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“It is sending smart people into complex areas and being able to provide ground truth or information back so senior leadership can make better informed decisions,” Rouleau told the Star.

The tender calls for up to eight “non-verbal” role players for each training event who will conduct surveillance and be targets of surveillance both in vehicles and on foot. As many as another eight “verbal” players per event will interact with the soldiers to “extract or provide information cues.”

The exercises are slated to occur in cities across Canada, said Beler.

The document requests “qualified” role players, but U.S. defence contractors who have recently advertised for similar services are more specific about their needs.

What you’re looking for is to provide realism to the training

One of them, North Carolina-based Telum Protection Corp., requires its role players to hold “active secret clearance” and have undergone a counterintelligence polygraph test, among other prerequisites.

The company, which provides training to intelligence and special-forces personnel in the U.S. military, hires experts in surveillance, who sometimes represent specific cultures or languages, said Alfredo R. Quiros, Telum’s CEO.

“What you’re looking for is to provide realism to the training,” he said in an interview. “Ultimately, it will better prepare your men and women for mission success and — here is the key word — survivability.”

Not all of the training involves cloak-and-dagger stuff; it could be about conducting a meeting with a source at a restaurant without drawing attention, or simply briefing a diplomat, said Quiros.

“You have a young captain who goes through all this training, and the first thing they have to do when they go to a foreign country is go to the embassy and they have to talk to the ambassador,” he said. “Why not include in the training, how to talk to an ambassador?”