As you know, when we started work on this file, a lot had to be done. So we had to monitor the trends at the time. The federal primary health care strategy helped us a great deal. It gave us a framework for the development of health services in French.
If you take a look at the directory we submitted to you, you'll see that we've covered a range of issues because the needs of the communities differ depending on where you go.
Some communities were better organized and able to do more in developing the offer of actual services to individuals. However, other communities didn't even have one health professional.
The communities therefore undertook a number of disease prevention and health promotion projects. A fairly impressive range of projects was developed. I believe the society's strong point was taking our broad general direction and adapting it to the specific needs of each of the communities.
To add a point in response to the question you put to Ms. Lalonde, it's extremely important to train health professionals because we know there is a significant shortage of francophone health professionals.
However, we also know that those professionals very often are not administrators or managers. They aren't trained to organize, to start up practices or to establish clinical environments. However, the society was able to do that through its work with its partners. Using our small financial levers, we were able to put infrastructure in place or to complete files.
I believe that what Denis presented with regard to Manitoba is a good example of that. We had the same thing in New Brunswick. A community health centre was established in Fredericton based on the approach of the Société Santé en français.
A small community in the region of Clare, Nova Scotia had no access to health services in French. Now there's a medical clinic that has four young francophone doctors who provide health services and can take in our students for clinical internships.
We've tried as much as possible to look at the major axes, the major trends and needs and to combine our training strategy with the CNFS and the Société Santé en français to ensure that we have appropriate environments in which to take in those students.
In closing, as I mentioned during my presentation, a lot of these projects have provided models that have been adopted by various provinces and are now integrated into the health system. We've had good results.