I can answer that.
There are two types of parole officers: those working in institutions and those in the community.
This is how things work in institutions. The ratio is one officer for every 25 offenders in minimum security institutions, one for every 28 in medium security institutions, and one for every 30 in maximum security institutions.
For community parole officers, we use a resource allocation formula. This formula calculates the time these officers need to do their job, that is to draft reports, supervise offenders in the community—there are different models of supervision—and to travel to carry out this supervision. This tells us how many resources are required in the community. We work with our union partners and review the formula annually.
We want to establish a similar formula for parole officers working in institutions. We conducted a survey in collaboration with Statistics Canada. We are working on creating a formula that is similar to the one used for community officers.
As for training, parole officers have initial training of four and a half weeks. After that, all parole officers receive one week of training a year.