Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Canada's history of settlement and colonization has resulted in a multicultural society made up of three founding peoples—indigenous, French and British—as well as many other racial and ethnic groups.

CHIN Radio reaches over 100 cultural communities in more than 50 languages within the greater metropolitan Toronto and southern Ontario areas on CHIN FM 100.7, CHIN AM 1540 and CHIN FM 91.9. In the Ottawa-Gatineau region, we're on CHIN 97.9 FM.

The contribution of CHIN to the cause of multiculturalism is to understand, embrace and celebrate our cultural diversity between people of national, racial and religious origins. In today's multicultural society, it is crucial to be able to reach all ethnic groups in our country and to be able to explain to them in their own language any type of message. This is why the Canadian government has many publications and programs that are translated into different languages.

In Ontario, almost 26% of the province's population identified as a visible minority group. In the city of Ottawa, 24% of the population was born outside the country, and in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, over 50% of the population identified as other than English or French.

Multiculturalism in Canada has established us as a unique society keenly aware and respectful of our cultural diversity as a nation and, through the success of our multicultural policies, respectful of the importance of inclusion for all peoples in Canada.

Ethnic media has played and continues to play a vital role in supporting multiculturalism in Canada. For over 70 years, ethnic media has helped new Canadians interpret the world and society around them and made them feel welcomed, informed and entertained in their new home. We believe the government should do more to help ethnic media achieve these goals.

Unfortunately, ethnic media has not been held in equal status to mainstream media, when considering budget expenditures for media campaigns. Government spending in ethnic media is vastly disproportionate to what mainstream media enjoys, largely due to the built-in bias of the diary-based audience measurement methods used by advertising agencies.

These agencies typically rely on established surveying companies, such as Numeris, which is the sole provider of audience measurement data for television and radio broadcasters in Canada.

Audience numbers are accumulated through the diary methodology, which is only provided in two official languages, English and French. Unfortunately, for ethnic broadcasters, this is an immediate disqualifier if the survey is not provided in the mother tongue of the household. This presents a language barrier and would corrupt the findings. In addition, surveys conducted by phone face the same dilemma. If the respondent has a language barrier, the call is terminated.

Even if the individual broadcasters create their own surveys, they are often rejected by agencies as being proprietary. The end result is that ethnic media, in particular radio and TV broadcasters, are not even considered by advertising agencies due to the lack of measurement. It's not because of lack of audience.

Getting the measurement of multicultural audiences correct has long been a struggle for the industry. It cannot be stressed enough—the vital importance of ethnic media to effectively reach audiences with information essential to successful integration into Canadian society. Often, ethnic media is the only source of important information available in a mother tongue, a service not provided by mainstream media outlets.

Many ministers in the government have had, and keep having, from time to time, segments in our shows. They value the direct connection they can establish through CHIN Radio with the different ethnic groups we serve. If the benefits of ethnic media are important to sustain, we believe the government should consider ways in which this great resource can be encouraged and grow.

It is important that the federal government support ethnic media. This doesn't necessarily mean that more funds be allocated to the advertising budget. The government should direct third party advertising agencies to disburse the budget and allocate a minimum of 15% of the overall yearly advertising budget to ethnic media. This would be the right move towards being more inclusive of the multicultural media outlets. Inclusion is not just the smart thing to do; it is also the right thing to do.

This distribution of funds would permit the government to make a more targeted effort to convey a message to certain ethnic groups and to reach out to the many diverse ethnic entities living in Canada in a very proactive and dynamic way.

With ethnicity and languages, it's an ongoing process. We mostly have an open door immigration policy. The government is pursuing an ambitious plan to welcome 395,000 immigrants in 2025; 380,000 in 2026; and 365,000 in 2027. That's a door that's not going to close anytime soon. It's going to continue well into the future years to come.

Thank you.