I just finished taking the ICS Canada 200 level course. This is a course in Incident management using the Incident Command System (ICS) I took the course because many of the served agencies we could be working for use ICS to manage their incidents and by the ARES team having familiarity and some of us being trained as supervisors of single resources we will fit in better with their structure during the incident.
For anyone thinking of joining ARES, if you can take the ICS 100 or you can take it after you join ARES it will be a big help. ICS is designed to make the joint work of many different agencies easier through a common language (everyone using ICS uses the same terminology for things) and a command structure that just makes good sense.