MONTREAL -- Quebec must cap advertising spending in Internet giants and invest more in local and province-wide media, according to a National Assembly report.

The parliamentary committee that tabled the report on Tuesday is made up of elected officials from all parties and its recommendations were unanimous. Both the Liberal Party and Quebec solidaire wanted the report to go further by imposing a tax on web giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, who collect the majority of the advertising pie in Quebec.

Among the recommendations were having the government increase advertising spending in local, regional and provincial media by a significant percentage.

“We could go much further as regards the giants of the web,” said Liberal MNA Isabelle Melancon. “We have this ability in Quebec to tax the giants and we take refuge behind the federal government... Every day, it's money that we lose. It would be a great opportunity to make billionaires in California pay.”

The authors also called for the limiting of investments by ministries and public bodies into digital giants by an established percentage.

The province's opposition parties also said they would like to see the 25 per cent tax credit currently applied to the payrolls of written media newsrooms extended to those of radio and television stations.

CAQ MNA Samuel Poulin said his party's position is that “There is a crisis in written media and we want, above all, to support the written media.”