I'm Travis Bader and this is The
Silvercore Podcast.
Join me as I discuss matters related to
hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits with the
people in businesses that comprise the community.
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outdoor adventures.
Today, I'm joined by a modern day warrior,
retired RCMP Sergeant Major Seb Lavoie, who
DM'd me that rather intriguing message.
"I'm about to change the face of leadership and
policing in the country.
Do you want this scoop?"
Seb, welcome to The Silvercore Podcast.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
Good morning.
Wow.
So for the listeners, and you've been doing a
few podcasts recently, I've been watching the
progression over the last couple of years
of the podcasts that you've been doing.
You've got a very interesting background.
You've probably told it a large number of
times now, but would you like to give a
quick thumbnail just so the listeners have
an idea of who you are?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm, Seb Lavoie, I, um, retired recently
retired from the RCMP after 20 years.
I spent the majority of that in, um, tactical
units, um, either in a covert capacity or on the
Lower Mainland emergency response team, which is
a full time, uh, tactical unit here in, in Canada,
NBC, it's now referred to as the integrated
emergency response team.
Cause there, there are a few municipal departments
that are a part of it.
And, um, I spent 13 years on the team, seven
years as a team leader, um, 2019 moved on to
become the divisional Sergeant Major for the
province of British Columbia and retired two
and a half years later.
Wow.
On top, on top of my, uh, as far as
I was going to go.
Wow.
So very storied career.
And you know, some people might look at this
and say, man, this guy must have horse shoes.
Look at this, he goes to Depot, and I think
you were stationed in Tofino to begin
with, beautiful place.
Do you surf?
I do not.
Oh.
Yeah.
I do not.
I had, uh, you know, I tried while I was there
and, um, I had a near drowning experience and,
and really, to be honest, we, we just didn't have
the time at the time, the numbers just weren't
conducive to us having the ability to kind
of go out and really enjoy the outdoors.
It took me years to go back there and really
look at it and go, man, what have I done?
Near drowning experience.
Was that just swimming or out there.
No.
Surfing?
Surfing.
Really?
Yeah.
It, can.
I get a few of those actually I have
another one diving and one surfing.
Really?
Yeah.
I've had a couple a near drowning experiences.
And it's not quite what most people, it's not
how you would imagine a drowning experience.
When you actually start to drown, it's
actually rather relaxing.
It's, there, there's I don't want to
say panic about it.
Maybe there is, um, uh, organized, um, energy
to try and stay afloat and not go under.
But once the oxygen starts to deplete and
it feels like anyways, that you're inhaling
the water, um, things get a little bit calmer.
I don't know if you had the same experience.
I wasn't quite that close no.
Thankfully.
Well, I guess where I was going with that
was, well, some people might say that you have
horseshoes because you're deployed in these great
places and you've had some very story career
in some very interesting, uh, deployments.
I look at this as something that you've
strove for, that you've worked very hard for.
And while there may be an element of luck
somewhere along the way.
I that's only because preparation and all
the prior planning that you put together kind
of fell into place.
And now as a retired Sergeant Major, you have
started a new company, Raven Strategic, can
you tell me about this?
Correct.
Uh, this is, uh, evidently a work in
progress now, but, um, what it is now in
sort of the bulk of what I'm doing is, uh,
leadership, sort of.
There's I have three modules, so three
different modules.
So one of them is a leadership introspection,
and this is a very, very recent here.
Right.
One of them is essentially a leadership
introspection where we go in, whether it's a, uh,
in a police environment or in a corporate
environment, and essentially use, uh, my
experience in, in dealing with critical incidents
where consequences are dire as in the, how the,
you know, the leadership is held to the fire so to
speak all along the way, as they are developing
to go and assist other leaders in looking
inwards in, in, instead of, when assessing their
own leadership, instead of looking out and
deflecting and disabling and having an ego.
So what we're doing is basically what
can you do today to make your leadership
better without, without waiting for anybody
to inject on in your world and, and provide
you with some tools.
Right.
Very cool.
Yeah.
And so that's one part, I also very, very,
uh, sort of passionate about anything that has
to do with combatives and, um, uh, you know,
uh, combative tactics for those that don't
know, obviously a police defensive tactics or,
or, or martial arts, so to speak, but in the
context specifically of whatever, um, business
or police force or unit we're I'm dealing with.
So that's one of the parts that I
simply kept because I just love doing it.
Well, you've been doing that since
what, three years old.
Yeah.
It's been a long, long time.
Yeah.
Three years old.
And you got into, and you started martial
arts or was it JiuJitsu immediately at three?
No, I started, I started martial arts when I
was three and I was traditional martial
arts, you know, and for everybody's pleasure,
it was Kung Fu.
Right.
Right, so.
Hey, there you go.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
It was, it was a step in and, and, um, you
know, it taught me a bunch of valuable
lessons that I carried over with me all along
the, along the journey.
And eventually sort of went into more of
the Muay Thai stand up striking and eventually
ended up in JiuJitsu, which was about 2007.
Okay.
So in 2007 uh, Brazilian JiuJitsu became
my primary focus.
Right.
Um.
Why was that?
Was that because of Royce Gracie and all the, uh.
A hundred percent it was, yeah.
I mean, in 93, evidently when UFC started, we
actually got to see what truly worked and what
didn't, and it was no longer a theoretical, uh,
before that there was a ton of theoretical ax to
grind about every single, you know, style and who,
who was going to beat who and everything was just
essentially opinions.
Right.
That was when, uh, Akido ring king.
Sure.
Because Steven Segal was on the big screen.
Right.
And to be honest, he was pretty awesome.
Yeah.
I can't deny.
He's a weirdo, but.
He is definitely an interesting individual,
but I can't deny, I probably watched every
one of his videos up until a certain point.
900 times.
Rewind, pause.
How did he do that move?
Yeah, I was a big Seagal fan myself as well.
Yeah.
Favorite movie?
I would say probably above the law.
Yeah?
That was his first one wasn't it?
Yes, it was.
Yeah.
And then I really liked, um, what's the one
with the twins again?
Jamaican twins.
On deadly ground.
On dead-, no, no, no.
Oh no, hard to kill.
Hard to kill.
That's right.
Yeah.
So good.
Everybody want go heaven.
Nobody want dead.
That one?
So good.
Anyways, we digressed a little bit.
I like you already.
Um, yeah.
So with the martial arts background, I had
had a little bit of martial arts as well.
Did kilkushen karate as a kid and I hated it.
I've talked to other people who got
into that and they absolutely loved it.
Maybe it was my mindset.
Maybe it was the group I was with, but I wanted
nothing to do with.
Uh, later on, I got into, uh, Arnis and, uh,
JiuJitsu and I did some Akido and because of
the Steven Seagal stuff and, uh, the Muay Thai,
and I found a great deal of value to the standup
work and the physical conditioning, the cardio
work and all the rest for the movie to I,
and I, I really enjoyed the Arnis actually.
It was, um, uh, is something I did for,
for quite some time.
But there were lessons that people can learn
in martial arts that are very applicable
to policing and applicable to business.
Is that where you're drawing some of your, uh,
your leadership training or are you primarily
leaning on what you learned through, uh, your
career with the RCMP?
Yeah.
Well, my leadership journey started long
before that there was, there was a stint in
the military and then it rolled right into,
you know, being at the academy where I was in
charge of my troop and it rolled into leading use
of force programs, you know, for the west coast.
And then it just, so there was, there was a
long kind of tracking history there, but you
are absolutely correct when you were saying
that, uh, martial arts have the, the,
the crossover so to speak is, um, are
undeniable, right.
And, and, um, but in, in terms of the
environment or setting up an environment like
that is critical for, for any gym or martial arts
studio, and we see it over and over again, how
this is being failed and, and, and the people that
are going in to attempt a martial arts or to,
you know, to, to, to do with everybody else is
doing that's seems to be so great and then they
have a bad experience or a negative experience.
And next thing you know, it turns them off forever
martial arts, right?
So.
Right.
As studio, as martial arts studio owners,
which I'm one of them, um, we have a great
responsibility in, in, in representing the martial
arts world and whatever style that we are
teaching, um, and beauty ambassador, and know
that if somebody comes to you and they're treating
you in a, in a, they're received in a welcomed,
in a family environment with the respect and all
these other things, along with the professional,
um, instructions, eventually, if they move
on, they go somewhere else, they carry
that along with them.
Versus this is a wrap.
Um, you know, I've tried it then, like it done.
Right.
One and Done.
You talk about respect.
And some of these things are just fundamental
core values that a person's mother should
have taught them as a youngster, but perhaps
not everybody has that.
The, that is one of the places where martial
arts can really help leaders I've found
is in instilling a, a code of ethics
and some fundamental values that are shared
amongst the community.
Uh, the physical conditioning is a big
part of that for the, the mental resiliency,
as well as your physical resiliency, um.
Your studio.
Tell me a little bit about that, where, I
didn't realize, I know you had a gym for about
eight years, wasn't it?
You still have that?
Two.
Yeah.
Two gyms?!
Two.
Yeah.
I had two CrossFit gyms, a Sheep Dog CrossFit
and Dogs Den CrossFit, both, both of which
I'm no longer owner, uh, owner of, of, but
I still coach at Sheep Dog on the Sundays,
it's in Port Coquitlam.
My, my martial arts studio is called
Ascension Martial Arts and it's also
in Port Coquitlam.
And, um, I was going somewhere with that,
um, in line with what you were saying there,
what was it now?
Mental resiliency.
Yeah, the resiliency piece.
Thank you.
Uh, yeah, the resiliency piece.
I mean, highly underrated.
Like we know that adversity adds to the
resiliency bank, like adversity in a controlled
fashion either creates post-traumatic growth or
it creates post-traumatic stress injury or, or
occupational stress injuries in the case of
a professional setting.
And so what we have is safety.
So no real risk for harm aside from you know, the
odd, very rare injury that, that, that can
happen anywhere in soccer or baseball or whatever.
But what you have is adversity.
You spar, you know, especially in Brazilian
JiuJitsu, you, you, you get the sparring in
and, and when you start as a white belt, you
know, you're pretty much everybody's punching
bag and it is safe.
It is safe, but you are not winning.
Right.
And so it's difficult, especially if you're
somebody that's generally very successful and
you're generally very successful quickly at
things that you do.
Or you've been in the same field for many,
many years, you're a subject matter expert.
And now you get to test something
that's completely out of comfort.
And next thing you know, you're not winning, not
winning, not winning as you're progressing.
And then you start getting little wins
here and there and you, you know, it's, it's
really, um, humbling and that's a critical,
that's a critical piece.
