At the townshippers' level in our region, the discussion turns around demographic weight and those kinds of measures when making investments in the official language minority communities in Quebec, especially in a rural context. The further we get away from the large urban centres, the smaller the pockets of anglophone communities tend to be. They can sometimes get left out completely in terms of opportunities and investments, as well as service delivery. If you only deliver services based on the number of people who are accessing them or have the potential to access them, then it can be highly problematic.
I think it's really important to have a concrete and specific definition of what is meant by the vitality of an official language minority community. We get asked a lot by partners and other stakeholders what we mean by “vitality”. I explain it in my communities and in our region as if a community were a person and had vital signs. How is the health of that person? If you think about your community in that way, is it overweight? Is it aging? Is it ill? What's going on health-wise for your community?
Having those kinds of clarifications makes it easier for organizations like mine to effectively impact those issues and indicators.