Thank you, Mr. Chair.
From a personal perspective, as security intelligence officers we had a training program in place that was really an amalgamation of other agencies' training philosophies. One of the things I'm very excited about in the security intelligence department is that we have a brand-new training program for all of our security intelligence officers that was actually developed and is being facilitated by experienced security intelligence officers in the Correctional Service of Canada. This training is much more practical for what we're actually doing, for what our actual jobs within the institution are, than some of the theoretical training we were getting in the past.
In addition, it's been recognized that the training we receive and that's available within the Correctional Service of Canada may not be sufficient in and of itself. One of the measures taken was to give the security intelligence officers a training allotment. It is basically a budget we can utilize to seek training from other agencies. As a result of that, I've been able to access training with CSIS, with the RCMP, and with other outside agencies, which has helped to expand my personal repertoire and expertise. I'm very excited about that as well. The training is there.
With regard to staffing, on a personal note, and to bring some of this into perspective, I'd like to speak specifically about Stony Mountain Institution. When I started as a security intelligence officer a couple of years ago, we had two SIOs—security intelligence officers. That was our full complement for 575-plus inmates with a high gang and drugs percentage. We currently have three security intelligence officers in the office, and we occasionally use a fourth. In addition to that, we've received an administrative assistant, which has greatly reduced our workload when it comes to things like filing and data.
In addition, we have security intelligence analysts at our regional headquarters. They are helping us take some of the volume of information we're developing, the forms we're producing, and the intelligence we're producing, and look at it from a top-down perspective. They are also able to correlate it with what's happening at other sites, which really wasn't happening in the past. I was dealing with Stony Mountain Institution as an island. What they're able to do is connect things happening here with things happening at other institutions. It's definitely made things easier for me as a security intelligence officer at Stony Mountain Institution.