Thank you, Minister.
Here is some quick data to bring you into the current context.
For this fiscal year, we've had 405 applicants who self-identify as indigenous. Out of those 405, 37 have already graduated from depot. This year, more than 5% of our graduates from depot identify as first nations, Inuit and Métis.
I can tell you that it is a consistent priority with a specialized indigenous recruitment strategy. In particular, around the indigenous languages, I want to highlight that in December 2023, in our official languages branch, where I serve as the champion, we took a culturally innovative approach to launching an educational program to ensure that the regular members and those who are serving in the more than 550 indigenous communities also bring cultural competence, including language. We currently have 140 regular members who are in ongoing language training in seven different languages in the indigenous community. We hope to continue to expand that in 2026.
We also celebrated our 31st anniversary of indigenous pre-cadet, where we bring young indigenous individuals who are interested in policing to RCMP depot to have an experience, and we've seen tremendous success.
I want to reaffirm our commitment that, as part of the 1,000, we'll have a specific approach to onboarding and implementing more indigenous regular members into our organization.