DFO itself participates in the development of the course instruction, although the individual companies deliver the course. We also provide remedial and follow-up training as required.
With regard to some of the weaknesses of the training program, just given the nature of the fishery, unfortunately we have a lot of intake throughout the year. If I were to say there was a weakness, it would be that sometimes, just due to the very nature, either for at-sea.... If you had an urgent requirement for staff, you might have to give them some very quick training. Normally the formal training is done in the spring prior to the new fisheries starting, so all your staff are fully trained then.
If you hire people mid-season, you probably don't have the core capacity to bring everybody in. So we leave it to individual companies to make sure these people are trained for that particular fishery, on a one-on-one basis, for sort of remedial training. Then we get them on the first available course to do the full training.
I don't know if there's much we can do to change that, simply because it's a reality of the fishery that you have a lot of people and you have a high turnover in observers. You have a high turnover dockside. Sometimes the requirements come up because DFO has opened an exploratory fishery, for example, and you suddenly need a lot more observers than you had predicted. That would, perhaps, be a bit of a weakness.
In terms of the overall training standards and the consistency, we're very pleased. Despite a fair amount of turnover in recent years in some fisheries, there are a lot of individuals out there who have made a career of being at-sea observers. Certainly a good 50% of all of our observers have been around for a number of years, and that helps in the transfer of knowledge to new observers as well.
Thank you.