With the youth in Canada today, it's quite an interesting phenomenon we're dealing with. What we've experienced in the Canadian Forces is a higher than normal rate of failure for physical fitness. As you know, to be a member in the Canadian Forces, you must be physically fit.
Instead of having the physical fitness test during the recruitment phase—another way of speeding up the process, by the way—we've taken that physical fitness test and moved it to just prior to basic training for both officers and non-commissioned members. When they do the test on arrival at the training centre, they will take one of two routes. If they pass the test, they will continue on with their basic training. If they fail the test and it's obvious they're going to need some remedial physical fitness training, we have adopted a mentoring approach to these individuals and they have up to ninety days to get themselves physically fit, with our help, with our encouragement, and also an opportunity to catch up on some other areas of training.
One of the unique things we discovered when that was not in place was that after about four to six weeks of basic training, an individual's cardiovascular system would start to improve and catch up. However, at about the nine- to eleven-week point, the frame—the bones, the tendons—would start to break down because of the very sedentary lifestyle adopted by much of our youth. We were having an extraordinary number of injuries, with some of those injuries going unreported because they were so close to the end of their training. When they finally reported them after training, we were in a position where some of them had to undergo significant rehabilitation or release because they were no longer meeting our universality-of-service principles for service in the Canadian Forces.
That's a long-winded answer, but, yes, we're very aware of the fitness issue in the Canadian Forces, and we're working toward developing a lifelong commitment to fitness and health.
