Thank you for the opportunity to present to you.
We're representing the Saskatchewan Community Health Co-operative Federation. We're a federation of Saskatchewan's four cooperative community health centres.
The community health centres are not-for-profit, citizen-owned health centres. We provide multi-disciplinary primary health care services to about 70,000 people in the province of Saskatchewan. We have a particular focus on the vulnerable in our society: the poor, first nations persons, the frail elderly, and persons with disabilities.
We've been in operation since the introduction of medicare in Saskatchewan.
We're not only here to talk about the cooperative health centres in Saskatchewan but also about cooperatives in Canada that provide health care services. There are about 117 cooperatives in Canada offering services that range from health centre services like ours to home care service delivery and paramedic services. About 65% of these organizations operate out of Quebec.
There are three provincial federations of health care cooperatives. Two of them are centred in Quebec. One represents home care service delivery. The second represents paramedic services in Quebec. And then there is our federation, representing the health centres.
We believe that the cooperative model has great potential for the provision of health care services across Canada. In Canada and other countries, cooperatives have had great success in the delivery of health care services.
While there are only 117 cooperatives in Canada, in other countries in the world, such as France, Japan, Spain, Scandinavia, and in South America, they are very involved in the delivery of a broad range of services. I'll give you a sense of the breadth of the services that health care cooperatives are engaged in.
There are professional group cooperatives where groups of physicians are involved in the direct delivery of planning health care services through the cooperative model. In Spain and Japan, there are hospital services delivered through the cooperative model. In Scandinavia, there is often long-term care delivered through the cooperative model. There are other multi-disciplinary health care centres in other countries of the world like ours. There are holistic health centres. Frequently, health insurance is provided in the cooperative model, and in fact, in Canada, The Co-operators market a multi-dimensional health insurance that people purchase across Canada.
Finally, cooperatives are very much involved in special needs housing, including housing for the elderly, long-term care, and housing for low-income persons.
We believe the cooperative model is an ideal vehicle to help health care delivery into the next millennium. And Tim is going to talk to you a bit about what kinds of opportunities and strengths we bring to the table in the delivery of health care.