Welcome to Blue skies. I'm Erin O'Toole. Today we're talking about warriors and some of the injuries that warriors face from their time in uniform. That uniform can be the Canadian Armed Forces, Special Forces, JTF-2, CSOR, our people that breach the buildings that save lives or that uniform can sometimes be the uniform of the gridiron, of the hockey arena. P
eople that physically challenge themselves as part of their calling, whether it's professional sports or the profession of arms, often leave with injuries, some that are visible, some that are invisible, and some that we're just starting to learn more about. And that's what Blue Skies is going to Blue Sky today.
We're also very fortunate that we have a great Canadian on the podcast who has the unique distinction of winning four Grey Cups. That's filling one whole hand with Grey Cup rings, but with four different CFL teams. Hamilton, Montreal, Edmonton, and Saskatchewan. Sadly, it's missing the best team, Toronto Argos, but maybe we can talk about in that. Really happy that we're being joined today by Tim Fleiser.
Tim, welcome to Blue Skies.
Tim Fleiszer
Thanks for having me on.
Hon. Erin OToole
Well, listen, I'm having you on as the executive director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. And we're to be talking today about some challenging issues related to concussions, related to contact, related to traumatic brain injury. And I do have a number of veterans that listen to my podcast and, you know, make sure that, that you're in a good state of mind to listen to a discussion, but this discussion is intended to help, and make sure you reach out if, if it brings up memories of service.
But I want to talk about your record, Tim, because it's an impressive one, you know, a professional career in the CFL, a career in American NCAA and the Ivy League for Harvard Crimson, where you were a fullback at the start and you changed positions, drafted back into the CFL from Montreal. Tell me about your own personal story, because you were kind of a multi-sport athlete and then focused on football, played in incredible institution of Harvard, played in the CFL. Tell me your own story and how sports gave you that sort of purpose as a young man and led to where you are today.
Tim Fleiszer
So sports really for me started with my dad. And my dad played football at McGill, is the only heck-crate and trophy winner from McGill. So most valuable player in Canadian College football. And so growing up, you know, was always very aware of what he had done in his career. And he was great, never put any pressure on me, but gave me every opportunity, you know, very supportive mother, sister, great sports family all the way around and you know like so many Canadian families you know constant shuttling between the football field and the hockey rink and also played rugby and soccer and you every sport under the sun and just always loved sports. Used to wear my Expos uniform head to toe to first grade. That was kind of my go-to clothing for first grade.
And yeah, just loved every part of it and was so thrilled to get those opportunities later in life to keep playing.
Hon. Erin OToole
You said that you had the option of going playing football for Harvard. And when you walked into Harvard Square and saw the sort of majestic campus they have, it led you on that course rather than playing in the Quebec Major Juniors and getting into the corners and being a bit of a brawler. Talk about that for a minute, because obviously both hockey and football are very, you know, contact sports.
Were you known as a sort of both a finesse and both an elbows up guy? And what drove that decision between hockey and football?
Tim Fleiszer
Yeah, so played at high school in Montreal at Selwyn House, played football, hockey and played rugby as well. And actually rugby may have been my best sport, but there just wasn't the same opportunities in rugby for a Canadian kid as there was in hockey and football back then. And ended up going to prep school in Connecticut at Choate Rosemary Hall and was still playing hockey and football, had substituted rugby with track and field.
And so was trying to figure out what was the better decision to keep going with football, keep going with hockey. I had done an evaluation camp and some of the NHL scouts came and suggested to me that my best path forward would be to focus less on my hockey skills and goal scoring and more on my fighting. So I think that maybe answers your question. I was maybe a better point of attack guy.
I thought I was a decent hockey player and had some good goals and assists and point stats going for me. But I guess when you start to get to that level, the way they saw me was more for the physical things I did than the skill things I did. And so football, same thing. I used to run with the ball. I used to be a running back. And they let me do it for one year when I when I got to Harvard, but very quickly they moved me to the other side of the ball and moved me to defense so I could go hit people I guess.
Hon. Erin OToole
Well, so your big choice was bruise it up in the queue or get a degree from Harvard. That doesn't seem like a tough decision to make. You told me you were the one Canadian on the football team, the Harvard Crimson, unlike the hockey team, which had a lot of Canadians on it. Tell me a little bit about that experience because I think people don't realize the Ivy League gets its name from the sports league that those teams play in, all very elite schools where you're highest academic standing really in the world, but in North America for sure. But you're also playing sports in this sort of NCAA high level. What was it like to be a Canadian boy in that mix and what lessons did you take from the playing field as much as you did from the classroom?
