Canadian Heritage committee  I can tell you that one of your Saskatoon colleagues, Bill Peterson, set up a whole chain of small independent newspapers, and unfortunately he wasn't able to make it.

Canadian Heritage committee  He went broke. He went at it for a while, but he wasn't able to carry it on. I watched that and I thought we might have given him some help.

Canadian Heritage committee  I appreciate your remarks and I thank you for them. Toronto Star Touch set out to do exactly what you said, to establish, in effect, what La Presse had done in Montreal. We worked in close conjunction with them. The collaboration was absolutely extraordinary. When we started that, one argument was that this was something that would only work in Montreal with the French culture, with the French language, and so on.

Canadian Heritage committee  But we've been cut by one-third. In terms of Toronto Star Touch, the competition in the English market in Toronto is so great. People have so many options. I think the exclusivity of La Presse in Montreal gave it an added advantage. If you were to ask me—I'm going to volunteer this—who is our biggest newspaper competitor today, I would say it's the CBC.

Canadian Heritage committee  I wish.

Canadian Heritage committee  The answer to that is it depends. It depends on whether you're a regular buyer and the plan you might be under. There can be a whole series of plans, but it's not what it used to be.

Canadian Heritage committee  When it comes to advertising, there are now an infinite number of places where digital advertising can go. You had this whole thing—

Canadian Heritage committee  It's absolutely okay. It's created this diffuse market. It used to be that we had a protected place. That's quite right. Now it's infinite and it's going elsewhere. That's the free market. That's where we're living, there's no question.

Canadian Heritage committee  Before you do that, could I please reply to that question, Mr. Chairman? I did not say that.

Canadian Heritage committee  I said it's more profitable, that's correct. The Toronto Star is not doing as well as Metroland, but we are not using resources from the Metroland group to prop up the Toronto Star. I never said that and I wouldn't want that to go unchallenged.

Canadian Heritage committee  You make my point. I understand exactly what you're saying, and I know about those papers. As I pointed out, on the community newspaper side, we have now reduced the number of reporters by 38%.

Canadian Heritage committee  I know there has been a centralization of some of the bureaus and some of those papers. I can take up the particular concerns you raise, but I know this is what's been happening as you reduce reporting, and this is not going on just suddenly. This reduction has taken place over a 10-year period.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, that's not a practice I would condone.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, I would stack up our community papers against the Quebecor papers any day.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, I can tell you that in terms of awards and looking at how they're doing, I would stack them up any day. Clearly there has been a greater centralization in the community paper market because of these declines in resources. The decisions aren't made in Toronto. Metroland, which runs the community papers, is a separate company within the Torstar group.