Thank you for your question. I'm going to talk specifically about my experience with young officers who come to the military college. Young people across the country who come to us know that, at the military college, if they are officers in the Canadian Forces, they'll have to become bilingual if they want to advance in the organization. General Semianiw talked earlier about generals, about the pressure that is exercised to ensure that generals, the main leaders, are bilingual. However, there are also bilingualism levels at all ranks. For example, Colonel Whelan, an anglophone who has good French ratings himself, would not be commanding the Saint-Jean school if he wasn't bilingual. Someone who starts, a captain or a major who wants to advance, who has already taken language courses, who is at the military college and who already has good language ratings will score points with the merit boards and have the opportunity to occupy command positions. To do that, we have to have certain bilingualism ratings. So people learn that quite quickly.
My impression is that that's done quickly at military college, from the first year, because the accent is placed so much on bilingualism that people know they'll need it in order to become officers in the Canadian Forces. For non-commissioned officers, no, because it takes them a number of years. In addition, infantry men who go away to join the regiment in Valcartier or who go to Edmonton and enter the infantry as privates, don't think about it at all.