Tim Fleiszer
So we came in with a coach named Tim Murphy and he was a new coach at the time. He had replaced a guy who had been a legend who had actually at one point been the Hamilton Ticats coach. They're very interesting. Harvard Hamilton Ticats connection. So this coach Tim Murphy came in and with him he brought just a very different style and type of recruit. And so you could really see there was a big difference between our classes that came in, you know, versus the guys that had been there before. And so there was certainly a bit of a divide and Coach Murphy just retired two years ago and he retired as the winningest coach in Ivy League history. He's won more championships than anybody else in Ivy League history. So amazing opportunity to be part of forming the foundation of that and forming a culture that ended up, you know, turning into a culture that lasted 30 years, which is pretty incredible.
But the type of, I mean, you and I had talked about it earlier, Erin, a lot of similarities in the mindset between military folks and football players. Certainly, you know, what you would describe as high performers, very intense guys. And, you know, as the one Canadian there, I definitely had to hold my own, you know, particularly as a young guy.
Look, it was a wonderful experience. Some of my best friends in the world are from my days at Harvard and the Harvard football team. So overall, just an incredible experience. And I feel very blessed to have had it.
Hon. Erin OToole
And then you get drafted into the CFL. You know, I love when our mutual friend Pinball Clemons tells a story about how Canadian rugby football gave the Americans American football, and they hate hearing that story. so you left that storied institution that really is at the root of football at Harvard and then came up to the CFL. What was that like? And, you know, we'll spend a couple of minutes on your CFL career before we get into the work on brain injury, but where were you drafted? I know you played for pretty much every team. Talk about that CFL experience and, and, how exciting it was to win four Grey Cups with four teams.
Tim Fleiszer
So, wonderful experience. I talked about my dad earlier and you you grow up all the time hearing about my dad and his Hec Crighton trophy and it's well, you know, what could I possibly do to top that? And so we had the Combine out in Winnipeg that year and at the end of the Combine, Ron Lancaster who, you know, incredible legendary coach in the CFL who had been out in Edmonton and it was his first year in Hamilton and he came and saw me and said, look, we're going to take you first overall.
Tim Fleiszer
And so absolutely amazing moment going back up to my hotel room and calling my dad and saying, hey, I'm going to be the first overall pick. And finally felt like I could sit at the table with him and look at him eye to eye. And of course, I don't think there was anybody in the world that was happier for me than him. So that was an amazing moment and a great way to get things started and that was an absolutely phenomenal team. We made it to the cup that year and lost on a last second field goal to Garcia and the Stampeders. But ended up coming back and winning in 99. Then Kent went back, played in my hometown, which again, absolutely amazing experience and incredible having that Grey Cup parade in downtown Montreal with thousands of people out for that was amazing experience.
Just wonderful being able to not just visit, but to actually live in all these different communities across Canada. it's one thing to get to visit those places, quite another to live there and get to be part of the community and see the differences in our country, but also to understand the similarities and just how lucky and how blessed we are. I certainly believe that we do live in the greatest country in the world. And so that was a really nice part of my career.
But yeah, lots of fun winning those championships. And when you win championships with guys, you become bonded with them for life. so, yeah, very, very positive experience of which I'm incredibly blessed.
Hon. Erin OToole
Yeah, in many ways we've been talking about the absence of Canadian patriotism lately. It's at lowest levels. You know, what is a Canadian identity? Justin Trudeau, I'm not getting political here, but said we're the first post-national state. I don't even think he understood what that meant, but the CFL is unique. You know, my wife, Rebecca, as you know, has worked within the CFL and I've had the good fortune of going to several Grey Cups, both with her and on my own.
And there is a Canadian heritage in that, that is one of those unique fixtures, whether it's the horse from the Stampeters running into the Royal York Hotel or just the sort of camaraderie and the friendly rivalry, you know, the Labour Day Classic games, know, the being a Brave Argo fan to go to Hamilton for the Labour Day Classic. These are all things that I think are extremely special and I think we need to cherish more. But before we transition, I'm really glad you've you've spoken about your father as well, because part of character in young men is really looking up to your father. And the absence of a father can cause a whole path of difficulty for a lot of young men. But I was the same. In fact, my joke with my father, who was elected when I was in the Air Force was how can you one up? How can you sit up at the, at the, the table? Well, my dad was an MPP. I was going to try and be prime minister. And then, you know, then I could, you know, sort of sit at the table and have some bragging rights. But as you said, there was no one who wanted me to win more than my father. and so, you know, do we ever stop trying to make our fathers proud? I, you know, I'm putting you on the spot here, but has that been a big motivating feature of your life is not only learning to emulate respect, and learn from your father, but to, to to go that extra yard, to use an intended pun here, to take that baton from him.
