Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my turn to welcome you to our annual shareholders’ meeting.

I attach great importance to this event because it gives us an opportunity to address our shareholders, business partners and executives. The remarks we make here today reflect our formal commitments.

This is my 15th annual meeting. But unlike the other 14, I am now standing in front of you. The perspective, I must say, is somewhat different! It’s a responsibility that I accept with enthusiasm.

First of all, I’d like to thank Luc Desjardins for his availability and support over the years, and particularly during the last five months. Thank you very much, Luc.

I also extend my thanks to my colleagues all across the company for their warm reception to my appointment.

As Rémi just mentioned, an internal candidate is synonymous with continuity and stability. Speaking for myself, the key element of that continuity will be teamwork, which has always been Transcontinental’s hallmark. For me, that means the pleasure of sharing one’s passion, of helping each other and, ultimately, of achieving success together.

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I will now give you an overview of our main achievements in 2007. As you will see, Transcontinental is excellently positioned to keep growing.

The Race Towards Excellence

Last August, at the annual meeting of our 150 senior managers, we launched The Race Towards Excellence, a mobilizing tool designed to bring the company’s vision and strategy to our some 15,000 employees.

This initiative supports the ultimate goal of Evolution 2010, which is to be the best in all of our activities, thereby ensuring our future growth.  That future growth will be rooted in our four business issues: talent, sales growth, efficiency and digital.

Let me give you a brief overview of each one.

Talent

In the 21st century economy, talent is a company’s main competitive edge. The best strategies will get you nowhere if you do not have the right people to carry them out. For that, you need leaders at every level of the organization.

That is the goal of our Mission: Leadership program, which seeks to broaden responsibility for leadership at Transcontinental to 1500 of our managers. The objective is to give them the tools they need to strengthen our culture of continuous improvement, to empower and to develop talent. More than 85% of them have completed this program, with immediate benefits.

Furthermore, the vast majority of our some 15,000 employees have taken the Phil – The Three Pillars^TM course. One of the main goals of this program was to deepen the culture of continuous improvement and employee participation throughout the company. We also launched 360 Feedback, which is designed to help executives set development objectives and get feedback from those they work with so that they can improve as leaders.

In 2008, we will be putting special emphasis on identifying and developing our in-house talent so that we achieve greater self-sufficiency in meeting our leadership needs.

Julien Houle, Corporate Vice President, Human Resources, is in charge of the Talent issue.

Sales Growth

Another crucial issue for our future is organic growth in sales. Our goal is to achieve an average 5% organic growth in sales per year for the period from 2006-2010. By the end of 2007 we were slightly under 3%, but we almost reached our goal in the final quarter. The momentum is building. Internal growth is thus a major component of our efforts to achieve 10% annual growth in earnings per share.

Organic growth relies on our ability to anticipate the new needs of our customers and to meet them quickly. That demands creativity and an innovative spirit, which are, as it happens, two of our corporate values.

In 2007, we achieved a resounding success with readers and advertisers by launching the Canadian version of More, a magazine that meets the needs of an under-served niche by targeting women aged 40 plus. We will build on this feat by launching a French version in the fall of 2008. Congratulations to Francine Tremblay, Senior Vice President, Consumer Magazines, and her team, for this gratifying success.

Another initiative was the creation of Transcontinental Custom Communications, a joint custom publishing venture with British agency Seven Squared. This segment has strong growth potential. Stéphane Gagné is in charge of this area.

In our printing operations, organic growth takes two specific forms: outsourcing and expanding the line of products and services we offer to our existing customers.

In outsourcing, our business credibility has led companies to entrust us with entire departments in their value chain. For instance, Canadian Tire and, more recently, Loblaw, outsourced their premedia operations to us. Premedia includes design, digital photography, image archiving, colour management, remote proofing and I’ll stop there. Congratulations to Nicky Milner, our Vice President, Premedia Group, for these important gains.

In newspaper printing outsourcing, we have marked an important milestone with our exclusive 15-year contract to print the San Francisco Chronicle, and we set up a new division to develop our outsourcing model and manage our future newspaper printing plants in the United States. Ted Markle is the leader of this division and things are progressing well.

