Our Réseau continues to promote designation under the French Language Services Act as a means for ensuring a regional capacity for French language health services. Therefore, we are continuing our work to guide health service providers (HSPs) in the development and submission of designation plans or statements of compliance. This is also why we work with the HSPs and the Champlain and South East LHINs to foster accountability with respect to designation.

In 2016-2017, 23 designation plans and statements of compliance were submitted by health service providers in Eastern Ontario. This record number of plans then led, in 2017-2018, to an unprecedented increase in the number of plans received by the Réseau's designation committee for assessment.

To be able to process these plans, the designation committee began an important exercise to optimize its practices for receiving and analyzing plans. These actions helped the committee significantly increase its efficiency: in fact, no less than 19 designation plans and statements of compliance were assessed by the committee over the last year.

At the end of 2017-2018, we can thus assert that designation has moved to a new phase: after working collectively to update designation in the Champlain and South East regions – which helped us draw a complete overview of the regional capacity of French language health services – we are now in a position to maintain designation.