Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
We do have an extensive program to recruit and train our officers. When we are going to recruit officers, we have them go through a variety of tests, essentially skill tests, behavioural tests, and we make sure they have other credentials such as first aid and are able to handle the enforcement responsibilities they would be asked to undertake.
Once they pass that screening, then they go to what is currently a nine-week training program at our national training centre in Rigaud, Quebec. There is extensive testing done when they are there, and they must pass two tests along the way. When they graduate from that nine-week training, then they will be deployed to their particular ports of entry.
Once they get to their ports of entry, we have what we call a follow-up in-service training program. That would constitute training that is more applicable to their particular geographical situation, to the kinds of clients with whom they might interact, and also to the responsibilities that they will undertake. As an example, some officers may work their entire career and never actually deal with complex commercial matters if they're in a small port of entry that is more focused on traveller processing. So if you're going to work in a commercial environment, we'll make sure that we give you that kind of training.
In addition to all of that base training, as I'll call it, we continually have other kinds of training available for our officers. If, let's say, someone is from a legacy organization, such as customs, and we would like them to become more comfortable at administering our immigration responsibilities, we will make sure that they are cross-trained in order to do that. The same situation would apply with the breadth of our responsibilities.
We also make sure that our officers are given, if necessary, linguistic training and values and ethics training; there's a whole host of efforts that are being made.