You are absolutely right. For the Canadian Armed Forces to maintain its edge and to be prepared to respond to emerging threats, our members have to continually train for the different types of environments they might be deployed into. Initially, when we knew little about this disease, there was a requirement to contract the force and to privilege the support that we were providing to Canadians. Over time, as we better understood COVID-19, it allowed us to initiate or reinitiate a number of training and operational activities.
In general terms, our chief of the defence staff and our deputy minister have articulated a number of guiding principles, if you will, that need to be put into place as our force generators and our different environments re-engage in training. For example, it's absolutely essential that our teammates respect public health measures and have at their disposal non-medical masks and personal protective equipment if it's required. They must be properly trained on the use of personal protective equipment. We make sure there's a period of onboarding for all Canadian Armed Forces' members and Department of National Defence personnel before they come back and work, so they can visualize the environment they're going to be in, while making sure we respect the flexibility that some of our teammates require to be working from home.
The last thing I would say is that as we deploy back into the field to conduct our manoeuvre training, it's forced us to mobilize some imagination, some innovation, on how to do that safely to maintain physical distancing, for example, and strong hygiene. It requires significant attention to detail and strong leadership and cohesion among all our teams.