Um, it's really humbling, but it also shows you
that when you're having a really bad day on the
mats, maybe two hours later, you're back
and it's a greatest day and it's weird.
Cause they're the same day.
Yes.
Right.
W what did it was, think it was E.H.
Chapin.
He said out of suffering have emerged as
strongest souls than those massive characters
are seared of scars.
And perhaps, perhaps that can be a very
accurate statement.
And sometimes some people just don't get up
from, from the scars and they have a difficult
time rebounding.
Having those small wins, having that
little light at the end of the tunnel, that's
probably why people golf actually, right?
Same sort of thing.
You get that one good shot.
And then you suffer for the next, for the rest
of the course, whacking the ball everywhere.
But you need those little success of wins
in order to build that, that mental resiliency.
And now you built, if I'm not mistaken, um,
the sort of standing on the shoulders of giants
and using cumulative work that's out there,
but you built a mental resiliency program
yourself, didn't you?
That is correct.
Yeah.
It's called a Leadership Through
Critical Circumstances.
And, um, you know, it, it, um, evolved greatly
over the years, but essentially what it was
to begin with was, um, a program to re uh, to
support our memberships and to support our police
officers going through critical incidents,
whether it was shootings or, you know, use of
force, major use of force, or even some of
the things that are a by-product of life as
it could be, you know?
Cause the way I like to sort of the analogy I
make is imagine having a bucket and every
single drop that you put in there, whether
it's administrative stress or marital
problems or problems with, with the kids
or financial problems.
And then you get to the office and there's a
caustic work environment or a caustic culture.
You have this, you have that.
And it keeps on going until it,
until it's full.
And now you have any sort of incident, especially
in a critical incident realm and boom you're
overflowing right?
Right.
So our job was to essentially poke holes
through that buckets in any means necessary,
poke the holes so that the water would flow
out and the water level would stay low so that
we could send our people out to do the tough work
did they have to do, and then bringing them
back, because guess what?
Next week, in two weeks, in three weeks there's
this other call and this other call, and we're
talking about a team that's full time that
has hundreds and hundreds of operation a year.
So our guys are not going anywhere.
Right.
So it's it, so that's essentially
how this starts.
So I've heard, and can correct me if, uh, if
you've heard otherwise, but I've heard that
let's say the stress of getting married, the
stress of, what would otherwise be viewed
as a positive stress.
Will have a very similar physiological
response on the body.
So whether somebody is looking at an individual
who's constantly dealing with negative stresses or
negative stresses, which everybody's going to have
to one degree or another, uh, combined with the
positive stresses, all of that needs to be,
to be emptied from the bucket, so to speak.
Stress, the body really doesn't make
a big difference.
And I can even add to that and say somebody
that trains really, really hard on the
physical realm adds to the stress as well.
Interesting.
And it is interesting because it's
also an outlet.
Right.
Right?
So which one of the greater goods, which one
is it for you and how are you perceiving it?
So for example, if we're going back, just
to kind of unpack that a little bit, if we're
talking about say, and I'm not a psychologist,
so bear with me here, but you know, as part
of my research, I've, I've, I've, um, linked
up with, uh, the Chicago police department,
psychological unit, and some of the work they had
done and, uh, and much, much smarter people than
me along the way as part of the research project.
So, um, but yeah, when we're looking
at, uh, stress, even positive stress, or
if it's even a thing.
It's stress and the reason why you're
considering it positive is because there was
a marriage in the end.
Right.
You know, and, and, and that's the, the outcome.
So now we're, we're outcome focused.
So there's a little bit of outcome bias, but
the stress that leads into the marriage,
isn't positive.
Right?
It's a positive event, but there's distress
is still distress is still, it takes
a toll on you right?
Interesting.
So it's a bit of a, it's a bit of
semantics, I guess.
But ultimately the only reason why there's stress
is it'd be the same as saying, you know, we're
going to get, you're going to get into a fight
and, um, it will go, all you need to know is that
it will go your way and when you finish, you win.
So, so, so the stress of the encounter, is
that positive because you're winning, you know?
Right.
So it's a, it's a little bit, uh, it's
a little bit of, um, it's, uh, it's, it's
a bit of a twisted thought process, right?
Like.
It kinda is.
And the stress of a fight, I've always.
Is typically the anticipation or I
should say probably always the anticipation
of the fight.
The fight itself is another, a
stressful thing.
It's, you're in it, you're in it.
And you act and you react and you work in a way
that you've either been trained or it's something
that comes instinctually.
But the anticipation of that event is a
very stressful thing for a lot of people.
And then the aftermath of that and how you mentally
frame that event, was that a positive event?
Is it socially acceptable?
Is it accepted by my supervisors?
By my, my crew around me?
Or am I now looked at as a black sheep?
And I've seen from the limited research that
I've done, when we talk about critical incident
stress, and you talk about, um, PTSD and these
different things, it's that mental mind frame
that I've seen people be able to walk away from
exact same incidents with very different outcomes.
Yeah.
And I would say, I would say, um, you know, in
support of that and what compounds their ability
to do that is also what was their resilience
bank at the time of the incident and what kind of
adversity have they gone through, through life
before getting there.
So, cause that also will dictate how one person
will react and how the other person will react.
So those are compounding compounding things.
Right.
You have mindset, my mindset, mind frame,
understanding their purpose and you know,
all the other factors that play into how
they're going to react to the event and how
positive it is, but also what was the ability to
sustain this level of stress to begin with.
Right?
So, so the two kind of mesh together.
So it's a very interesting, uh.
Yeah, that, that is interesting.
Cause when you bring up, what is
the individual been through ahead of time?
Now, some people can go through something,
they can get beaten down, they can get that
little bit of a win.
They can reframe that situation in their
mind and then they can start building
the resiliencies.
Other people will get beaten down, beaten
down, beaten down, and they never can get
that mindset right.
And consequently, two people can have the
same adversity coming up to a certain point.
And have two different mental resiliencies.
How would, how would you coach your team?
How would you suggest to others to really
enhance their, their mental resiliency?
Well, I'll just speak to my, I'll
speak to my guys.
For example, like we use a lot of positive
reframing, right?
Because one of the issues that, that we
know is that humans are negatively biased.
Right.
And we are, and the reason why we are is
because evidently we are coming out of a
cave and we're not looking left and right.
And we're getting eaten right as, as
you know, in the old days, so to speak.
Um, and, um, and, and it's easy.
And if you look, um, just to make a little segue,
if you look at a, say in an MMA world champ, for
example, like an absolute superstar, or even a
boxer or anybody that really excels in their
field, their ability to shut down the voices
is slim to none, right?
So, so it's really hard to emulate because what
they get the same, they get the same, you know,
where you're, you're an imposter, you know,
you eventually you'll be, you'll be exposed
and people are going to know who, you know, that
you're not as good as they think you are and
all these other things.
But they really, really will quiet
those voices down when other people just don't
have that ability.
And the voices will become louder and
louder and louder and louder until it actually
mute their own right.
So one of the things that I like to do,
that's actually quite, quite easy.
And I've spoken to this with a bunch of different
podcasts, but it's basically, um, have them
listening to positive messaging, but that
those positive messages, they have to have an
impact emotionally.
They can't just be like, okay, you are
going to, um, process information with your
cerebral, with your head.
It's more about, can you feel this message?
Right?
So when the context of my guys, for example,
I used video videos that were say set in a
tactical context, right?
Or in a military style context or in a police,
you know, special operation type context,
but a key messaging was done by motivational
speaker, right.
So they would, essentially at the
beginning of each block, I would play,
you know, a four or five, six minute video.
And my goal was not to change their life by
playing this one video.
My goal was for them to understand how we can
positively impact their day and their shifts so
that they get to do it on their own at home.
So for me, when I'm cleaning the house,
when I'm doing things chores around the
house or whatever, I'm not listening to
music, I'm listening to motivational video
set in a context that's conducive to me having
an emotional reaction.
And I just blast them right.
Very interesting.
And so what you do in what you find quickly
is that I'm sleeping in bed at night and I
will wake up reciting certain things.
You know, luck is the last thing, we should
also believe that winning can happen by accident
and all these things.
And, and your brain continues to process
the information.
And what I also tell them to do is to do it in the
morning, because in the morning when you wake up,
what happens, you listen to a song, you have it
in your head all day.
Well, now's the time to, front-load your,
you know, your, your frontal cortex and your
emotional side and your subconscious mind, uh,
with positive messaging.
And, and, and it's crazy how effectively it works.
Now, the problem is because humans
are inherently negatively bias.
We tend to go back there.
So, so what happens is oftentimes people will
do it for a while and to be like, oh, I felt
really great, I felt like I was, you know,
able to do things that normally would have been
more apprehensive about, or I was able to publish
public speak, or I was able to present or do
this, or lead a call or whatever the case may be.
Right.
And then they're like, oh, well that worked,
you know, it's over.
No, it's not.
Because over time, what happened is the voices
will become louder and louder and louder.
So what I do is every time I have downtime,
I just front load, you know, jam pack
my brain and my, my subconscious mind with
these key messaging.
And it never goes back there if it
makes any sense.
Oh, it totally makes sense.
Yeah, no, you brought up a ton of things in
that little short span.
I wrote a couple of things down.
So my ADHD mind doesn't run off in
different directions.
Um, you know, one of the things, when you're
talking about that, the, the motivational, the
positive imagery, the positive messaging, one
of the biggest things I've heard people say
is, oh, it's a, it's a short term thing.
It wears off and you know what so's washing.
So showering.
Why not do that every day?
Right?
I mean, it's a routine that you
have to get into.
And if you're not always doing it, like what you
say and keeping on top of it, then you will
have diminishing returns.
And that's the disabler, right.
And a disabler in all of us, I'm going to
disable my own wellness.
I'm going to disable my own ability to be better.
I'm going to disabled.
Uh, no, it's, you know, empower
ourselves to do it.
So yeah, understand that if you stop doing it,
it will stop working.
But what else do you have to do?
You don't have to listen to Metallica, well you
do, but you know, at some point you can, you
can switch it up and have an have, um, you
know, a motivational video go out and really
reinforces that key positive messaging.
What's interesting with that too, is just like
martial arts and just how difficult it is to
get certain people to train despite the data
that shows that it's absolutely necessary
for their own either professional endeavor or
whatever the case may be.
It is equally as hard to get somebody to listen
to a four minute video after I've had this
conversation with so many people, because
they just don't want to even see if it could
possibly be right.
That's how deep the disabler runs.
Right.
Why do you think that is?
It is, it is completely asinine.
Yeah.
We, we, as humans have, I believe more propensity
to self-sabotage than any other species, because
we have the ability to process so much
cognitive information.
