I often get asked that by the academic institutions. Once we launched the report, I went to the Norman Paterson School here and then to the Munk School in Toronto as well, and there are many young people who are eager to get in.
With the foreign service exam in the past, all you needed to do was to pass the exam and have Canadian citizenship, but the exam that was being offered was very much like a SAT, if you know what this is, or an LSAT. It's very specific and would not take into consideration foreign language capability, niche expertise if you're an economist or a lawyer, and that sort of thing. That's why we recommended looking at that differently and also looking at mid-career exchange in and out.
The department had a very successful academic exchange program for a while, whereby experts would come in and then leave—Jennifer Welsh is an example—but that goes back to the 1990s. That sort of enrichment would be great, getting people in sort of mid-career and rotating them out, and the same thing with other government departments and agencies or even the provinces. Every province has an international affairs component to its work. Every department has an international affairs directorate of some kind. Have more fluidity in terms of moving people in and out, and then you can select your assistant deputy ministers or deputy ministers of the future on that basis. That's why we have a direct recommendation to the Clerk of the Privy Council in this.