In some provinces, the community health centres are equivalent to some degree to the CLSCs, the local community service centres. They are really a public system. It is interesting to note that Alberta is considering the creation of family care clinics and is studying the possibility of adopting the cooperative model.
Also interesting, the four Saskatchewan cooperatives are a part of the community health centres network and of the public network. The democratic process is what differentiates a cooperative model organization from one that is not built around that model. In the first case, the population, the members, are involved. Often they make a financial contribution, small or large. The fact is that members become the owners, to a certain extent, of their health development tool, in their community. And so, there is more involvement on the part of those members.
Members of cooperatives believe in the collective responsibility for health, but also believe in personal responsibility. The principle is that people should be involved in fostering their own health, and learn to manage it themselves. You can see the difference. Generally speaking, the additional services involve prevention, essentially because people want to help each other out. Rather than using a program or a standard approach that allocates funds to a specific purpose, the model trusts the communities and allows them to determine their own needs themselves. In a lot of cases, their solutions really meet their needs, since they are the ones who know what they are. That is the difference we have observed.