Thank you, Marc.
I will move on to the subject of the importance of service planning in the region.
Over the years, the network has carried out many studies on French services and has taken on the planning of these services through its working groups and through activities such as community forums.
Furthermore, the network set about developing the 2005-2006 regional plan for health services in French, a responsibility it was given by the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. It was in this context that the "Préparer le terrain" project, whose goal was to establish a plan to develop French language primary health care in Eastern Ontario, was managed by the network and integrated into the regional plan.
This important exercise generated a list of recommendations and priorities for French language health services, which were presented to the local integration of services for health care network for the region of Champlain in the fall of 2006. They are as follows: human resources, the organization of services, primary health care, accountability within the system and support of health care agencies in supplying French-language services.
The continuation of the regional plan deals with the development and implementation of courses of action, a stage we intend to tackle soon.
The Government of Canada has been a partner of the Réseau de l'Est from the outset. Through Heritage Canada as well as Health Canada and the Société Santé en français, it has directly contributed to our role as an advocate of French language health care services in the region, and has been from the beginning of our network.
As far as cooperation with provincial authorities is concerned, we have been following the development of the restructuring of the health care system launched by the Minister of Health with great interest for the last two years.
The province's regionalization of health care services, through the creation of local integration of service networks, has a very special impact on French-language services.
In fact, it is a matter of a real integration of French language health care services, within the provincial and local health care system. The same is true for the improvement of access to services and of accountability through legislation and its regulations.
Briefly, we welcome the provincial government's leadership with pleasure as far as health care in French and the francophone population are concerned, as well as the prospect of an even closer cooperation on the issue of French language health care services at the regional level.
In this context, the complementarity of jurisdictions between the provincial and federal governments in health care is something that could be considered. The French Languages Health Services Network of Eastern Ontario is in a position to play a decisive role through cooperation between the partners.
In this regard, we keenly wish to continue our activities toward only one goal, that being to improve access to health care services in our community and to contribute to the improvement of the francophone population's state of health.
I thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.
Thank you.