Mr. Speaker, to give members an understanding of how this works, in most cases the handlers starts the dogs right from pups, from about eight to twelve weeks. They start working and progress to where they can get to a facility such as Innisfail.
The cost to train a dog and get it to the point where it is a police service dog is approximately $60,000. It is a significant investment that is made to ensure that the dog is trained to the ability it is going to be working with. That does not include the ongoing maintenance for the dog and the handler who does daily training. In most cases, the handler takes two to four hours of training with the dog every day to ensure that its abilities stay at a peak level and the handler's abilities stay at a peak level.