Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you, folks, for coming to see us today.
There has been lots of talk today about access to doctors in rural and remote communities. I never actually thought of Barrie as being particularly rural. Since I come from Toronto, it's just kind of up the road, with lots of suburbs in between.
Setting that aside for the moment, I was watching The National last night and there was a story about paramedics in Toronto being rerouted seven times in the course of three hours and a woman eventually dying over that period of time.
If I may, I'll share my own personal experiences with trying to access a doctor. I've had the same doctor for almost 20 years in Toronto. I thought I could book an appointment for a checkup with two months' notice, but apparently that's not correct. It required six months' notice. Then I had to miss that one, so that set me back another five or six months. By the time I got my annual physical booked, a whole year had gone around. In my family, my son and I—the boys in the family—have stuck with this particular doctor. Once my girls grew up, they decided to go to a female doctor in our neighbourhood, and it's really just this constant rotation of doctors through a clinic where you never see the same doctor twice.
With all of that, I accept the issues of remote and rural communities, but in our cities we have a huge problem with accessing health care and doctors on a consistent basis as well.
I should add that even in downtown Toronto, because of this condo boom we've experienced, even though there are a whole bunch of hospitals up and down University Avenue, as you know, they have simply been overwhelmed with the population in downtown Toronto.
My first question, after that lengthy introduction, is to the cooperative folks. You talked about pretty much all rural cooperatives. Is there any application of this model in an urban context?