Thank you.
I have two comments. First, I can provide you with a good demographic picture of the trade commissioner service. I'll supply it through the chair or the clerk.
Second, in the last few years we have tended to recruit people who have some industry experience rather than those coming right out of university. About 60% of our new employees have post-graduate degrees, and about 60% have lived or worked abroad. As the ethnic makeup of our country changes, we're finding more and more people who have language abilities. So I would argue that there is a far more professional group in the service than when I first arrived 30 years ago.
The education and linguistic levels have gone up, but what is most rewarding for me is that the trade commissioner service, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, is clearly seen as an employer of choice for people who want to do that kind of work overseas with the best and brightest of our economic people.
This year I think 3,300 people have applied for the 50 or 60 openings we have. In fact, it takes more time to interview all the people.... We're not going to interview 3,000; we'll interview several hundred. So we're quite pleased that the quality seems to be edging up.
The second question is the numbers. The problem, purely and simply, is cost. If you look at the average cost of having a Canada-based trade commissioner or foreign service officer abroad, it's somewhere in the range of $350,000, on average. You have housing, education for children, salary, and all those things. So it makes a real difference. Those are difficult things you play with. That's why I look at redeployment and where I can move people.