Canadian Heritage committee  It's difficult to answer that in the absence of final regulations and an understanding of how the funds will be distributed, especially, as mentioned earlier, when you look at the scope of the organizations that are involved. I would go back to saying that certainly the evacuation of Meta from the industry will, without question, disadvantage many small, start-up and independent publishers, because this was, in many cases, the on-ramp to their developing audiences, and it was a very efficient way in which to do that.

Canadian Heritage committee  Obviously, I hope we're proof that local media can survive and thrive in this environment. When we speak to rural, our smallest community would be about 10,000 people, and we go up to communities with about 150,000 to 200,000 people. Certainly, we are able to access some government funding programs, which help with our expansion, but I think in the world where we find ourselves now—in particular with Meta out of the industry—the ability to accelerate the launch of a new digital community publication has been significantly set back.

Canadian Heritage committee  Get Meta back.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. With respect to the CBC, while there are some roles that are important for the CBC to play, certainly having a commercial role is not one. When they're primarily funded by the government, the loophole they found to compete in particular in the digital advertising space seems unreasonable.

Canadian Heritage committee  We're highly interested in the outcome. We expect the final regulations may prescribe some division of that. Certainly, if the full scope of the CBC and the full scope of private broadcasting is in, including Bell and Rogers, then it obviously dilutes what is already an undervalued pot of funds, which originally, at least I believe, was intended to support the traditional digital and print news industry.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. I was asked that question by the CBC on Power & Politics and I said that I didn't think it seemed reasonable. The CBC currently receives a generous contribution from the federal government of approximately $1.2 billion. If you break that down and distill it, it's equal to almost $150,000 for each of the 3,000 journalists of the 8,000 staff they have.

Canadian Heritage committee  Good morning, everyone, and thank you for having me today. I apologize if my comments are not directly aligned with the title of this session, but I was asked specifically to come today to provide our perspective on Bill C-18 and the Online News Act. As a brief introduction, I am the CEO of Village Media, which is headquartered in Sault Ste.