Thank you once again for your presentations. I thank you as well, sincerely, for sharing both the successes and the challenges that you're facing. As I mentioned, as MPs we all have the common interest of wanting to know that the federal dollars are actually making a difference in communities in helping you overcome challenges.
I'd like to congratulate you as well on your model. That's an excellent model. I'd like to congratulate you on the work you put into it.
What it tells me is that in measuring vitality, we have to understand what we mean by vitality. We need to know how to tell whether our vitality is increasing or decreasing in order to understand whether we're moving in the right direction or not. So I really appreciate the work you put into that. It's very simple to follow, which is a great challenge, as you know, with any kind of model--making it detailed enough but simple enough.
One of the things I noted was networking. You're saying community associations are a piece of the solution, but not the sole piece. I was looking at networking. I think networking is essential because it's a way for you to understand your priorities among all the different anglophone associations that exist in Quebec and align yourselves among each other to make sure you're working together in the same direction. As well, it's a way for you to share your successes, understand the challenges each of you is facing, and share information. That's probably a key thing; we were talking before this meeting about how there's often a lack of communication, in that we might have a program, but it's not known down at the community level or at the association level.
You mentioned one success that I was very pleased about, the 15 community learning centres. As we've been moving across Canada I've been mentioning this arrangement we've put in place--$1 billion over four years--and you're the first one who has said it's actually showing up here in the community learning centres. Rachel is one who said they know about that and they're working on that. Again, I think that probably happens through networking, through keeping in communication with each other. What can we as a government do in the networking area to help improve networks among yourselves?
Second, you were talking about anglophones leaving Quebec for a variety of different factors, some political and some economic. What can we do as a government to help you retain an anglophone presence in Quebec?