Tim Fleiszer
Absolutely, but proudly so. So my dad, great football player, had some opportunities to go and play pro, partly because I think physically he was dealing with some injuries, but also I think he just felt like it was his calling and he decided to go become a physician. And so his background has been as a trauma surgeon, he's done some great work in oncology.
And teaching and I think you know if you want to psychoanalyze it part of the my my current efforts with the foundation my current efforts in health care is probably a way to live up to that without having to go through the arduous path of med school it was I remember when I was a very little kid and he used to bring me to the intensive care unit and he'd leave me at the nurses station nurses were great they'd come and they'd bring me milk and cookies and they'd say so are you gonna be a doctor like we daddy when you grow up and I would say no I'm not From that from the earliest time. I'm also very fortunate. I've got a fantastic mother who's also incredibly accomplished.
You know a woman who was able to get through McGill med school as you know I think there were maybe seven other women or five other women in her class and has had an outstanding career and she was very ahead on think about things like nutrition and hydration before anybody else was talking about this and so she was a great value add to my to my pro career as well and so was sitting here sitting in the Montreal General Hospital Foundation boardroom and they said well you know your stuff's great because it brings together you know our two main pillars which is trauma and mental health and I said okay now I understand exactly where I'm sitting why I'm sitting here it just it just made too much sense in the context of of what my dad did and what my mom is doing. so yeah, I think having my father's support, having my mom's support, having that family support, but also the things that you learn from them, right? Both personally and professionally. If you can take all that and apply it in a positive way to what you're doing, I I think that that's a magic we all aspire for.
Hon. Erin OToole
Yes, and it's a sign of good character, which you have in spades. So let's transition here to really how we've connected and are collaborating today. Your time at Harvard, one of your classmates in particular helped really drive your passion to explore the issue of brain injury and concussion and some of the work that now is being done to help prevent brain injury, to recognize it, to treat it. I've been saying for many years that now that society is dealing more maturely with mental health and we're doing resilience training, we're helping people come forward faster by reducing stigma so they can get help faster and hopefully have better outcomes before that mental injury or mental condition impacts other aspects of their life.
But the one area that I think we've only seen this sort of tip of the iceberg on for the Canadian Armed Forces and our veterans is traumatic brain injury, TBI, which we're starting to understand a lot more now. The US is. Tell me about your path from professional sports into being one of the leading advocates in Canada. You just testified before parliament a few, a couple of months ago on this issue. What was it that really got you on this path? Your teammate and you've been able to realize you can make a difference by advocating, tell us about how you became executive director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
Tim Fleiszer
So I was wrapping up my pro career and I was down at Harvard Yale and I bumped into Chris Nowinski and Chris after he graduated, Chris was two years behind me, also played on the defensive line. And after Chris graduated, he went and wrestled in the WWE with the tights, the boots, the whole thing. And we were talking earlier, Erin, and I said, I didn't want to ruin it for you, but wrestling's fake.
It's choreographed, but what those guys do, that's right, is very, very physical. And Chris, unfortunately, had got hit and had suffered a series of bad concussions, didn't really know that he had suffered those concussions, had seen several specialists that couldn't tell him what was wrong. And he ended up in Bob Cantu's office, who's one of the top brain injury physicians in the world.
Bob, instead of asking him he's had a concussion, asked him if he had ever experienced any of the symptoms. Headaches, seeing stars, feeling dizzy, those symptoms that are now becoming more more familiar in our culture. And Chris's answer was, well, yeah, that happens all the time. And Bob said, well, look, those are all concussions and you're suffering from post-concussion syndrome. And Chris, being Chris, went off and said, you know, how is this possible around elite athletes all the time? Nobody's talking about this. And he went and he wrote a book about his experience and was able to look at all kinds of different medical journals and different sources and correctly ascertained that there was this hidden epidemic of brain injury happening right under our noses. And so he came and put his book in my hand at Harvard Yale and I read the book and I was blown away.
you know, my thought was this, there's something going on here. This is serious. And at that point I was transitioning from being a player into being a player agent. had the guy who had been my agent for 10 years, gentleman by the name of Gil Scott, who's been one of the top agents in football and hockey in Canada for, I it was almost four decades now. And, and Gil at the time came to me and had asked me to come on as his partner after I retired. And so as I retired and started becoming a play regent, also went and was told Chris that I was happy to try and help and to try and volunteer in the short term as he was growing, you know, the work in Boston, which is so well known now, was really in its infancy. And so I had a front row seat as that developed.
From the player agent side, just felt like as I was going to these guys and saying, hey, I'm here to take care of you, toe to head, that I better be up to speed on what was happening on the brain injury front. And so it kind of went from there. It was really very much my charitable work for years, evenings, weekends, was just sort of funding some of the stuff myself. And then...
you know, as it continued to grow and particularly as we got into the pandemic and sports had stopped and, you know, was starting to do less agent work with the players, I still do some work in management and just felt like it was important that I do this work. you know, I mentioned my background with my parents and being around the medical community and then having had the wonderful blessing of the experience in pro sports, the thought was...
you know, if I don't do this, who's going to? And so it's just kind of gone from there. And, you know, our foundation has grown significantly in the last couple of years. And, you know, during the pandemic, this file, you know, I think kind of went to the bottom of the pile. But I think we've seen a resurgence and it just sort of feels like now is the right time to finally address this in Canada.
Hon. Erin OToole
Yeah, so some of the work you've been involved in has really transformed how we approach sports. And I think people don't really realize how much things have changed in the last, I would say, 10 years with respect to reducing concussions and brain injury. There is now something called a concussion protocol when someone gets into, you know, a physical injury or something on the field or ice.
that is likely leading to a concussion, concussive injury. There are now a number of steps, but that was never the case. Like when you played, you know, we would have talked about somebody getting their bell rung and it would have been shake it off, get it back in. You know, did you see any of this sort of protocol or protective or preventative stuff when you were playing? And I think it's important for people to realize that a lot of this is very recent in terms of society taking precautions.
Tim Fleiszer
So no, and listen, for the times that I had concussions, mean, there was very little wait time. You know, I went back in there very quickly. I think the one exception I would say to that is one of our team doctors for the aloe, that's guy named Scott Delaney, who's here at McGill. And Scott's currently the medical director of the NHLPA. And at the time, this is like 2000. I'm not sure if I'm in this study or not. can't remember, but it's possible.
But, but Chris did just, or sorry, that Scott did just what, what had happened to Chris, which was instead of asking athletes if they've had a concussion, he went and he started asking athletes and started with CFL athletes, which is why I think I was probably in that study, started asking them if they had experienced like listed the symptoms that are associated with brain injury and started asking them if they'd experienced any of that. And that, you know, what had come back, you know, in and around, let's call it 2% of athletes of contact sports every year saying they had concussion. That number went from 2% to somewhere between 70 and 50%. Right? And so, you know, again, that's for anybody that played in there. It's not going to surprise you. You know, we experience those symptoms all the time. And it was just, it was.
Hon. Erin OToole
And what are those symptoms, Tim? Like just for our listeners, run through the type of things that are the indicia of a concussive injury.
Tim Fleiszer
So getting hit, and it doesn't need to be a blow to the head, right? I mean, there's a couple of things that people get wrong on this. One, people think you gotta be knocked out to have a concussion that's not accurate. Two, you need to be hit in the head to get a concussion, also not accurate. You can get a hard blow to your body, and if your brain moves suddenly, that's how the injury happens. So it's associated with headache. It's associated with feeling dizzy, it's associated with confusion, nausea, acting inappropriately, just anything where you see any sort of intellectual disruption. Somebody just feeling off, feeling in a fog. Those are all things that are associated with concussion. And when we talk to soldiers, and again, associated more with sports and hockey.
But it happens in so many other areas in life as well. And so that's the first thing when we talk to military is, well, I never had a concussion. But the other thing that's important for the public to understand, is that it's, yes, there's concussion. I'm not saying concussion's a good thing. But the broader issue is not just the concussive impacts, it's the non-concussive impacts. And so it's those impacts, you know,
think you know a base block in hockey or a body check in the corner You know a tackle and rugby again any time that the head is shaken and an impact happens and and when you're talking about chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE Risk, the risk is not the number of concussions you've had It's the total number of impacts that you sustained during the course of your career. So, you know think about somebody who's played contact sports growing up and then gone in and served in the military, been around some of the heavy artillery, been a paratrooper, you know, on the landings that go on with that. Some of the combat training that's been done, it's the cumulative, those cumulative impacts that can actually put you at higher risk for mental health issues, dementia, substance abuse, anything that's associated with brain dysfunction.
