Good afternoon, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to present the views of our organization on these issues.

My name is Annick Charette, and I am president of the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture, or FNCC.

First of all, I have found it hard to understand the exact issue regarding the hundreds of job cuts at CBC/Radio-Canada. The staff numbers that we have for the previous year are as follows: a total of 141 employees have lost their jobs, and 205 vacant positions have been abolished, for a total of 346 positions out of CBC/Radio-Canada's total staff across the country.

In the current environment, these job cuts are having a greater impact on the workloads of the remaining teams than on the services provided to the public. However, we mustn't downplay the effects of the policy of always doing more with less. We're seeing rising stress levels, heavier workloads, extended work schedules and, in the case of news, difficulty covering increasingly large areas with minimum staff.

Radio-Canada workers are devoted professionals. They are committed to serving the public with a high level of commitment. Above all, they are proud to work for Canada's public media service because they believe Radio-Canada is a national treasure.

That being said, we should be discussing the very essence of that public service.

Radio-Canada belongs to Canadians as a result of a social contract established nearly 100 years ago. Radio-Canada's mission is to represent the essence and values of Canada to its population, to guarantee them access to high-quality information across the country and to reach the most remote Canadian homes to create a window on this exceptional country, which extends across 6 time zones and approximately 9,980,000 square kilometers. No other broadcaster can carry out this mandate; no social network has this mission to devote itself to the Canadian people and to reflect their reality.

Now more than ever, the public broadcaster has a role to play in holding together the society in which we live. It must be the mirror and mouthpiece of diversity, of what distinguishes us and what should unite us in the globalization of markets and the hyper-predominance of the American standardization of all audiovisual product consumption models.

Are we, as a society, prepared to abandon the representation of our reality and cultural identity, those of both Quebec and Canada, to the moods of the private sector's economic interests or those of multinational corporations such as Netflix and Disney? That's the question we have to ask ourselves in considering the value of CBC/Radio-Canada.

Are we prepared to erase the specificity of Canadian and Quebec culture in the digital space?

Local news across the country is doing the best it can as it deals with a 70% decline in advertising revenue. Tens of newspapers are shutting down, and radio and television networks are reducing their coverage, thus resulting in declining traditional revenues.

In the circumstances, it's both unrealistic and irresponsible to make private-sector newsrooms responsible for covering all of Canada. News wastelands extend across the entire country, and CBC/Radio-Canada is the only player that can halt their advance. Well-informed citizens are the foundation of a solid and enlightened democracy.

That said, is everything perfect at our public broadcaster? The obvious answer is no. The same is true of any public broadcaster around the world. That mission and ambition can't be achieved without relying on guiding principles such as independence and transparency, or without the support of stable, multi-year funding that guarantees the broadcaster's ability to project itself into the future.

Today's media world is characterized by an overabundance of available content, growing competitive pressures and globalized supply. The considerable importance of CBC/Radio-Canada in the audiovisual content production ecosystem must not be underestimated. To undermine our public service broadcaster is to endanger many media industry players, content producers, artists, craftspeople and workers who earn a living from it.

In its present form, practices and way of doing things, can Radio-Canada meet the present challenges and new paradigms that define its sphere of action? That's a good question. Is the implicit social contract with the public still valid? We perceive a growing distance between Radio-Canada and the public, even more so from its young audience, despite its attempts to draw closer.