Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As I mentioned earlier, the human resource demand in this occupation is extreme and very difficult. We don't take it lightly. I would say I spend the vast majority of my time trying to understand innovative ways to come to that answer.
The first tranche of operatives we put into cyber-occupation, as an example, we took from a proven commodity. They were people who were doing that work within our operation centre, and we moved them into the operator trade. We've developed internal training programs. We have standards to develop and train our operators. We got those standards in collaboration with our allies. We worked together to have standardized training that we can exchange with our other broader allies.
Also we recognize that within the civilian sector, there's a robust and rich opportunity to recruit young Canadians from colleges around our country, and we are working with a number of colleges to accredit their programs and to bring those people into our programs as fully fledged cyber-operators.
I would not want to leave you with the impression that this is another military occupation that we will handle like every other, because it's not. It demands a different view, a different focus, and an adaptive approach over time.
The answer I give you today is that I hope that it will adapt and evolve over time to meet the demands of that occupation. For example, in the coming weeks we're going to have an entire ideation session on how we can best use the reserve force within a cyber-occupation. We're looking at every and all means, and not just within our own structure. We are trying to leverage both industry and academia to bring ideas to us and to leverage those as well. I don't think we have all the answers—I know we don't—but we're working with all allies internationally and nationally to get the best advice within that structure.