Like how do we actually, self-sabotage to the
point of, if I said to you, give me three
minutes of your time and I will prove to you that
what I'm saying is real.
What if I said to a police officer come to
the mats and I will teach you that your level of
competence is currently sits at the unknown
incompetence, which means that you don't
know what you don't know.
And in three and a half minutes, I'm going
to show you that your life is in danger if
you don't do something about your, the ability
that you have to use of force in a controlled
fashion, right?
Oh I'd jump on that.
Yeah, but that's not the case.
But most people don't.
That's not the case.
Right.
Well, most people don't want to have their
inadequacies pointed out.
A hundred percent.
And so the, the, the, one of the, the course
that I have, the, the, the introspective
leader courses exactly about that, this is a
transformational day for your leadership.
We are going to look long and hard inside.
There is nobody else responsible.
There's nobody else to look out for, for rescue.
It's all about going down and deep.
Very cool.
Yeah.
So you mentioned something and I did a
bit of research going into this as well
uh, but you mentioned the word imposter.
And in my research, I was listening to
our local police chief here in Delta.
You had a chat with him.
And one of the things that you brought
up was you actually were promoted to a
leadership position and then promoted from
there to an even higher leadership position.
I think you had, what's it like not direct
control, but about 500 people that were under.
Is that a correct number?
No.
So I, I essentially went from having 24 people
reporting to me to overseeing, being broadly
responsible for 8,200 employees in a division.
Right.
Now, you're absolutely right.
There's a span of control.
We know what the span of control is right,
about five people.
So you have to have your leaders
underneath, and that's how these centralized
command works.
But in, in terms of that the image.
And in terms of the, my ability to reach and
connect, I had to be able to do that with
basically 8,200 people.
That was my job to be, um, an inspirational
leader, so to speak.
Um, and I mean, if this wasn't a task that
was handed out to me.
No you took it upon yourself.
This was, this was an opportunity
to do it right.
I, you know, I could have, I could have
cruised through the position for
two years, but.
But I think you mentioned in that interview
that you felt like an imposter when you were
first put into that.
Can you speak about that?
Because I don't think it's an uncommon
thing for most people when they're
trying something new.
A hundred percent.
To say, like who am I?
Who am I to be able to do this opposed to
somebody else who might have greater accolades?
Sure.
Well, you know, to begin with understanding
that, um, uh, tactical team leaders, such
as me is held to the fire every single day.
So we bring our accountability with
us everywhere we go.
We don't need other people to, to, you know,
to make us accountable for our actions.
So for me, being in the unconscious
incompetence is, is a very, very rare thing.
I generally always know that I don't know
anything about something.
I just don't know specifically what
those things are.
Right.
But I will know who to speak to.
So as I like to tell my guys, know what you
don't know and know who knows what you don't
know, or at the very least, you know who you
could speak to the find out what you don't know.
So for me, when I moved on to an administrative
position, so to speak, um, from being a
tactical team leader, which was also an
administrative position, that's called a spade
a spade for the last two years of my career.
I was in the command post and doing mostly,
um, enabling of my guys doing the work on
the ground, which they did fantastic work.
But, um, but when I moved to a, a truly
administrative position at 30,000 foot, you
know, I was now dealing with the assistant
commissioner, the deputy commissioner and the
commanding officer of the division, which
was very different from, and all of us.
So dealing with Ottawa and the commissioner
of the RCMP and having face-to-face meetings and
doing presentations and these types of things,
it was such a broad and it was such, you know,
it, it, it was so vast different from what I
was used to uncomfortable with that the first time
they put the ranks on my shoulders, I was like,
you don't know anything, you don't own the job.
You don't own this job yet.
You're not ready for this rank, but
now you have it.
Right.
So there was a temporary, there was a, there was
a period there where definitely I felt, you
have the ranks on your shoulders, but, um,
you, you don't know where you you're doing.
So for me, the, the, the sort of the defense
mechanism and what that led me to want
to do is you are going to earn this rank.
And you're going to start right now because having
a rank on your shoulder, um, is, is a privilege.
It's a privilege.
You now have, uh, the ability to affect the
collective positively and negatively and.
If, if you're, if you're not prepared
for the responsibility that comes along with
that, and you're in for yourself, the collective
is taking a back seat, everybody's paying
for that shortcoming.
And, um, and, and, and so yeah, what it
did for me is just, it was extra motivation.
The bridge was cut behind me, so to speak, right.
I just, I just had to go all out and try to
make the best out of the experience that I
had to cross it over to where I was going.
And it took no time to figure out how that
was going to work.
So some people will say fake it till you make
it when you're in there, pretend like you have it,
but you took a different approach and you said,
okay, I've got the stripes on my shoulder
now and I'm going to really earn them.
I'm really going to own it and make it my own.
And for better or worse, as I look back,
I can't say it was for lack of trying.
No question.
That's a good way to do it.
Unquestionably, controlling, you know,
what was within my sphere of influence.
And, um, and, and really, I believe all I could
ask myself was work as hard as I possibly could.
Right.
And I would never look back and say, you, you
missed an opportunity to really give it your all
and you failed miserably.
It might've been, you failed miserably, but
you tried everything you possibly could so.
Right.
Yeah.
Well as I think back.
So my father was Vancouver police.
My grandfather, never met him, he was
Vancouver police as well.
Actually, he's one of the ones that this company is
named after he was Silver Armeneau VPD detective,
uh, Cornelius Bader, my other grandfather
was an entrepreneur.
I took the silver, I took the core,
put 'em together.
Beautiful name.
Um, but my father, he was VPD and he was on
the very ERT and then he was in charge of
it for, for some time.
And, uh, consequently, we would have most of
the team over in the house and I got to see
the different people involved in over the
period period of time.
See how the stresses of work can start
effecting people.
And one, he's passed away about a year ago,
but, um, got into the bottle pretty heavy.
Another fellow, um, resigned, took himself
off the team, took himself out of policing
altogether, moved up north a bit and ended
up taking his own life.
Um, everybody kind of deals with things
differently and I'd look at how my father
would deal with things and how anger would
come out in certain ways when in hindsight,
looking back what I would view as normal
behavior, it was, it was very, very different.
Um, I think in the very early, the days
of the ERT there, um, the mental conditioning
aspect of it was confined to, uh, the warrior
mindset, as opposed to the mental resiliency.
When did that whole resiliency piece start
to really take hold that, that you could see?
The real question is when did we lose it?
You know, well you're looking at warrior
culture and not to compare, say ERT with the
samurais, but we'll use the samurais for example.
Right?
Sure.
A lot of the, a lot of the pillars of
resiliency were already within their mindset.
You know, they had a sense of higher purpose.
There was a social aspect to it, there was the
physical aspect to it.
There was a spiritual aspect to it and
the emotional side.
And they were, you know, they brought all those
things together as well.
Those are the pillars of resiliency.
Right.
And so what ended up happening, I think
over, over the course of whatever centuries,
millenniums, whatever the case may be.
Um, we we've lost the bigger picture and it
became a sort of, uh, it sort of became a one
dimensional approach to problem solving.
Right.
And, uh, when I, when I think of my beginnings
on the team, so now it would have been in 2007
or whatever, at the time the old school, you know,
ERT guys were still.
I have a, they had a death grip on the team
in terms of case, some of them were still in P in
position of leadership.
Uh, definitely, uh, one of the, one of
them was at the helm of the team at the time.
And, um, I remember vividly, you know, going
to a hostage rescue and actually, you know,
conducting it with, with, with two or three
of the other guys.
And, uh, and when one of the, uh, supervisor
asked, they, should we give the guys
some recognition for this or whatever.
It was like, wow, that's their job, right?
That was kind of the mentality.
But I think reinforcing that purpose and Hey
guys, this was a, you know, a really tough
call that we sent you to, uh, you did
a fantastic job and here's some recognition.
So now there's a positive attachment with this,
and your sense of purpose has increased and all
these other things.
So they all feed into each other right.
And, uh, there was always on the ERT side, just
like there is on the military side, um, a
strong importance given to sort of being tough
and, uh, being tough as much more to skin deep.
Hugely.
Being, being tough is sometimes having the
ability to say, this is too much for me, or how
do I get better at this?
Or what can I do better here and show some
vulnerable, vulnerable vulnerability.
mixing up two languages, two of
which I don't speak officially, but, um.
But you know, and so my thing has always
been focused on what you can do to be
better all around.
And you'll never have to project an
image of toughness.
You will just beat off.
And generally people don't try to
overcompensate as they have something.
Right.
Which ties right into why police officers should
be good at controlling suspects on the ground
or, or even, you know, uh, being able to sustain
an assault standing up and be able to, to, to
react appropriately, do all those things and
have a certain level of stress resistance to
some of those events so that they never feel the
need to overcompensate for the things that
they're insecure in, if that makes any sense.
So.
It makes a lot of sense.
So for me, sorry, I went on a bit of a
segue here, but, but for me, um, it's a very
different game now.
I think over the course of the last, I would say
probably I'd say five to 10 years and, uh,
as more of this newer generation is starting
coming through and there's a recognition
organizationally, not just from the RCMP,
but from a variety of different organizations
are important than the, you know, the,
the importance of mental wellness and
emotional wellness.
And, um, and it's bleeding, it's bleeding
into everything and it should.
And so I think that now we're doing a
much, much better and it's not perfect.
It's not perfect, but we're doing especially
an M speaking about the team here.
Right.
Not, not necessarily you know, painting with
a, with a broad brush here, just to team.
And, uh, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think there
is no going backwards now ever because we've
had, we've had plenty of our guys go with to some
incredible things that you would have thought
years ago would have definitely, definitely
benched a bunch of guys for a long, long time.
And the prospect of speaking, you know, I'm,
I'm thinking about a gentlemen, you mentioned
that took his own life.
The prospect of speaking about those things
back in the day would have been, you know.
Oh.
A sacrilege, right?
Like.
It was looked down upon.
What are you doing?
Just drink another drink, you know, like.
Right.
Well, like I say, one of them, I, I, you
know what, I won't, I won't say the name.
I won't say the nickname, but very heavy into
the drink, but this fellow, he said, um, I
remember he was at the, uh, the kitchen table
talking about how he would start shivering
and convulsing violently as he started to drive
over the bridge and he'd break down into tears
and he didn't know why.
And this was as he's driving over the bridge
to go into work and the incident that he was
involved with,wasn't even one that I think people
would look at it and say, well, are you kidding me?
Is that it?
But the fact that the balance of life and
death did stand, was held within his hands
and the fact that he didn't react in a way
that he thought he would react or that he figured
he should have reacted.
Uh, really didn't sit well with him.
And on top of that, I didn't get the sense
that there's a heck of a lot of support from
management in the, in the whole process.
And I, I remember him telling the story
and I remember him going through it
and looking at it.
And the, I was very young at the time and thinking,
well, that's not, it, that's not what a tough
person does right.
And cause that was, that was how I was raised.
And that's how everybody kinda kinda thought
maybe he doesn't belong on the team.
When in fact the guy was a perfect
fit for the team.
Had he had these mental resiliencies in place
and had a support network for being able to reframe
that incident in a way that was positive.
Yeah.
As I, um, as I completed a research project, when
I first moved to the commanding officer's
office, um, I asked for permission to go around
and interview people that were involved in critical
use of force and half the conversations about
what was done with them, following the incident.
I mean, pre post and pre, during and post
incidents, you know, just to see where the
balls were dropped so that we could obviously
pick up some slack and tighten up some things.
And I was absolutely amazed the mud, the
vast majority of our members weren't actually.
Um, adversely afflicted by whatever incident they
actually responded to.
It was the way they were treated did after.
So when people come into policing and
come into these first responder job, they
have an expectations of some of the things
they're going to see.
Therefore there's a pre-loading of the
information and weary, and the punch you expect
is better than the punch you don't expect.
Right?
So then they would go to work on the daily with an
acceptance, and that this may be the case today.
I prepare for this, I have this training
and that training and, and, and so,
but what they didn't prepare for is to get
abandoned along the way.
And unfortunately, it's not always, it
doesn't, it's not always an organizational
thing where everybody dropped the ball, but
sometimes it's just that one person, right.
It's that one person that didn't
quite get it right.
And was going through a clinical process at
the time at which the person that was actually
a part of the incident is hypersensitive
following an incident.
And they should be, you know, cause
it's abnormal.
Like we're sending our people to
abnormal situations.
And then, and then, and then, you know,
uh, something was said, or something was done
or an attitude was taken and, and, and,
and the person felt completely, um, betrayal,
betrayal, like a, a strong sense of betrayal
of being betrayed by the organization.
Uh, and then, you know, it's interesting too,
because, and I tell this to member members all the
time, it's like the force treated me like crap.
Well, we've had this conversation for
say, uh, two hours.
And, and you've mentioned this person
900 times, right?
Is this person representing the force?
To a certain extent they do, but they
are not the force.
They are not the organization.
There'll be one person that was your disabler.
And he really caused some severe damage, right.
So with the idea, yeah, it's just,
it's tough, right?
Because if you have a line of say 10 people
that have the ability to impact somebody's
career or their lives and the lives of their
family, all it takes is one, it just takes one.
Totally.
So they have to be in unison, they
have to be in sync.
They have to be squared away of the processes.
They have to be, they have to be
prioritizing wellness over, over anything
else in recovery, over anything else.
And they all have to be on the same page.
And if they don't, somebody will pay.
A lot of the retired police officers that,
uh, not at all, but I see a lot of them that
I've dealt with will have a resentment or
a, an antiestablishment attitude after getting
out of policing as they look back because
of those one or two people that, that's
a very good analogy that you put forward.
The issue that you also brought up was having
the, um, the confidence of being able to deal
with people in the street in a way where
you now no longer have to overuse force or
over exert your role.
And I quite often hear the same thing come up.
Well, how come we're hiring these people
who've never been in a fight before?
How come we're, uh, prioritizing
university education over top of perhaps
some street smarts.
And I, and I see the argument on both sides.
I see the fact that some compassion and
a different approach can quite often have
a much better outcome than perhaps going
in with a heavy hand.
And I also see the side when the heavy hand
needs to be applied.
Um, but that process of hiring, and I know
you've heard it before and then people will
get into positions of leadership and leadership
will start to promote other people with similar
experiences, life values, interests that they have
and you start getting a top heavy establishment
with certain ethos and outlooks.
And if you get that one or two negative
individuals in there it can start to
sour an organization rather quickly.
And I think that's where some of this media
reporting has been, uh, at one point the RCMP.
I mean, you, you couldn't paint it
black mark on them.
And for a long time now, I, all you hear about in
the news is just really, really negative things.
And when we first started talking here, you brought
up, uh, uh, a recent one.
I, you did a post on Instagram as well, did
you want to talk about, I think I brought up
a couple things here, but why don't you just
step off on whichever one you'd like to.
Okay.
If I, if I get lost, he'll have to bring
me back on track here, but I'll start with one
thing to begin with, we know that group problem
solving and effective problem solving is
better when you have diversity of thoughts.
Right?
So if you surround yourself with like-minded
individual, it looks like we're doing the
right thing, but it's not always the case.
Now don't get me wrong.
Evidently you could say, well, if you're
on an ERT team, the majority of the guys are
like-minded individuals.
They're hard driven, go getters that want to go
out and do things and they want to step up.
But amongst those personalities, there's
a wide spectrum of different variety.
Right?
And it's, and so you can have, um, S some,
um, similarities, but having diversity of
thoughts, especially is critical for effective
group problem-solving.
And there was a spring, uh, I believe a Stanford
university or one of the university in the
states, I can never remember which one.
Um, had done basically a, an exercise where they
had a strong baseline with a collective IQ,
much higher than another group that had diversity
of thoughts, you know, by, by way of backgrounds
and ethnicities and all these other things.
Right.
And what they end up doing is they end up
being able to figure, being able to come up to
the conclusion that the group that had a lower
combined IQ was still better at effectively
problem solve the.
Interesting.
Dilemmas that they were given because there
was, oh, you know, I've dealt with this in my
job and I've, I've got this at an experience.
And, you know, versus we're all thinking the
same cause if you're, if you're group problem
solving with people that are all like you,
you're essentially alone.
You're in an echo chamber.
Problem solving.
Yeah, you are.
And so that's a very interesting dichotomy,
so to speak, but, uh, but uh, you have to
go on with, you know, the media and, and,
and, um, and hopefully you haven't started
something that we can't put back in the box here.
But, um, you know, cold call me, call me naive,
call me, um, idealist, uh, I don't know.
Um, but I do believe that there is an ethical, uh,
professional and, um, ethical, professional
and, and just outright, um, responsibility
to, um, to, to, to stop the divide.
Right?
We're not what we are seeing currently with
the polarization is, is, has the potential to be
extremely self-harming for this, for this,
uh, species and a prospect of us getting
so bad to a point where we self-destruct
isn't that far off and call me fatalistic
or anything, but it is, it is what it is.
If we keep going down those rabbit holes where
we're getting further and further and further
apart, and we're, nobody is unable to bring
people back together so that we can pull
in the same direction.
We're going to have some serious
problems as a species.
Yeah.
And we are not even talking about, imagine
electricity going off when we saw it
with COVID, you know, it didn't take, it
didn't take 24 hours to find out that we
couldn't work together.
Everybody just went running in there,
you know, every directions and.
Gotta get toilet paper.
Yeah.
And when I say everyone, obviously there's always
the people that are there to assist others.
And we, we, we love them and we were lucky you'd
have them, but, um, you know, it had, it had
an incredible impact.
And we're talking about a virus with a survival
rate that far exceeded anything, not to downplay
it, but you know, that far exceeded anything
that we would experience.
If we had, I had, you know, a vx gas attack or
whatever the case may be, you know, like something
truly, truly dramatic.
And so, you know, I realize, yeah.
And, and just being devil's advocate, then
kind of going through my own processes, I realized
that the news media.
As we know it, uh, especially the paper
format is, is dying.
It's a dying, it's a dying business.
And, uh, it's really, really hard for them
to even stay afloat.
Right.
So I realized that there is a need for
them to inject some sensationalism in there
so that they can hit certain numbers that
allows them to continue proliferating news.
Right.
However, at some point you kind of
have to look at what are we after here?
Are we, are we prioritizing financial
gain or are we, uh, we are, we prioritizing, um,
man, human kinds, right?
Uh, and, and, and our ability to positively
influence all of these people and change
millions of lives.
So when you're at the end of the day, what
you are doing, you may be successful, but are
you, are you meaningful?
You know, is that something that, that
actually truly makes a difference and something
that you can look at yourself in the mirror
and be extremely proud to have been a part of?
So for me, again, going back on track, what I
want to see is I want to see fair reporting.
I'm not, I'm not asking for them to, um,
sugarcoat the actions of police officers if
there is misconduct.
Absolutely not.
That's let's expose them.
Let's deal with them.
Let's do all this good stuff.
But adversely when, when things are done.
Um, and, and, and, you know, members are
rushing into a building to save a two year old.
Right?
Like recently.
Like in this case.
Yes.
And they were stabbed in the process of
doing so don't go out and call and make a
big headlines on your newspaper that states
police officers were cut.
Right.
Because it's semantics.
I get it.
But if I, if I speak to somebody that has zero
frame of reference and I go, okay, two police
officers were cut.
And I said to them, I need you to
describe to me what you just envisioned.
Right.
They, they would.
Look at their finger.
A hundred percent.
They would think, you know, when I caught
myself with onion.
So, cause we that's what we do as humans,
our cognitive, uh, experiences are now
attached to whatever we know as a reality.
Right.
What police work is, a lot of the
times is extremely gruesome, extremely,
extremely gruesome.
So if, if obstacle or, uh, you know,
stabbed that is a serious, serious life
altering potentially life, the life ending
situation and the person that's done it also
deserves to be exposed.
And I'm not saying, I'm not saying necessarily
with their name or anything like that,
but I'm just saying don't downplay it or
diminish the actions by saying that police
officers were cut.
Cause how he makes us suspect sound
like potentially you did something right.
We didn't do anything that bad.
Didn't trim his nails well enough earlier
and kinda cut the.
That's right.
And now the, the, the police officers that
entered this place knowing, foresee, I
don't know the details, you know, for a fact,
but like, we'll assume that, we assume that
there are weapons in most of the houses that
we go to, especially if they're problematic.
And I can tell you that that's the case.
There's no question.
And if we were to think about, you know,
kitchen knives who doesn't have that?
Everyone.
So yeah, so there's always tactical
considerations when go on calls like this.
And if the person is emotionally disturbed to
the point where you're dealing now with a set
of circumstances where you have a two year
old that's in danger to the point where you
launch essentially a hostage rescue, right.
Cause there is exigency to do so, you know
that some of those things are going to
be coming your way.
Like that's an accepted fact, like you will
get either hurt or you're going to have
to respond to something you will be faced with.
So for them to have that information
front loaded in their frontal cortex and be
ready to go and do it anyways, go get stabbed.
And a, and a, and a two-year-old is being
rescued, um, needs to be proliferated.
It needs to be proliferated.
