds—definitely aren't in enormous markets that enable them to make enormous amounts of money. We're not making millions of dollars in profits every year. Financial flexibility is generally quite small, and those of us that have to be distributed by Canada Post Corporation, since that's the only solution, definitely need distribution support.

Official Languages committee  La Liberté is a paper with a provincial mandate; it has circulation of 6,000 copies. Half of our readers are in Winnipeg, and the other half are scattered across Manitoba. For us, Canada Post is the only possible way to distribute the paper. When we say $25,000, Mr. Godin, that's based on the PAP's $100,000 contribution to La Liberté in 2004.

Official Languages committee  It was Le Voyageur.

Official Languages committee  We already have that type of agreement.

Official Languages committee  I believe that if there weren't any communications in French, the community wouldn't see itself reflected anywhere. The majority media don't cover matters of interest to Francophones or what they do. If you read the Winnipeg Free Press, if you look at the English-language television networks or if you listen to English-language radio, you won't hear about the people from Saint-Pierre-Jolys or Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes.