Let's take the Ukraine civil service project as an example. From our experience, CBIE's role has been to serve as a facilitator of these types of public service partnerships. We are there to identify needs, to understand the local context, to bring those needs together, and to connect them to potential Canadian partners. In this context, those would be public sector institutions such as the Public Service Commission of Canada or the Canada School of Public Service, given the subject matter of the project.
What's very important in this context is that we serve as the interlocutor. We've managed to bring the value-added aspect through our very long-term relationship in the country and our very in-depth understanding of the context, which allow us to work with the Ukrainian beneficiary, or the partner, to articulate needs in a way that allows us to identify Canadian partners--Canadian institutions or individuals--with the required expertise and connect the two.
Although we've noticed a significant improvement in the Ukrainian context, from our experience that's probably the biggest challenge, in that often the beneficiary has a general sense of the need or particular issue they're grappling with, but it's often very difficult for them to articulate what that need means in a Canadian context and for us to identify that the Public Service Commission, for instance, could provide assistance in this area. I think that's a very important element to consider in any future modality in which you would want to engage recently retired public servants or parliamentarians and the like.
In our project we too have many senior-level, fairly recently retired public servants, and the important thing to highlight is that their experience is invaluable and has proven very impactful in the Ukrainian context. This is not solely as individuals who have a breadth of professional experience, but as individuals who come from particular institutions that represent particular values and represent a certain level of expertise and acknowledged professionalism. Those are very important elements. Even if those individuals have departed from a given institution, from the beneficiary side there's a remaining association.