The public needs to see, needs to hear the story
and needs to see it as much as they are entitled
to know when cops are conducting themselves
embarrassingly.
Sure.
Right.
I think that's a really tall order, particularly
considering the negative bias that we already
talked about to begin with that people look
towards, you can look towards a really positive
event and some people clap, hey that's great.
Glad to hear it, but the negative ones and people
just dwell over it.
And on top of that, the media, holy crow.
So if we talk about print media, these people said,
wow, they're just doing it to sell newspapers
and a friend of mine in the media says, no
no it's so we can sell advertising, right?
Really that the better their circulation the
more advertising, the more we have, and we've
only got a limited amount of space and we got to
catch your attention.
And so we'll, we'll put it forth like this.
And you're going to have people with negative
biases against law enforcement because
they got a speeding ticket when they didn't
think they should have.
And this is our way to get back and
they've got a pen or whatever it might be.
And I know law enforcement has, for
a long time now, been taking the media out
to, uh, on ride alongs, take them out to the
range, show 'em like these are the decisions
that you have to make.
Here's some simulated training that they
go through to give a better perspective in
how things are reported.
I don't know if that change in how the media
provides information is ever going to get any
better, particularly considering that
most people get their information through
online sources now, and the online sources
are heavily integrated with advertising and
revenue streams through Google, which owns
YouTube and Facebook which owns Instagram.
And you'll notice like you brought up COVID you
can't write something on social media without
the advertising company coming in and putting
their two bits on the, uh, on, if you write in,
Hey, I got my COVID shot.
You're going to see a thing that comes
up underneath that talks about COVID.
I don't know if fairness in reporting is
something that we will ever really see again.
And when you talk about this precipice of the
divisiveness within, uh, people right now
and how the media and most of our information
sources are really playing out up to that.
I see it.
I think most people see it and it might
be exacerbated by what we actually
read in the media.
It might be greater in our minds to what it
might actually be, but at some point it will
reach a tipping point and it'll self level
for better or for worse.
Um, but when you talk about leadership and
policing, which ties back to who are we hiring and
why, how do we develop mental resiliencies?
How do we develop basic people skills and a
value system so that people can deal with
at risk individuals or people on the street in
a way that's going to be conducive to publicly,
um, positive reporting.
Um, you have been developing a system
to sort of change the face of leadership
in policing, which I think will touch on
all of these points that you've brought up.
It'll touch on how the media reports on it,
because the leadership will now take hopefully
a more proactive approach and how
they're and how they're engaging the citizens.
Like I've always thought, holy crow, a boots on the
ground hearts and minds approach, like what the
military will do when they go into a, a foreign
area, uh, by the police.
We do wonders to getting just the
basic idea across.
You talk about a person getting cut
well holy crow.
I've known people who've been stabbed, I've
known people who've been killed through,
uh, by knives, you don't have to go that deep.
It doesn't have to be that big of a
stab and you can do horrific damage.
I remember I had a, I used to bounce
back in the day.
So did I.
Ozone Nightclub, out in Surrey there back
when that was around.
And, uh, I, uh, I was hired there, the guy
didn't, I was working at a gym at the time and
this one of the owners came by the gym and says,
um, you'd be perfect.
You should come, you should come bounce
at, uh, at the ozone.
I wasn't even old enough to attend the
ozone, but no problem.
I'll go there.
I won't tell them my age.
Right.
Um, they had a mass exodus of people leaving.
Someone got shot in the face and the parking
lot, and a body was found in the dumpster
behind the strip club.
That was right next door to it.
Um, but we encountered knives there.
A friend of mine, I gave some body armor too,
because I had a whole bunch of old VPD stuff.
And he ended up getting poked in the
belly and in the back.
And, um, just went through just
a little bit.
And then he caught it in the arm and went through
his, uh, his bicep when he put his hand up to
kind of block his, his throat, but a bit of
a degression there.
Um, when we talk about how these things are
reported, if people could understand the
actual seriousness of what an edge weapon.
Can be to an individual.
They said, well, you got a guy and
he's got a knife.
Come on.
I mean, the way he just wrestled the
knife out of his hand.
What?
He was X distance away, how far away is that?
And of course, most police know about the
Tueller drill and the Megliato and all, all the
other, um, uh, theories on distance and how
long a person can live and how far away they
can be, um, lethal too.
But all of these little points I think, could be
addressed through what you're talking about
in the leadership and policing, how leadership
interacts with media, how leadership interacts
with the subordinates, so that they interact
with the general public.
Is that sort of the plan that you're, cause
as you're talking here and I'm thinking about,
it sounds like a very holistic approach that
you're looking at.
Yeah, absolutely it is.
And, and, and the good news is, um, just to go
back on something you said, cause I think I
wouldn't really, it would be a disservice for me to
not sort of speak to it, but, um, or at least to
give you some semblance of an opinion on it, um,
I realize that striving for fairness is going
to always be difficult.
Now the problem is, is, is, is
accountability, right?
And so the problem is this.
We have a prime minister right now that will not
answer a question for 27 minutes while all of
us are asking it again.
And after three or four times that he's
skillfully skirt, uh, skirted his way out of
answering the question.
Nobody asks it again and I'm standing there
going, somebody ask that question again.
Hold them accountable.
Yeah.
So, and so this is what the issue is here.
The public has a lot of power.
If the public to turn around and say, tell
us what truly happens here, tell us who's
truly dying from COVID, tell us who we would
get the information unvetted right?
But there's a lot of information floating
around that just we're not getting, and we're
not asking for it, so we're not getting it.
So it's the same with this, you know, take
one isolated incident because we can go on,
on tangents for days with how we're going
to make that happen.
How is it actually logistically feasible
and how do we all work together and
whatever, right?
But if you look at say the incident with a two
year old was, so there is enough information
out there to know that that occurred, right?
And so now what needs to happen is there needs to
be a public backlash on the way it was addressed
in the first place.
Let's call it 500 emails, let's call it
5,000 emails, let's call it 50,000 emails.
At some point it will have an impact.
It will have an impact because the next person
that comes along a similar situation
will be last time we reported on this and
we weren't accurate.
And we weren't, we're going to get 50,000
emails following, right.
There was no repercussions.
It's acting with our repercussions just
leads us to do anything.
I'll give you an example of this and I'll, I'll,
I'll sort of lead right into your bouncing,
your bouncing example.
Cause I was a bouncer in Montreal during
a biker war between the work machine,
the hell's angels.
It was war zone, you know, no question.
But it's interesting because as this war was
unfolding and it was, as it was getting worse and
worse and people were dying everywhere and,
and caught in the cross fires and people were
trying to kill people and club lineups with
rocket launchers and all kinds of stupidness.
Um, one of the things that never happened
for the longest time was for people to say
enough is enough, right?
And so, and so those things proliferated
and it continued and they just, it just, it
was getting worse and worse and eventually.
An innocent guy killed.
An eight year old, got, got, got killed, right?
And his Jeep blew up in a, essentially a vehicle
born IED and boom.
And he received, you know, some, some piece
of parts of the Jeep and, and, and, and his life
ended when that happened.
Everybody in Quebec got together and they're
like, enough's enough.
They put their foot down.
It took a year and a half to two years, following
that to make hanging out with people with colors,
illegal, I'm talking about like, obviously.
Gang colors.
Biker gang colors, right.
And, and having any gathering of more than
so-and-so the sentences got way stifer and
the pursuit and to the budgets increase for the
units that were actually chasing those guys.
And, and, and, and eventually what happened
is there was nothing to be found in Quebec
in terms of bikers.
It was very boucher was in jail.
His son was in jail.
The nomads were completed as banded.
It was everywhere.
And so, and so all it took is for everybody
to get together once.
Right.
And, um, anyways.
We're seeing that now.
We do.
And they call it SLO or social license to
operate, and we're seeing it, but not necessarily
in a positive way.
No.
Exactly.
And this obviously a good tool can always be
used a bad purpose right?
You can have the, the, the most beautiful,
you know, Lapua and uh, either kill an
elephant or, or people.
Yes.
You know, um, anyways, so yeah, I, I do
believe that, um, and I don't want to make
it sound like, um, I single-handedly, or, you
know, hold the key to fixing all the policing
problems because it would be, um, extremely
disingenious on my part to say that, but
certainly what the plan is is to get people,
to take responsibility for the things that are
not going well for us as, as police officers
and as departments and all these other things.
And so teaching all levels of leadership to
stop looking around for somebody to rescue them
and to self rescue by being extremely critical
of their own actions and also by seeking input
and work cooperatively with their people.
So I support you, you support me, not in a
way that some media has put, it puts a
spin on it, where I hide you, you hide me.
We're talking about ethical professional
behaviors here, and how are we going to problem
solve certain things in a prioritize and
execute type fashion.
We're having an issue with media relationship.
Who's fixing that and how, and how
can we enable it and how can we help?
We need to get the people that are resistant to
change to step off.
And what's interesting with resistant to change
is maladjusted leaders, as I call them, um,
will, will often be in charge of change.
That is really interesting.
And one of the things that I found out is
at times, I think they take that responsibility
on to prevent it, you know, and it's.
I'd agree a hundred percent.
And it may be conscious or it may
be subconscious, but it ends up happening
anyway, I'm late.
And my conversations are, you are supposed
to be spearheading a movement to change here
and introduce us to the, you know, to the century
that we're in and, um, be proactive, but you
are not, you're actually disabling everything.
So I need you to curb the disabler and start
looking, you know?
Um, so anyways, so yeah, so that's kind
of what the idea is.
You're absolutely correct.
And it impacts absolutely every aspect of your,
uh, of your ability to police effectively.
So responsibility and taking responsibility
for actions is not something that the
RCMP has a stellar reputation for now.
They might do it, but in the public perception,
the public eye, they definitely are, are held
in the same sort of, um, vein as, uh, your
example of Trudeau there.
And I remember I was doing a firearms
instructors course with the Vancouver police
a number of years ago.
And there was a VPD officer during that
time, who I believe he shoved somebody on the
streets, it was a woman.
I think she might've been disabled or there, there
was some issue there.
And within the period of time from that
incident happening, the officer made a mistake.
He thought he was being approached by
somebody with ill intent, turned out this
person was, um, MHA.
And I think it was about a three-day span between
that incident happening and the brass coming
out and saying, yeah, that officer screwed up.
Uh, we are now putting that officer on some
retraining, pulled them from the current
division until they're trained up and, uh,
we'll report back after.
And that just seemed to me, and I looked
at the, uh, the rest, everyone else there
was law enforcement and I looked at how
everyone else dealt with it and like, yeah.
Yep, makes sense, sounds good.
And that approach to me, you get in front
of the problem, you take responsibility
for it, even if it's a situation where the
officer may be, they made the right decision
based on everything, but didn't have that one
key piece of information for the department
of stand up and take responsibility that
sends a really strong message and conversely
watching multiple issues.
One of which is, uh, information up right
over my right shoulder, where the RCMP, um,
would rather double down.
Circle the wagons, so to speak and not want
to admit wrongdoing.
And I always wonder why that is.
Is there, is there the worry of opening
Pandora's box?
If I say, yeah, we screwed up here that
everything's going to come flying or is it just
arrogant protectionism.
I don't know.
Am I off base in that sort of, because keep in
mind, I was raised in a municipal police force
family, which had a very different perspective
of what a federal policing looks like.
It's also much, much easier to turn a small,
uh, speed boat around than a aircraft carrier.
Right.
And so, but you're not, no, you're not wrong
in the sense that, um, what I, what I could
say, I guess, in what I could speak to, and
not that I'm being limited in anything I
say whatsoever, but I got to speak to what I know.
I can just start making stuff up, uh,
what I have seen.
And what I do know is that, that the
RCMP's sort of media, um, strategy.
And this is not a knock on doors that are working
in a media strategies, but, but the broad
strategy, um, is vastly underfunded for one.
And also it's like, there's, there's a
S there's a certain centralization of command
there that needs to stop.
It needs to be decentralized.
It needs to be centered a region.
And we need to have some strong teams
of strong leaders.
We're talking about people, you know, that
that can take ownership of things, that can dig
into things and find facts that can be given
without say, jeopardizing an investigation, or, um,
making a statement that's completely off base now
from the perspective of the members.
There's no protective attitude on the, on the
part of the organization, as far as our regular
members are concerned, because these guys
feel like they're being dragged into the mud
incessantly, and nobody is stepping up for them.
So this, this, this is a two-way street.
They're actually not providing information,
but they're also not defending the
members right?
So now you have you basically, it's on two
fronts where it's a failing on two fronts,
like communicate.
And, and one of the things that I really,
really don't like is when you start taking
listeners and, and, and people in the public
for idiots, like don't, don't start taking
people for idiots.
Like if you actually give them, uh, the totality
of the circumstances, or at the very least an
exemplification of what this might look like, or
this might've occurred here, or we don't know
for sure all the details, but we can tell you this.
We've asked our officers to go in a very tough
situation, this occurred, as soon as we know more,
we'll give you more, but we don't get, we don't
even give them that because we're afraid
of making a mistake.
If you make a mistake, you own your mistake,
you own your mistake publicly, and you
apologize for it.
And those are the mechanism that we're
going to put in place so that it does not
repeat itself and this is it, it's over.
You don't lose respect when you do
that as a leader.
But when you start hiding being disingenious,
this is where you now establishing
your character as an organization.
And the problem with that is after that,
everything you do is always tinted with the
possibility that you are being disingenious right?
Right.
And so for me, um, you know, I just, I
would love to see a much more open format,
which respect to how we communicate preemptively,
whether it's with operations or some of
the work that we do, or some of the really
difficult situation that our members are in and,
you know, have take the public for what they
are, which is if you give them a reasonable,
uh, if you give them a reasonable facts that you
give them a reasonable, they will come to a
very similar conclusion.
And yes, there's always going to be
the outliers that, you know, the conspiracy
theorist and, and, and all these other things.
I mean, conspiracy, conspiracy, we can't
get together on what kind of colour pen
we're going to purchase.
So let alone broad scope conspiracy.
Yeah, yeah.
This is just, this is just unworkable, uh, in
a government organization as far as I'm concerned.
But, um, but yeah, I just, the lack of media
strategy needs to be addressed and it's
not, uh, um, uh, sort of, um, a follow up
to whatever happens.
It's preemptive.
It's gotta be proactive.
It's proactive and it's, and it's after as well.
Give you an example.
Another example of this, uh, you know,
that has tragic, has had tragic consequences.
So Pierre Lemaitre was the gentleman, excuse me,
that um, that came out and during the Surrey 6,
sorry not the Surrey 60, um, the jet-ski incidents
at the Vancouver airport.
Right.
And he has made, uh, you know, uh, first
statement that had some mistakes in it.
And, and, and, uh, it wasn't ill will or
anything like that.
It just was reported in a way that con, you
know, conveyed some facts that weren't
necessarily facts, at the time uh, there was some
missing pieces there.
So what happened was of course, Pierre wants
to go back and wants to correct his mistake
and wants to go to the public and say, look,
I screwed up, I didn't have all the facts here.
And I thought I heard this and, or I was told
this, but it wasn't verified, or whatever
the case may be and explained that to the
public and let them know what happened.
And he was told category clean, no, you are
not going to do that.
Took his life.
Right.
He took his own life.
Right.
And, and, and, and we just, we, we, we, we
need to understand.
And it's quite interesting because when
you set a culture of ownership with yourself,
as a leader, ownership and accountability
with yourself as a leader, it starts,
it starts bleeding into your culture and
all of your people.
And it's really difficult nowadays to go anywhere
and to have somebody say, This didn't work
out because I did this wrong, or I didn't work.
When do you see that?
Hardly ever.
Right.
But on units, like say on the team I was on or
whatever, we sat there.
And that was a constant people were
fighting over, who was responsible for what.
As in trying to take the blame.
You weren't even working that day.
You had nothing to do with it.
You know, like it, it got through the next day, it
got to an extent where everybody, the culture
of ownership was there.
Well, if you transpose this on a broad
spectrum, you are doing it organizationally.
You are now sent sending this down
the ranks as well.
So there is like, it's a Pandora's box.
You're absolutely right.
And that if we do it correctly, it's going
to have a trickle down effect that will impact
everybody's ability to have that ownership.
And I, when I say everybody, we always know
there's some that won't, but the more you have
the masses do the right thing, the less popular
it is to have somebody not do the right thing.
If that makes any sense.
You know, that's a really interesting way to look
at it too, because with them social license to
operate, and it seems like there's a misguided
approach to ownership of responsibility in
society at the moment.
And maybe that's because they have not received
a good example from those who should be in
a leadership position when people are going
and looking at events that happened a hundred
or more years ago and saying, we've got to take
ownership for this now.
And that's gonna open up a whole, whole
other can of worms of things, but the level of
ownership that officials are being asked to
take upon themselves, sometimes they're things
that had absolutely nothing to do with
them, I think is rather unreasonable by sometimes
the vocal majority.
Having a police force, having a government in
power that will take responsibility and, and
encourage the federal police force to do
the same thing and set the parameters or the
framework for what is right and what is wrong
and what is acceptable or not will probably have
a very massive effect in the populace who is
looking at it and saying, Hey, it's not right.
I don't know what is right.
But my personal feeling is, and, and running
off on all of these strange tangents,
I couldn't agree more.
I, and I, you know, we'll try to qualify this as
much as I can and try to avoid, uh, you know,
a nuclear explosion, but here's what my
thoughts are on that.
You're talking about events that occurred, you
know, hundreds of years ago, you were talking
about events that were say at the time church
led supported by the current government and
forced by the RCMP.
Supported by the public that puts
people into power.
Right.
So everybody along the way had a play
in the horrible things that occurred.
Sure.
There isn't one group in that, including the
public that can turn around and look at
anybody else and say you are responsible
for that because the person of today is as
responsible for those events as you are.
Right.
Because you elected.
If we're going to go down that rabbit hole,
you elected the people in power at the time.
So therefore you today are responsible
for what happened.
But people don't want to kind of like that
because it's a process of shifting responsibility.
It's.
Again.
That fault, not my fault.
Again, it's deflection.
Right.
And deflection is just everywhere, but it's
li it leads us nowhere.
It leads us to further divide.
Like we need to understand that we
need 100% try to find collective ways to make.
We'll never change what happened.
It is absolutely horrible.
You know, I don't even want to go down that.
I mean, I think we all understand how, how,
how absolutely horrible those situations were.
And what are we doing today to ensure that
this is never, ever, ever, ever repeated.
That there is no bleeding, you know, of,
of the same culture, continuing to proliferate
all these other things.
And I can, I will take ownership
of this all day.
But we need to understand, it
was a very, very different time.
All the people involved for the majority,
like 99% of them are dead, there's
no question there.
Um, especially those in positions of power,
because it would have been already in their
thirties or forties.
And so now it's how do we move forward?
And what are we doing now to make things.
You know, what one other tangent here
and you brought it up.
And I just figured it's just been sitting in
the back of my head.
Oh hell, go ahead.
Here we go.
I'm just warming up.
Yes.
COVID.
Yeah.
That's not a contentious topic.
Probably a little less contentious of
what we're talking about at the moment.
Um, so friend of mine, longtime friend, um, went
to high school with him, gives me a phone call,
says Travis, I've been tasked with taking a look
at how we can increase, um, vaccination rates in
the Northern areas of the province among hunters.
And he's, he works for the provincial government
and he's a director and he's got a lot of people
working under him and they're looking, what,
why aren't we having a, an adoption rate like
we'd like to see up there of the vaccination?
I said, well, I can give you my perspective and it
may or may not be shared by these other people.
But I think a biggest part of all of this
puzzle is, is how that information
is communicated.
And just what you were saying earlier about
not taking people's intelligence for granted.
You know, there was an article I read, I
believe it was Jeff Bezos and whoever the
new, I think it was Tim Cook, a few of them
talking about creating cultures of success.
And they said, unequivocally time and
time again, they find that when the have a
group of individuals who are highly driven
and they bring somebody from the outside in to
join that group, that person might not be
the most highly driven person, but they will
match that drive that the rest of the group has.
Likewise, if they have a group of people who
are rather lazy and they bring a highly
driven person and it doesn't take long for
that person to kind of meet that norm.
People will sort of leveled to the, to
their environment to kind of want to fit in.
So when we talk about not underestimating
individual's intelligence or the masses
intelligence, why don't we just anticipate
that people have some intelligence and they
can make a decision if we present them
with that information?
So I, I took them through point by point some of
where my concerns were.
I mean, nobody wants to feel forced into
doing something.
Nobody wants to be coerced if you give
them the information and it makes sense they'll
probably readily jump at it and went through
a plan that I figured, the whole thing,
essentially just re revolved around honesty
in how information is being provided.
And we'll see.
,He's he took notes, he said, well, I, I
doubt I have my doubts and, and how all of
that will go across.
But I'm just a bit of an interesting
aside talking about responsibility and media.
Responsibility in leadership, because he's
in a leadership role.
Why, why provide information that's
partially true or true in one respect, but doesn't
take into other things, provided all there
for people to look at.
