Vitality of Francophone communities in Winnipeg, Sudbury and Halifax

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages carried out studies on the Winnipeg, Sudbury and Halifax Francophone communities. This is a concrete action research project that is well rooted in the everyday life of the communities.

The research focused on vitality in four specific sectors of activity: immigration, health care, community governance and access to government services.

In each city, a working group made up of approximately 10 people who work in these different sectors was created. As these communities are the primary architects of their own development, it was important for them to participate actively in the study and in designing a community vitality assessment tool that reflects their priorities.

In each sector of activity, the communities drew up a list of the expected short-, medium- and long-term results, the corresponding indicators and the sources of data. These tools will be useful to not only the communities that were studied, but also other minority communities and governments that have specific responsibilities in terms of the development and vitality of official language communities.

The results of our research are published on the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages' Web site.

We are currently starting another component of the study, which will focus on three Quebec Anglophone communities: in the Estrie region, in Québec City and on the Lower North Shore. The results will be released in 2008.

These studies are part of an extensive research project on vitality. The first research report, published in May 2006, is entitled A Sharper View: Evaluating the Vitality of Official Language Minority Communities.