Hon. Erin OToole
Yeah, I'm going to break a bit of that down because you've gone all the way to CTE, which I think a lot of people are now starting to understand that injury and its cumulative effect. It can't be diagnosed from what I understand until there's actually an autopsy of the brain, right? So the CTE is something we have to prevent, but a lot of players are donating their brain after they pass for study trying to help the very sport or profession of arms that they're working in. I've actually been asked to do this as a veteran, even though I was not in a combat arms role. But there's a willingness to try and get a better understanding. But let's break this down. So now that there are concussion protocols, if somebody has one of those hits on the field or on the ice.
What is the protocol meant to do? It's meant to make sure that there's enough recovery time so that they're not just going out on the next shift or the next game. Break down a bit for our listeners what we do in the protocol so that we can help heal or at least prevent re-injury.
Tim Fleiszer
So what Rowan's law does in Ontario is if a player gets hit and there's a suspected brain injury, that that player should not return to the ice, the pitch, or the field until they've been cleared by a healthcare professional. And so, you know, certainly trying to self-diagnose when you've had a brain injury is an absolutely terrible strategy. It's like asking somebody who's had some drinks if they're too drunk to drive.
You're asking somebody who's cognitively impaired potentially to self-diagnose. Not a good idea. So what you need in that case often is the bystander model. So a lot of the education that we do with young people is trying to teach them to look out for those symptoms. And if they think that one of their teammates has been hurt, tell the coach, tell the ref, and make sure that we get that player off the ice. So that's the first thing. If anybody in any walk of life
If there's a suspicion of a brain injury, you need to get them out of the activities that are potentially stressing the brain, get them off screens and then you kind of away from loud noises and have them rest until they're able to see a healthcare professional, right? Without trying to diagnose that on your own. Again, though that's concussion is kind of, I don't want to say a smaller part, it's only one part of what we're doing. I we're very focused these days
on trying to prevent some of the other things that are happening. And one of the things that we've seen in the literature is that participation in sports that exposes to kids, certainly under the age of 12, and we should even consider up to the age of 14 is a terrible idea. The data clearly shows those kids that get exposed, age of 6 to 12, the brain is developing.
neck strength is very low as compared to the size of head, right? Kids are like little bobbleheads, so their heads are often 80% of their adult size where their neck strength is like 20% of what it's going to be when it's an adult. And so again, it's back to that sudden movement of the head over and over and over again. Think heading soccer balls, right? Which seems like a relatively innocuous activity, but actually, and you mentioned earlier, Erin
that I testified before Parliament and that was my comment when I was asked, which is if there was one single policy change we could make in Canada to protect young athletes, it would be taking heading out of soccer for kids under the age of 12 and we should even think about 14 to give more time for the brain to develop and neck strength and the body to be ready to absorb those sort of impacts. And a lot of those headers are not happening on the field
during a game, they're happening in practice with an adult lobbing a ball at a child. And so it's understanding that those repetitive head impacts are just bad for young athletes. Hockey Canada has actually been really good on this. They raised the age of body checking to 13 years old in 2013 after the Sidney Crosby concussion. But we have not followed suit in soccer where the US banned headers for kids under the age of 12 in 2016. They did it last year in the UK.
And so we're now behind from a policy perspective in Canada. And it just goes without saying, kids in football shouldn't be tackling before the age of 12. That shouldn't be happening in rugby. Flag is a really good option in both of those sports. And even if you don't care about, you know, kids' health or the ethics of putting kids in a activity which potentially gives them brain damage, if you want your kid to play in the NFL or the CFL, don't hit them in the head
before the age of 12 and don't let them play tackle football because it ruins their reaction time. That's some of our research that we've got, that we've looked at at Western University with Dr. Jeff Brooks, who looked at the Western varsity football team and the effect of these non-concussive impacts on reaction time.
Hon. Erin OToole
So Soccer Canada has to worry less about their drones and drone training and they got to start looking at concussion protocols and catching up with the States and the UK. I'm going to probe that a little bit more because you mentioned Rowan's Law. I'm sure most people don't know it. I'm going to give shout out to a soon to be retired politician, Lisa McLeod. That was her initiative at Queen's Park. Kudos.