Like if, if the end goal of vaccination
revolves around the fact that our country
is publicly funded in our health care, and
we lack ICU beds for, to deal with a pandemic
on top of everything else, then say that.
Maybe people will step up and say, well, you
know, whether I believe in COVID or not, where
they believe we'll get this or not, I
do know that people get in car accidents,
people get hurt.
And maybe if this will lessen my effects of,
of, if I do get COVID it'll lessen the strain
on ICU, then put that out there for people.
I don't know.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, where you were referring to earlier, I
thought that was worth mentioning is called
synergical, basically um, what's the word?
You know, what a con the concept of synergy is,
essentially you bring two people together.
If you have one person dig a trench, how long
has it taken that person?
And if you bring another person and they work
well together, how much has it taken took
people, well, logic would say half the time.
But the reality is it could be as much as three
times as fast, right?
Inversely, you can take that one
person that takes a year to dig a hole.
You bring another person, the wrong person, and
now you're dealing with triple the time that
it would have taken one person to do it
because you've negatively impacted the masses.
But what you do, what you are speaking of
is you already have an established synergy
one way or another.
Now you're bringing one person that gets
sucked in essentially with the culture that's
already established.
Right.
It's very, very powerful and it works.
And that's why you want to have that
positive synergy in your workplace so that
your people are actually a force multiplier.
Right.
And they can do a lot more with a lot less in
a lot more effectively.
Um, yeah.
And, um, where was I going with
this again now?
Well I guess the
reason I kind of segwayed into that,
cause it was brought up about COVID and it's
interesting about how media is putting it out
on how the governments choosing to communicate,
brought all that up.
But the one overriding thing that I saw
out of this whole COVID experience
that was concerning more than the lack of
toilet paper, right?
More than all of these goofy little things that
are going on, was the general group think.
Like that was scary and that is scary.
And when you take a look at how group
think is affecting um, how we operate on
a day-to-day basis.
And I think that bleeds back over into, uh,
organizations like the RCMP and what that group
think looks like and how people can break out of
just the, um, the echo chamber, so to speak.
And it is something where they can replicate
that Stanford, I think it was you were saying,
the experiment where you, where you have more
diversity in thought to be able to come,
come to a solution, but that, that the
general group think that I'm seeing right
now, uh, is something in if we're talking
about it and let's say a policing, uh, context
is definitely something that can use some work.
There's a lot of positive in the group,
the group thing, but there are areas within
the leadership and in management that,
um, would need to be positively effected
in order for ownership to be taken on, on
different tasks.
And I, and I got to wonder how
would you do that?
Yeah.
So what, it's, it's a big, big
undertaking, right?
So for me, one of the, excuse me, not sure
what's in there, cat maybe or something.
Um, it, for me, one of the, one of the areas of
focus has been changing the culture from the
inside out, right.
Because here's what the issue is when,
even when we're having a conversation about
management and leaders, all these people along
the way, all the way that however, a high
of a rank you want it to be, are thinking
of their leaders.
Right?
So now what we have done is we've essentially
taken 80% of the workforce and took
them out of the problem solving equation.
We didn't do it, but they did it because that's
what happens right?
And so for me, when I hear, you know,
management this and management that, the
question is always, what are you doing?
What have you done today to make things better
for the organization?
What have you done today to make things
better for your peers?
What have you done today for whatever X, Y, and Z?
Okay.
And if the answer is nothing, zip it and get
something done, I don't want to, you know, I
don't want to hear it.
I don't want to hear deflection.
I don't want to hear who can do
this for you or not.
We'll take, take some actions, make some
calls and, and help someone do something.
And so, um, I just, I just think that again,
the more unpopular we make it to be a certain
way, the easier it will be to affect a change.
So we need to have the masses pulling
in the same direction and that's going to
be, that's going to be putting some pressure.
Right.
And, and, and, and also.
People are starting to leave the ranks
because they're retiring or they're, they're
leaving the outfit or whatever the case may be.
You're going to now replace with a generation
that's been going through, those changes.
And, uh, and, and, and now are part of a
certain culture which changes the culture of
the leadership, right?
So, so you, and I say that to the people all
the time is, you are the next wave of leaders.
Hence why it's so important for us to,
and I mean, let's call a spade, a spade, a police
officer that is sworn in and receives a badge is
expected to be a leader.
Absolutely.
Constable or not.
They will be on critical incidents scenes.
They will be dealing with accidents.
They will be dealing with problem solving.
They will be, they will take the lead on
all of those things.
So to say, well, you know what?
I'm not interesting in leadership.
Well, that's for somebody that isn't in policing.
Period.
Oh absolutely.
Once you become a police officer, you've
abdicated the right to not be a leader.
And that's not to say that, you know, you
can't also follow cause that's a critical quality
of a leader having the ability to follow.
Yeah.
As well.
You need to be a good follower to
be a good leader?
And I think most leaders who are in
that position who have received that training.
I remember at 12 years old, I was one of the
things I had to memorize.
Leadership's the art of influencing human
behavior in a manner, uh oh, did I forget it?
Influencing human behavior to accomplish
a mission in a manner so desired by the leader.
A common goal, love it.
Best, best description of leadership.
And if you look at the L do you know
the description of management?
It's a science, not an art.
And what is it normally assigned to?
Assets.
Right.
Things.
Right.
So I, I often hear that, uh, very impressed with
you remembering that by heart, by the way.
Um, but, um, but, uh, yeah, you know, and
so now you have your manager, your manager
versus leader kind of, uh, conversation.
And of course you have the people that we
know that manager meant managerial tasks or a
part of leadership, or the other way around,
isn't always the case.
So ultimately what you, what we should be
striving for is having those inspirational
leaders, the ones that people want to be like.
Yes.
Not, not like the buy, but be like, emulate,
emulate, and, and, and, and, and, and, you
know, once you start, once you start having
those types of leaders and organizations, like
leaders are pumped out, you know, quickly, it's.
Yes.
It's so interesting because people will go
out and do the things that that leader has
done to be where they are or to be, or to have
the perspective that the perspective that
they have or all these.
And we see it now with all kinds of podcasts
that are out there as, you know, you have the
Jocko, willing Cindy and the, uh, you know, it's,
it's very interesting how, uh, if, if Jocko
says something, all of a sudden you have all
these leaders everywhere going, okay, I should
probably be doing this.
I dropped the ball on this, and now it's crazy.
We're in an age of information where there's
zero, excuse not to be up to par with the
information out there.
It's fantastic.
There's so much information.
So as you're talking, I, I made, uh, three
separate notes.
Yeah.
Because I think it would be a value to people
who are listening at the beginning, you're talking
about front-loading on your day,
listening to positive affirmations, listening
to positive people, talking about things.
What is on your playlist for that?
Who do, who do you tend to listen to?
Well it depends what, what kind of persuit
I'm I'm after, right.
If I'm listening to, if I'm listening to a
straight up leadership podcast generally is
going to be Jocko and it's, and the reason
why I really like Jocko notes just for Jocko.
Cause I relate to him, he's a black belt in
JiuJitsu so am I, we have all these other things,
but what I do like is that David Burke and
all these other people that he has on there
that are absolutely incredible humans and
have wealth of knowledge and of the Vietnam vets
and the SOG guys and all these things, right.
And, um, and I really in, and there will be reading
off the, you know, the Marine Corps leadership
groups was of course 350 years of combined
leadership experience in the Marine Corps.
I mean just incredible leaders coming out
of the Marine Corps as, as we know.
But, um, but I, this will be for that pursuit.
Now, if I'm, if I'm, um, in a mood for say
intellectual pursuit, I'll be listening to the
Jordy, Jordan Peterson or the Lex Freeman, or I
will be listening to, um, who else am I listening
to on the daily?
Um, even, uh, what, what's his name?
Weinstein or Bert Weinstein or, and
then there's, um, Sam Harris, even I will.
You know, like I, I just, and again, you
know, there's some contentions around
Jordy P and listen, like when I listen.
That's a sharp, sharp dude.
He is and when I listen, when I listen
to, when I listen to people like this, I
don't listen to gospel.
Like I'm not, you know, drinking everything.
Right.
I take what I hear and I process it in what
and, and, and I try to affect my own mindset,
my own, uh, intellectual sort of, you know,
sort of override my own bias to try to see
other, other angles.
But at the end of the day, I may look at Jordan
P and say, I totally agree with 99% of what
you said today, but that 1% I can't get behind.
Well, 99% of the stuff he says, isn't
absolutely concrete.
It's not.
Most of it is quite open.
It is.
And that's the beauty of it that some people will
look at it and take it as concrete and they'll get
right up in arms about it when he's just making
a general question.
Most of it is questions.
Um, yeah.
Interesting.
But he's, you know, he's, he's got one of the worse
personality traits you can have, and that is
honest and genuine right.
Right.
And he's just honest and it is a very
unpopular time to be.
It just, it just is.
But I think the more of us stand up and actually
have the stones to do it.
Um, you know, we need, we need more
and more of that.
And I think what you, which what you're trying,
starting to see in the, um, in the public, you
know, in the, on a social media or otherwise, what
you are starting to see is people starting to
understand that there's some different areas here
that we have been, you know, we went kind of
too far the other way.
So now they want to bring that back to
the measured, you know, on measured
ground, so to speak.
And then, and then, and really have, um, I guess,
a more balanced approach to some of the issues
that we're faced with and used, you're starting
to see the tides turn.
Like you're starting to see, you're starting
to see it, you know, it's quite interesting.
It is.
Yeah.
It goes far one way.
It'll go far the other way.
The universe has a funny way of unfolding
as it should.
It is.
And it's cyclical right.
It is.
In a hundred years, they'll have the
exact same issue.
Yeah.
It is.
It is what it is, but we'll be long
gone by then.
So the other one I wrote down here was, okay,
so you spent a fair bit of time in policing and
ERT you're, you're in roles of higher stress,
higher excitement, higher exhilaration, high reward
for what you're doing for effort out, what are you
doing to replace that?
No, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's hard, I would
say, but I would say what I miss the most is
the thought process that goes behind, um, solving
tactical dilemmas.
I just love to use my brain and to have,
to problem solve something that has
only bad um, solutions.
Just which one of those is the less worse and
how are we going to mitigate the risk and how
are we going to be able to articulate taking a
certain course of action and how is that course
of action justify and you know, all those things.
So I really liked the intricacies
of doing that.
I love doing that.
I missed out a ton and it's interesting because
I, I will still get phone calls, not necessarily
from my team, but I will because they're very
capable, but I, but I will get phone calls
sometimes from teams across the country that
perhaps haven't had the same exposure or, or, and
sometimes just to kind of run problems by me.
And I love when people do that.
Right.
