I want to add some concrete examples to what Mr. Gauthier was saying. I'm the regional chief of staff for Central Manitoba, a rural doctor in Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes. This is a region southwest of Winnipeg that includes a number of small scattered francophone communities.
Mr. Gauthier talked about training. I am a supervisor of students and medical residents on behalf of the Consortium national de formation en santé or CNFS. This is one of the pillars that the SSF is talking about. A number of students and residents from Manitoba, Ottawa and soon Sherbrooke come to train with us. We believe that this can help with the recruiting and future retention of francophone doctors in our region.
I want to talk about networking. Until quite recently, I chaired the network in Manitoba, the Conseil Communauté en santé or CCS. Recently, perhaps two years ago, the Government of Manitoba made the CCS the official representative of francophones in the areas of health care and social services in Manitoba. This is quite official. In any case, this gives it more credibility overall and even at the national level. Of course, our network is part of the national network, which is bigger. Thanks to the cooperation of the SSF and Health Canada, our network was able to take action.
The third thing that Hubert mentioned was services. We receive funding from Health Canada through the SSF. A number of projects were able to go forward in Manitoba as a result of these funds. The project I'm most interested in is being implemented near me in Notre Dame de Lourdes. The project is to develop a community or primary health care centre. Using a $30,000 grant, we studied the needs of the community based on the 12 health determinants. Next, we designed a primary health care centre. In addition to the $30,000 grant, the community raised $1.5 million for this project. As a result, the Government of Manitoba joined in and added $500,000. I will not name all the partners, because there are approximately 30 of them. Construction is currently underway.
There is a value-added factor to all this. We will become more of a training centre, not only for doctors, but also for other health care professionals. We have attracted the attention of Canada Health Infoway and Telehealth Manitoba. They have seen our project, and we are part of a pilot project using cutting-edge technology, teleconsultations and teleconference calls. Our goal is to improve access to services in French in our region and to network our centre, because it was networked with other francophone centres in Manitoba. I keep calling it a francophone centre, but it is really a bilingual centre because, in Manitoba, it is clearly bilingual. I consider this an added value. We provide services in French, but we can certainly also provide them in English.
I just wanted to give a concrete example to illustrate what Mr. Gauthier was saying.