I know Eric Lindros, great Oshawa general from my neck of the woods. He played for a few other teams, but I still consider him a general, was a driving force. We've seen careers cut, cut short. I'm sure your organization was involved as well. That was named after a young, young girl who, who died as a result of of a head injury. So not only, are these, are these injuries, you know, something we should prevent through policy, but they're having a real impact on sports now. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Tim Fleiszer
Yeah, Rowan Stringer, that whole situation was incredibly influential on what we do. Gord and Kathleen, Rowan's parents have just been incredible advocates. Gord, they both sat on my board. And Cassie, her sister, they've just done an incredible job in advancing the public's understanding in Canada. And for those that don't know,
Rowan is a 17 year old rugby player in Nepean and she had gotten a concussion playing rugby. She had googled concussion, she had talked about it with her friends, she did not tell the coach, she did not tell her parents and what they decided, because she had a big game coming up, is what they decided was that she would play the game and that she would tell everybody after the game about this concussion and she got hit again and there's a condition known as second impact syndrome.
It happens rarely, but the issue with brain injury is once you get hit, brain is, the normal functions interrupt it, it becomes much more vulnerable to a second hit. And that's what happened to Rowan and her brain swelled uncontrollably and she ended up dying a couple of days later. so Gord and Kathleen went and found Lisa who was the member of provincial parliament at the time and Lisa spearheaded the initiative which eventually became Rowan's Law in Ontario. And for context we have legislation in all 50 states in the US. In Canada so far we only have Ontario that has passed legislation. And listen, I'm a fan of smaller government rather than bigger government but we've seen incredible success with seatbelts and the seatbelt law.
And so I think you know, one of the issues with brain injury is that it's often not taken seriously enough. And so saying we don't need a law for this because it's not serious enough is reinforcing the problem. And so our hope is that, you know, the other provinces and territories will start to look at putting forward similar legislation. I know there's been discussion in places like Manitoba and Quebec and out East. And so my hope is that, you like I said, during the pandemic,
this file went to the bottom of the pile, but my hope is that people will start to look at this again because I think it's been incredibly successful in Ontario. And we're also hopeful with Bill C277 at the federal level, which calls for a national strategy with brain injury. We're hoping that that will also help advance things from a policy and the ability to protect the public.
Hon. Erin OToole
Yeah, what a positive legacy out of an absolute tragedy with Rowan. And I think hopefully her family have found some solace and some mission in making sure that they can prevent these things. Because this isn't a question of big government, in my view. This is a question of smart government. And this is a question of knowing that young people
especially talented in a competitive nature will always have the next game or there's always going to be a scout at the next game. And if we don't set up a circumstance to protect them from the competitive pressures, it's not just in pro sports, it's on the people that are on the path to pro sports. We want to harness that competitive nature. In fact, we want to be more competitive as a country. But when we know there's ways that we can limit exposure to risk and damage. Gosh, it's just common sense. And so it is crazy to think that the US is so far ahead of us on this issue. And thanks to your advocacy, I think we're catching up. I want to talk for the last few minutes on this connection with the military and the warriors on the battlefield as opposed to the gridiron.
Because I've seen through my work with True Patriot Love and my time as veterans minister, the connection, you know, you and I were talking about how Mark Napier and the NHL Players Association years ago, bonding with some CSOR soldiers at the Leafs Military Appreciation Night. There's just an affinity of that sort of, you know, competitive sort of physical culture that you see in sport, that you see in the Canadian Armed Forces.
There's similarly a reluctance to say that landing when you're a paratrooper didn't go well, or yeah, you're feeling the impacts of being close to an artillery firing or a shell going off. You know, speak to me for a minute on how the Canadian Armed Forces can learn from many of these protocols and the bill that's before parliament can hopefully come up with a strategy where we can be much smarter at preventing that recurring injury and providing more protection as well.
Because I think, you know, in the last 10, 15 years, there's been better developments on headgear, better developments on, as you said, neck and strength training and a number of things we can do. I know you've made the connection between military and sports. Speak to me for a minute on how we can take this to avoid traumatic brain injury or other mental health injuries that come as a result of brain trauma.
Tim Fleiszer
So you're right that there's an incredible respect between military personnel and athletes. People have heard me tell this story before, but every year when we did the military appreciation game and they would bring the military folks to the locker room, was like everybody sat up straighter. It's like there go the real bad asses. But I gotta say as an athlete, what we do in sports is a game and what you guys do and what you did is for real.
