I think that the federal government could perhaps put forward two criteria. To begin with, you could deal with regions facing negative growth, demographically speaking, based on the statistics for any given province. Then, you could look at the regions in one particular province where the unemployment rate is higher than the Canadian average. These benchmarks could be used by the federal government, but I don't think they are quite there yet. The onus really is on the federal government to set these criteria. And I would suggest two, in particular.
In my opinion, the regions that are experiencing tough economic times would be the main focus. Another would be regions in a particular province which are in trouble financially, dealing with shrinking populations and very high rates of unemployment.