Official Languages committee  Yes, I can tell you that we are going to examine the situation regarding unilingual French positions, especially in Quebec. Regarding training solely in French, we have been discussing it for several years, but we are not there yet.

Official Languages committee  Staff Sergeant Frédéric Pincince.

Official Languages committee  I believe he was the lead investigator on the file.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, I don't have the exact number. The lead investigator, who was here last Monday, is bilingual, but I'm more than happy to circle back—

Official Languages committee  I'd have to get back to you as to how many people were actually assigned to that file as a group.

Official Languages committee  As I said, I'd have to circle back. The whole speed, flow and direction of the investigation were dictated by the lead investigator.

Official Languages committee  Again, Mr. Chair, I'm not aware of how many bilingual investigators were assigned to it, so I can't say how many interviews took place with the bilingual investigators.

Official Languages committee  First, regarding recruiting, of course, we look for people who are actively enthusiastic about police work. In fact, there is no uniform approach. We look for people in different communities and at different universities, and we conduct campaigns to attract people to our organization.

Official Languages committee  We are going to check that and we undertake to send you those figures. Because I only have five seconds left, I want to point out that the budget that is assigned to language training has risen considerably: this year, we have invested $2.5 million, whereas in previous years the budget was $1.3 to $1.4 million.

Official Languages committee  I agree.

Official Languages committee  I am going to ask Ms. Huggins to help me with some of the percentages. In the RCMP, 87.5% of the individuals who have a bilingual position meet the language criteria. That represents about 652 positions. I don't know whether we have the statistics for unilingual positions, so I am going to ask Ms.

Official Languages committee  Thank you.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, since the question seems to relate mainly to recruiting, I can assure you that we have revised the recruitment process and we have changed things. For example, before, we required that each candidate be prepared to work anywhere in Canada. We have eliminated that requirement and we are now seeing a fairly significant increase in the number of people showing an interest in the RCMP in several regions.

Official Languages committee  There are several aspects to the question of bilingualism on the part of our employees. First, a person who wants to advance and access certain positions in the organization has to learn French, because French opens doors for them. Second, there are several programs for learning French.

Official Languages committee  I believe there are in Quebec.