Right? Like there's definitely a comparison, but in my mind, you know, I have more respect for the military guys. But there's just this really interesting interplay where, you know, if I'm talking to an athlete, I talk about what the soldiers are doing. When I'm talking to a soldier, I talk about what the athletes are doing. Somehow that tends to be more effective. And so the genesis of all this was Anne McKee, who's the, Anne McKee, who's the pathologist at Boston University.
And really this started, you know, people have seen the movie Concussion. People started, started, this really started with athletes and it started with NFL football players and started with a lot of guys that had played 10, 15, 20 years. And so when Anne McKee announced in 2018 that of the first 102 military brains that she had studied, 66 came back positive for CTI, I was very surprised. And so we started looking at, you know, is is brain injury an issue in the military?
And as we peeled back the layers of the onion, it became obvious that it was. And started meeting with veterans. We did a symposium at Queens University. This was two weeks before the pandemic hit. We had been connected with the RDC and the researchers at the RDC in advance of that. And so Ken Dryden was good enough to come and be the keynote. And we did an event at
Queens to really get people talking about brain injury in the military. And what had worked really well with the athletes was athletes pledging to donate your brain. You talked about that earlier, that you were considering doing that. And we're fortunate that we've had lots of very well-known athletes and many military folks doing that as well.
and that that was a great way to start to advance things or to accelerate the research and accelerate the awareness in and around brain injuries. And that's what happened. We're up, I'm proud to say we're up to 450 brain pledges from the military community, which is when you think about somebody giving a body part to support a cause. mean, that's a real number, a substantial number, and it's a real show of support. And there's this incredible thing where
where the military guys want to support the athletes and the athletes want to support the military guys. mean, that's absolutely been a wonderful, and when you look at our staff, our staff, it's mostly former athletes or former military. And one of the things you see is we work really, really well in a team together. And so those are things that you learn in sports and they're things that you learn in the military. And so...
I think where things really came to the head was there's a former special forces soldier named Shane Nedohin. Shane's got on a farm up north of Edmonton and he came forward in the Globe and Mail talking about how difficult it was to having his claim to veteran affairs for brain injury be denied. The Globe and Mail wrote a story about that.
pleased to say that the response from government and from the military has been swift. And I'll say even before that story, the response from government are challenges with some of the pro sports leagues. Been very well documented. My experience with the Canadian Armed Forces and with Veteran Affairs has actually been the opposite. Where particularly in the Armed Forces, they've been very attentive. I know some of those training protocols have been changed for the JTF2 guys.
We recently presented to Army Council and Mike Wright and my understanding is that they're looking at changing some of those training protocols much like we've done in sport for the Army and since the Globe and Mail article it seems like Veteran Affairs is well on their way to changing some of these policies. I I've been communicating regularly with Paul Ledwell and and my sense is that this is headed in a very positive direction.
Hon. Erin OToole
Yeah, no, it is. And that Globe and Mail article, which I sent to a number of people as well, Stephanie Levitz did a great job covering the story that I think you helped highlight with Shane. The TBI issue is not properly addressed by Veterans Affairs now. It took decades to reorient service to be responsible with respect to OSIs or operational stress injuries, PTSD.
I think I don't want to see the same amount of time taken to properly respond and provide benefits and medical supports for folks with TBI. I think the work you're doing, some of the awareness, there's the great folks with Buddy Check Coffee in Ottawa that do a lot of stuff on traumatic brain injury. We used to give away some Buddy Check Coffee at our mental health event on Parliament Hill. It's a great group.
And folks from Gwyer Hill, the JTF2 community, are much more aware of this issue now as well, because even dealing regularly with simulated explosives and things like this, all of these potentially have a concussive effect if they're not treated carefully. So in training, for goodness sake, or in practice, you should be going the extra effort, because you know sometimes in game or in combat.
You can't prepare as adequately. So we should certainly not be exposing people to too much repetition or injury in training and the environment. My podcast is Blue Skies. So we've been dealing with some deep topics here and tragedy in the case of Rowan and what we need to do to get better. And I think there's a lot of ways that the country can be a little bit better. And you're one of the leading advocates.
But I'm also an optimist. So I want to, in the last sort of couple of minutes, get your sense on what has been something that has been a positive change. You've talked about Rowan's Law and I think that's a great one. What's something else that you've seen advocacy from your group, from others? Society is starting to become more aware of brain injury, I believe. What's something that you can leave us with on a more positive note so that people don't get too down from this session? Yeah, there are challenges.
but we're tackling those challenges in a way that I think is really, really positive. So what's something that you're really optimistic about that we're either learning research-wise or practice-wise that is gonna protect people?
