Thank you for that question.
Yes, to pick up on something you alluded to, we know that a third of Canadians do not have dental insurance, so this is an important program. As a physician, I can certainly say that oral health is a key component of overall health. I think we can all recognize that.
As PSPC, we're working very closely with Service Canada and obviously with Health Canada in terms of each of our roles in rolling out this program. Service Canada is going to be the first point of contact where people apply to potentially enrol. Health Canada is obviously putting together what needs to be covered by the third party provider. We will then be involved in actually working with the third party provider, awarding the contract and moving forward with a program that actually provides dental care for those uninsured Canadians within the financial bracket that they happen to be in.
At this point in time, initially we put out an invitation to qualify to third party providers. We had a number of people interested. We brought that down to three that actually had the ability and the proven capacity to roll out a program of this size. We are now working with the three suppliers to identify precisely what is required of them. We intend to, in fact, issue the RFP officially within the next week or so.
Our intention is to hopefully have people beginning to be able to enrol towards the end of the year, the beginning of 2024—in that kind of time frame. We're hoping we can award the contract in the fall. We've been working very closely with these three, which have passed the first invitation to qualify piece and are now in the running for the RFP.
We're getting closer. It's a big program. At the end of the day, it should reach one-third of the Canadian population. We're talking about 9.8 million individuals. It is very ambitious, but I know that the officials are working really hard to make sure it is done on time and appropriately.