Maybe I can start by talking about the context, and I think you've rightly identified how it's changing.
It's changing in terms of an increase in the complexity of the law enforcement environment, the degree to which many of the major criminal challenges we're facing involve an international dimension, the appearance of a cyber dimension linked to many of those crimes. Take child sexual exploitation as an example and how that has been transformed by the availability of materials on the Internet, how that has transformed how you police that, in terms of the need to involve other international organizations because the crime knows no borders. And as you rightly highlighted, it's not just the complexity increasing, but the speed with which organizations are adapting in response to all these new changes is also increasing.
So it's both more complex and a higher pace of change, which means it's very difficult to encapsulate what an organization should look like in some kind of static sense. One of the criteria for the commissioner, as you've pointed out, and indeed for the organization, is a need for it to show a great deal of dynamism because it is going to have to continually respond to the changing environment.
There may be a couple of other examples there.
Even in the last decade the RCMP had record class sizes, in terms of the number of individuals Depot was graduating. So there's a big input in terms of new recruits coming on board as a result of policing demands increasing, not just at the federal level but at the provincial and municipal levels as well. But in addition, as in many policing organizations in the country, there's a demographic that is retiring very quickly at the senior executive level, which puts real stresses on all of our policing organizations that are seeing that demographic change, where the senior leadership cadre is leaving.
So it's a very, very dynamic environment into which the new commissioner will have to operate, which is becoming even more dynamic. That's why, as you've highlighted throughout the criteria that are laid out, innovation and the ability to operate in a dynamic environment are critical, because it's very difficult for any of us to clearly identify in a static way all the challenges the organization is going to face in a concrete way. Those challenges are dynamic and evolving.
And this is not unique to the RCMP. Certainly when we have conversations with other police organizations internationally or with our provincial colleagues, we hear this is being felt across the board.
So I think you're right in highlighting the dynamism of the environment and the need for a leader who doesn't just have a vision but has a vision that builds in innovation and dynamism in the drive of the organization.