Last Friday, we announced that we had won an exclusive six-year contract to print the entire portfolio of Rogers Publishing magazines, which numbers more than 70 titles. This arrangement is worth $210 million in new business. One of the reasons for this important gain is our commitment to using state-of-the-art technology and offering superior products. Our sound financial base allows us to invest so that we can serve our existing customers better and attract new customers like Rogers. I’d like to thank Guy Manuel, President of the Marketing Products and Services sector, and Brian Reid, Senior Vice President of the Catalogues and Magazine Group, for the crucial role they played  in winning this contract.

The excellence of our sales staff definitely played a role in being awarded the contract to print the French version for the Canadian market of the final volume in the Harry Potter series. This was the third volume of the French-language series that we have printed at our plant in Louiseville, which speaks to our world-class calibre. Congratulations to Jacques Grégoire, Senior Vice President of the Book Group, and his team!

To date I have taken personal responsibility for the Sales Growth issue and I firmly believe in it.

Efficiency

The third issue, efficiency, is in our genes. But we must constantly strive to do better.

To that end, in 2007 we developed the Continuous Improvement Roadmap, to help each business unit identify its strengths and weaknesses by measuring itself against the best in the world. And, more importantly, to draft an improvement plan that measures their progress. You can only improve what you can measure.

One of the most important initiatives involved introducing 5S, a continuous improvement system aimed at creating an enjoyable, safe and efficient work environment. 5S increases productivity by streamlining procedures and maximizing the use of space. A number of our printing plants are already 5S certified and we can measure the improvement. By the end of 2008, all of our plants will have received or will soon achieve 5S certification.

At this point I’d like to mention two remarkable performances in 2007 with respect to efficiency improvements and financial results.

I’m talking about the Mexico Group, under the dynamic direction of Roberto Sierra, and the Commercial Products Group and its management team composed of Hans Nielsen, Patrice Lacoste and Marian Kerr. Congratulations to both groups.

The person in charge of the Efficiency issue is Réal Boulet, Corporate Vice President, Efficiency and Innovation.

Digital

The fourth issue, digital, is a natural fit. Transcontinental’s mission is to help advertisers reach consumers. Today, new digital media, including the Internet, are radically changing how we work, get information, buy goods and enjoy ourselves. A few quick figures: a billion people in the world now have Internet access and, according to a recent study, by 2011 18% of the advertising dollar will be spent on the Internet, double the amount in 2006.

In 2007, without any fanfare, Transcontinental Media intensified the development of various digital platforms. For instance, we launched the site lebelage.ca, aimed at the 50 plus communities, as well as new versions of lesaffaires.com, canadianliving.com and thehockeynews.com. Since these launches, traffic on all these sites has increased significantly. Overall, our revenues from digital sources grew 40%. And let me add that our Internet activities are profitable.

Today we offer more than 120 sites that receive an average of four million unique visitors a month. Most are interactive extensions of magazines, daily papers or community papers, but others have no print counterpart. Note that our sites serve communities of interest or local communities.

With its digital solutions, Transcontinental Media has a national penetration rate of 17%. Our penetration rises to 36% in the “hobby, lifestyle and food” category, one of the most popular with Internet advertisers. In this category we have three of the 10 most-visited sites in Canada (canadianliving.com, coupdepouce.com and recettes.qc.ca.).

The Digital issue is the responsibility of Natalie Larivière, President, Media Sector.

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The Race Towards Excellence is like a training program aimed at getting each Transcontinental business unit to strive for continuous improvement. By measuring ourselves against the best in each area of activity, we will create the conditions that will lead us to excellence.

Growth Through Acquisition

In 2007, we also continued to grow through acquisitions in our strategic segments. We did it in our usual disciplined and responsible way.

We added community papers in four provinces: Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec. We now have 172 newspapers in our portfolio, for a total of 250 million copies a year. This makes Transcontinental the second-biggest player in this segment in Canada. The vital role community papers play in their communities makes them irreplaceable partners. As usual, the integration of our new titles was skillfully handled by Marc Ouellette, Senior Vice President, Newspaper Group, and his team. Well done.

I am sure that Marc is very happy with today’s announcement that we are going to invest $60 million in our Transcontinental Transmag printing plant in Montreal. That’s where we print, among other things, 40 of our community newspapers, the business newspaper Les Affaires and Métro, our free daily paper. Transmag will become one of the most modern newspaper printing plants in the world. And its state-of-the-art technology will make it possible for us to continue our growth by offering a renewed printing product with colour on every page. This will support our continued growth both as a publisher and printer.

