Canadian Heritage committee  Ladies and gentlemen of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, thank you for inviting us to appear here today. My name is Francis Sonier, and I am the president of the Association de la presse francophone. Today I am accompanied by the executive director of the APF, Jean-P

Canadian Heritage committee  Newspapers don't need fabulous equipment to operate. They mainly need human resources that produce content that is printed on paper or posted on a website, for example. They don't need a lot. It takes human resources. That is where investment is needed. We don't have an antenna o

Canadian Heritage committee  Indeed, not all provinces provide that much assistance to their minority community newspapers. Take Manitoba, for example, where French immersion classes in English schools have a subscription to La Liberté, a French-language newspaper. The subscription was purchased by the schoo

Canadian Heritage committee  The newspaper La Presse had to factor that in and crunch the numbers. I do not have those figures, but I know that distribution and printing were very expensive. Let us keep in mind that La Presse still has a concentrated central market, namely the greater Montreal area, with ove

Canadian Heritage committee  Our weekly circulation is approximately 200,000 copies. There are several readers for each copy, specifically about three readers per copy. Our administration budget is $357,000.

Canadian Heritage committee  We have feet on the ground.

Canadian Heritage committee  You have opened a door and there are two minutes remaining. I will tell you this. In 2014, an official from Public Works and Government Services came to our annual general meeting and informed us that it was not up to the agencies to decide, but rather to Public Works and Govern

Canadian Heritage committee  That is what we understood.

Canadian Heritage committee  Are you referring to our association members?

Canadian Heritage committee  Are you talking about the advertising?

Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of support programs for newspaper operations, we are talking about $490,000. For advertising, the amount comes to around $430,000. I do not have the exact figures.

Canadian Heritage committee  That was $490,000 for 2013-14, under the aid to publishers program.

Canadian Heritage committee  No. That was for operations, for assistance to publishers.

Canadian Heritage committee  For advertising, it was about $430,000.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. We went from $1.9 million to around $430,000.