The Confederation of National Unions (CSN) is proposing the creation of a 2% royalty on the sale of digital devices and subscriptions in order to constitute a Quebec fund intended to maintain newsrooms in the media.
This “info fee” would raise $200 million each year, which would be redistributed to media companies to guarantee the maintenance of staff in their newsrooms.
The CSN and its affiliate, the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture (FNCC-CSN), estimate that this initiative would compensate for part of their advertising revenue losses of around 75% over the past 10 years, or around 800 million dollars.
In addition to this new fund, the CSN is urging the Quebec government to announce the renewal of its tax credit program for the payroll of the journalistic workforce. The union also recommends extending this program to radio and TV newsrooms, also hit by the crisis caused by the loss of advertising revenue to the benefit of digital giants like Facebook and Google.
The CSN is asking that a new deduction be introduced to allow companies to tax deduct double their advertising expenses in local media. The union is also asking the federal and Quebec governments to adopt a policy so that ministries and public bodies stop dealing with digital giants who do not comply with the spirit of the tax rules in force.
In a press conference, the president of the FNCC-CSN, Annick Charette, stressed that the disappearance of journalist positions had the impact that the number of Quebecers without local media increased from 907,000 to 1.6 million between 2010. and 2023.
Mme Charest affirmed that Quebec is exposed to the risk of centralization of information in large centers to the detriment of the regions.
More details will follow.
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