Tim Fleiszer
So let me be clear, I could not be more optimistic about the direction that we're headed both in sports and in the military and some of the other groups that are affected, whether it be violence survivors, accident survivors, the elderly, and what we're gonna do to protect kids. So in football, what we saw in the last two collective bargaining agreements in both the NFL and the CFL is there were some real limits put on contact and practice.
And what we realized on football is that 80% of those impacts were happening in practice. And so that was well within our control. And so as coaches are becoming more and more aware, that's been the big fix for football at the pro level was reducing those total number of impacts. If you remember, we talked about concussions are not a good thing, but
To me, the most important part of this is the non-concussive impacts and what that means for brain injury and mental health and some of the other things that go along with that. So same thing in the military where, you I know within the Canadian Armed Forces, and we've seen this on the US side as well, there was a memo that went out to the Department of Defense, within the Department of Defense in August that talked about reducing impacts in practice, or sorry, in training.
And so, you know, I'm incredibly encouraged that things are going in the right direction there. I'm incredibly encouraged with Veteran Affairs' response to this thus far. You know, lots of work to do certainly, but again, that whole you mentioned, True Patriot Love, which have been a great partner for us. You know, we've got Invictus Games going on right now, which if you watch that opening ceremony, I mean, what an inspiring ceremony it was to see some of those guys.
I think my favorite moment was when the BC Premier was talking and talking to the American athletes and they all stood up and made heart signs and the Canadian military got up and you know with all the other nonsense that's going on in the world these days you know the guys that came from a career where it's life and death of course they cut right through it and you know got right to the heart of the matter so that you you talk about something to make you optimistic that made me feel really optimistic and inspired me over the weekend
seeing that out of the Invictus Games, was great. And our work with the Royal Canadian Legion and Lis Sancie, I think we talked about athletes having a, particularly team sports athlete, just understanding how to work in teams and understanding how to work with partners. And it's the same thing in the military.
So you want to talk about the optimistic part of this. It's seeing all the people that are mobilizing in sports, all the people that are mobilizing in the military to try and address this issue. And for some of the soldiers that we've been working with that suffered from symptoms of PTSD and the overlap of those symptoms with brain injury.
Seeing with what they've been able to do with Operation Brain Health, which encourages people to exercise and eat right and sleep properly and build their cognitive reserve and seeing some of these guys that have brought that into their lives literally transform. It makes me very optimistic that we're gonna be able to figure out solutions for this. And so I'm the coach for my kids hockey teams. They're nine, seven and just turned three, all boys.
My household, as you would expect, often looks like UFC or WWE. so I am feeling very optimistic as these guys start to play sports like hockey and they're playing fag football and they're playing soccer that we're going to be able to continue to change some of these policies and that for those type of folks that go into the military or play sports that are high energy, high motor kids just like my own kids that they're going to have a much, much brighter future than our previous generation did. Now that being said, with our research that we're doing at CAMH to be able to diagnose CT and Vivo, I this research is leading the world.
And so for all of us where we can't go back and change the past and for all of us who have been exposed to many non-concussive impacts and concussive impacts over the years. I also feel like treatment strategies are right around the corner in a way that we haven't done. So I could not be more optimistic about what the next five years are gonna look like as we address this issue. And I think Canada absolutely has the opportunity to be the global leader in this.
Hon. Erin OToole
You certainly satisfied the blue sky optimism quotient with that response, Tim. Thank you. And I was in Vancouver for the Invictus opening. The emotion between the American athletes and the Canadians, those hearts, that was the most powerful thing for me. And nobody knows, you know, the importance of the deep history between our two countries, more than people that wore the uniforms of their country.
Maybe there should be more of them in charge than some of the politicians, as they say. But look, the progress we're making is due in large part to great advocates like yourself. It's been great to talk to you about some of your advocacy work, some of your own story. And Tim Fleiser, you're not just a champion on the field, you're a champion in life. So thanks for joining us today on Blue Skies.
Tim Fleiszer
Thanks for having me.
Hon. Erin OToole
Thanks for tuning in to Blue Skies. If you want to learn more about Tim and his work, check out the Concussion Legacy Foundation, play a role in your own veterans group or your own civic group, advocate provincially to make sure that we catch up to the U.S. some of these standards and make sure you Blue Sky this wider issue with your family and friends. I'm Erin O'Toole. Thanks for tuning in.