In addition, we strengthened our leading position in Canada in direct marketing through the acquisition of PLM Group. Established in 1987, PLM has about 500 employees in the Greater Toronto area and reported revenues of $126 million in 2006. In addition to its direct marketing products and services, PLM also provides sophisticated premedia and digital printing services. Its diversified customer base is composed of a number of major companies who will now more easily benefit from Transcontinental’s global services offering. This promising combination is already producing results.

The integration process went very well under the combined leadership of Barry Pike, founder of PLM, who agreed to stay with us, and Guy Manuel, President of the Marketing Products and Services sector, as well as their respective teams. Congratulations to you, guys, on a job well done.

With facilities in Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Toronto and Montreal, Transcontinental now heads a direct marketing network that can serve the entire North American continent.

Managing acquisitions is a complex process that has for a number of years been handled by Isabelle Marcoux, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors and Vice President, Corporate Development. Congratulations, Isabelle, on your excellent work.

When it comes to acquisitions, we have world-class support by our legal team, headed by Christine Désaulniers. Christine, please convey my appreciation to your team.

Once the acquisition is made, the challenge is to integrate it quickly, effectively and smoothly. We have an excellent reputation for this as well, as shown by our successful integration of Chenelière Éducation, Canada’s biggest publisher of French-language educational resources, in 2007. Credit for this goes to Jacques Rochefort and his team, and to Isabelle, who managed the entire process from beginning to end.

Since late January, Chenelière Éducation has come under Pierre Marcoux, Vice President, Business Publications and Publishing, with Transcontinental Media.

Our Environmental Commitment

Transcontinental has always been known as a model company in terms of its respect for the environment. Last year, as part of our revamped action plan, we renewed our commitment in our own way, by mobilizing our employees and taking concrete action.

Green initiatives have sprung up all over the company. We have gathered them together in a beautiful brochure that will be distributed to all our employees and partners in the next few days. You can pick up an advance copy today, just outside the door, in our new biodegradable Publi-Sac, another first. In fact, today officially marks the first day of the door-to-door delivery of our new bag, certified by EPI (Environmental Products Inc.). Congratulations to Gilles Lagarde, Vice President and General Manager, Distribution Group, and his team for this initiative.

Management wanted to set the tone by adopting an eco-friendly paper purchasing policy. This policy was developed in conjunction with our partners, with assistance from Markets Initiative, a non-profit group dedicated to the protection of forests and biodiversity. I’d like to mention the key role played by Jean Denault, Corporate Vice President, Procurement and Technology, who took on this important job in addition to his other responsibilities.

I’d like to take advantage of our annual meeting to mark an initiative presented in our brochure that we feel is particularly worthy of attention: a waste recycling project organized by Transcontinental Interweb Montreal, our printing plant in Boucherville. Thanks to this project, we have reduced waste by 30%, a considerable amount, and it’s all due to the enthusiastic participation of Interweb’s approximately 500 employees.

The Initiatives 2007 brochure is the first public document I have signed as president and chief executive officer. This is not a coincidence. I firmly plan to build on our traditional commitment, as we have in 2007, and intensify our protection of the environment.

Conclusion

It is time to wrap this up.

As the new chief executive officer, I see my role as masterminding the future growth of Transcontinental. It is clear that we will continue to participate in the consolidation of the printing and publishing industries to support our growth.

However, our growth in the years ahead will be based in part on our ability to integrate and develop new, non-print related growth platforms. These will help our existing customers optimize their marketing dollar. Here I’m thinking of new services such as digital display, email marketing, databases, Internet, and so on. This means that our goal will be to increase our digital revenues to match their ratio in the advertising market and with consumers.

This means that we will have to partially reinvent ourselves.

This global offer, which combines new digital platforms with print, will make Transcontinental an essential marketing partner. The keystone will continue to be our relations with our customers: our close proximity, our credibility and our reputation. Thos are the levers that will place us with our customers as we move forward together toward these new services.

To summarize:

• We have shown that we have the stability and financial flexibility to keep growing.

• We have illustrated the strength of the teams in place and their ability to carry out our strategies.

• Lastly, we have seen that Transcontinental’s unique business culture is an important competitive edge for the future.

I am convinced that we have the tools and the people to ensure that our shareholders benefit, for many years to come, from a sustained increase in the value of their investment.

Thank you for listening. I will now pass the baton over to Benoît Huard.