Madam Chair, we have not been informed of these allegations. We will look into this, and we will get back to the hon. colleague if we do find any valuable information.
Local community and ethnic media outlets and papers have strong ties to their communities that often go much deeper than the major media outlets. Is the government currently using any local or ethnic media outlets to provide crucial coronavirus information through advertising?
Madam Chair, I totally agree with my colleague. We need to get the information to Canadians on COVID-19, which is why we have started an ad-buy campaign of $30 million, which is being distributed in more than 900 local, regional and national newspapers across the country and 500 radio and TV stations in 12 different languages, including Farsi, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian and many more.
Mr. Minister, I talked to the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday. It has received two ads from an ad agency in connection with the $30 million the government is doling out to help media outlets. They had one ad on March 27. The second ad was on April 11. That is two ads in the Winnipeg Free Press in the last eight weeks. Is this the kind of money you're attempting to dole out to help media: two ads in eight weeks?