Because it keeps me, it keeps me thinking, it
keeps me engaged in the problem solving realm.
But I would say though, is in my
life, I have driven absolutely everything
I do into the ground.
Everything.
Moderations for cowards.
I don't believe in it.
And, uh, when I wanted to be a SWAT team leader,
I went all out and I stayed there for 13
years, you know, 12 and a half years, so to speak.
Well yeah.
I mean, and, and, and so I literally took
that out of my system.
You know, I took it out of my system.
Now, the one thing, the one thing that I, that
I cannot put enough emphasis on is you can't
let something define you.
Right.
If something defines you completely.
Let me rephrase that.
Something may define you partially.
External.
And partially.
Right.
You have to have a, all these other pieces
that also define you.
Right.
So when one of those pieces goes missing, you
are re you are capable of reorging and being the
same person that you were use, the experience that
you've acquired at the time at which you were,
you know, involved in this, in this engagement.
But th but it doesn't destroy you.
So when, uh, one of the things that we see
with old generations RCMP is like the people
with 30, 40 years of service is that a lot
of the times they feel they are nothing if
they're not engaged.
Right.
So the death rate of some of those members,
retiring police officers, municipal, or otherwise
are astronomical because the sense of purpose
has kind of completely vanished and disappeared.
And, um, and it couldn't be further
from the truth.
Oh, absolutely.
It couldn't be further from the truth.
But what we need to do is we need to start teaching
our young officers and everybody, or
firefighters or whoever to engage what you are
doing professionally does not define you.
Those are all it's part of who you are,
and it's a part.
If it goes away, just like anything else,
you're going to re reorg, regroup and go again
and, and, and, you know, continue to be the person
that you are and have a positive, positive
impact on others.
So for me, one of the tiny little bit nice,
I always liked to be engaged in, um, I don't
know how to, this is quite interesting.
I don't generally lose, you know, how
to articulate certain things, but I'm having
an issue with this.
But it's essentially, if we act on the premise
that I lived a warrior ethos since I was very,
very young, either through martial arts or
through my professional engagements or whatever
the case may be.
And when I say warrior, I don't, I don't
mean war in terms of.
No, I get what you're saying.
But just live a certain ethos.
I carry it on now.
I'm a JiuJitsu black belt.
I got it this year when I was retired.
Good for you.
Now I'm starting judo.
Next week, I'm going to wrap a white belt around
my, around my waist.
This is my third pursuit of black belt
over my course of my, you know, my years
engage in martial arts.
I am 45 years old, completely stoked
and excited to go to judo route.
And I'm going to get, you know, tossed
over and over again.
I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn to things
and yeah, it's going to be hard on my body and
all these other things.
But so now I've kind of resurrected my energy.
Now I want to, I want to be fully engaged in Judo.
And so I, I find all those things that are
direct, almost, um, I would say almost in
line with what I've and how I've lived my life.
And I will find as many of those things as I
can without, by way of working out and going
on hikes with, you know, if we go on hikes with
a family, I'll put a weight vest on and you
know, I, I'm still in, I'm still in that mode.
I can, I'm going to drive this one into the ground.
And when they do find my body, when it's all
said and done, they will say this one is a done.
Done, nothing leftover.
And if there's ever an option to bring
somebody back, they'll say not him.
He's too beat up.
Too worn out.
He's definitely done.
Oh man.
Yeah.
That's, I like that persp, so I guess at
the core that warrior mindset is what defines
you, not so much the job, not so much the martial
arts, not the leadership . Training, but the mindset
or the drive of always trying to the pursuit of
excellence essentially.
Would that be fair?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah it would be an, I mean, let's get
something straight.
I never reached it anywhere, but.
And no one does.
And that's, that's why they call it the
pursuit of excellence.
And, and, uh, you know, the line is, is
consistently pushed, pushed, you know, over
and over and over.
And, and that's the beauty of things.
And we do so many things that we skim
the surface on.
Uh, and what you start, what you start
understanding is that once you start
going deeper into things, there is so
much more enjoyment.
Um, one of the things that I do with my groups,
when I, when I present, especially on the, um, on
the introspective leader course, is a simple
exercise to illustrate how we're overthinking
certain things.
And I ask people like, what do you like
dark or light coffee?
And people will say, oh, I like
dark, I like light.
And then you generally ask why.
And one of them will say, well, dark is
stronger in caffeine or whatever right.
Sure.
And so, and so the reality is that, you
know, light coffee is not roasted nearly as much.
So the grain are denser and generally negligibly
higher in caffeine.
And if you really want to increase your caffeine
content, you're going to have to jack up
the amount of coffee you're drinking, right?
And so that's one piece.
But the other piece to this, aside from the
fact that most people think that dark coffee
is actually stronger when it isn't the other piece
to this is the taste that you're after comes
from the regions, from where to coffees come in.
Because coffee beans take the taste of
their environment.
And so if you're going to Brazil, your tea,
your coffee is nutty.
If you're going into Ethiopia, your
coffee tastes more like chocolate.
And so w and then once you understand that
there is a word there, what you start doing
is you stop focusing on lighter, dark roast,
and you start looking at where's the coffee from,
and what do I feel today.
You know, do I feel like vanilla hint or do I feel
like, you know, and I'm being a total clown, but
you know what I mean?
Like whatever the case may be, and
then you can really go down and explore
coffees and regions.
So imagine that you're traveling to Hawaii,
you're traveling to Iceland, you're traveling
to all these regions.
And all you've ever said is I want a dark coffee
you've missed out on, you know, how many thousands
of potentially incredible flavour of coffee.
And so this is a really, really oversimplified
process and I'm not even touching
the surface of it.
Cause I got, you know, a very, um, you know,
rudimentary level coffee knowledge.
Right.
There's people having masters in coffee.
Sure.
You know, coffee sommelier.
100% there are.
And so, but the beauty with this and the beauty
of the introspective leader course is that
I believe that you can convey a message to
people that this will not only make you a
better leader, but it would also teach you to
appreciate life more.
I would agree with that a hundred percent.
It is absolutely amazing to go everywhere around
the world and say, here's an Iceland coffee.
Where does this grow?
What does it taste like?
It's light, dark, medium.
Doesn't matter.
Like, I want to try that.
So now you try that and you're like, wow,
that was absolutely amazing, right.
And we do that with absolutely everything.
We, we tend to really really say surface level.
We do.
Even though information is readily available
more than in any other time in human history.
That's probably why we stay surface
level because.
It's too easy to just find out.
It is.
And there's so much information out there
that the retention level of the information that
comes and goes, it comes, it goes, to process.
We today take in on a daily basis so much
information that it can be completely
overwhelming for, for most people, honestly.
And it kind of puts them into a place of inaction.
And I, I love that.
That's Hicks law, right?
Hicks law, I was just going to say that yeah.
Having to having too many options and, and,
and, and it stifles your ability to make a call,
but here's what needs to happen in my opinion.
And I, you know, um, what matters
at the time, right?
And so the issue is you're right.
We're consistently bombarded by all
those things, and we're doing it 24 7.
Now, if I'm selecting coffee and I live in the
moment, I'm selecting coffee right now, I
know thinking about my phone call to Karen.
Right.
And so if we have, and this comes down to
mindfulness ultimately.
And so if, if we have the ability to actually
focus on the now and a little bit before and a
little bit after just, you know, for, for good
measure, we now we now can focus our attention.
The now, and what is the decision that
I'm making right now and what is entailed
in that decision?
And, you know, and so it's not an
overthinking process.
It's like, yeah, it's useless information
until you need it.
Right.
And there is no one of the, it works
hand-in-hand with the fact that our brains have
the ability to retain.
Listen, there's people out there that can
recite an entire yellow phone book.
There is no limit to how much information
we can have.
The problem is, is there is limit to our focus.
Right.
That's what the problem is.
So you can have the information that you can
use when convenient, but it's going to take you 10
minutes to understand how to select your coffee.
That 10 minutes you just invested in years
of coffee enjoyment.
Right.
To be used when you are selecting coffee.
Not when you're running your team meeting, right.
You know, a bunch of things that you
brought up there.
And, you know, you might have to come on for
another podcast if I can coerce you just because
I don't want to go too long for everybody here.
It's interesting though, they, they, they've.
People are listening to the long podcast.
It's completely insane.
They break them down in pieces.
And Jordan Peterson was talking about that.
He says, you would think that a three-hour
podcast wouldn't be as successful.
And he's like, they're the more successful.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well maybe I've got to start breaking
it down into pieces.
Break the mold.
I've always gone for 45 minutes to an hour.
My ethos behind the podcast was, and is, I
want to bring something positive to people.
Sure.
I want to bring either entertainment or
education or something that they can walk away
with and say, I learned something or I'm better
for listening to it.
So in that I try to plan the podcast and plan the
guests to bring value to the listener base.
And I figure, they're going to tune out
after a certain point.
So I've always looked at maybe I'll just put
it out there, anybody listening who's made it
this far, let me know.
Okay.
Let me know what you like to hear
Podcasts@Silvercore.ca.
But when you're talking about, um, what defines
you, you're talking about, um, when we
look at, when you're on the job, when you
come out and, uh, what you're doing for that
excitement level, as well as living in the moment.
I very good friend of mine.
He's actually been on this podcast in the
past, and he's talked about his SAS selection.
He talked about his time British army, and
he was operating the 338 Lapua over there.
I used to say Lapooa until I was schooled
over at SHOTShow.
and no, no, no, it's Lapwa.
Okay.
Okay guys.
At their booth.
Um, but he is, he got into extreme
alpinism and, um, he does that a fair bit.
He's going through his ACMG mountain guide
creditation and all the rest, and, uh, found that
it's a very, uh, positive outlet for him where
he's now making those operational decisions.
In the mountain, you'll have a group that
he'll be bringing up and he's brought me
up a number of times and definitely pushed
my boundaries as well when, for the better.
But it really forces you to be in the moment.
And maybe that's a situation of unconscious,
unconscious coping, where as opposed to just
being mindful, you're now forced to be mindful.
When you're surfing, you're forced to be
mindful in the moment.
When you're rock climbing, you're forced
to look at every time, every place you put your
hand, every, every piece of gear that you put into
a crack and check it.
Um.
It's outcome focused.
It is.
If you don't do it, you will, something critical
or dire could happen.
And it's exactly the same with JiuJitsu, it
forces you to be in that role, if you're thinking
about your office meeting or something else, your
back just got taken.
But th in all of that thinking, cause I watched
him as he goes through and as he gets, he's
getting older and he's maturing in his alpinism
and all the rest.
And he's had some injuries and, and
seeing the, uh, the thought process behind.
Like you look at, uh, the Ueli Steck.
I don't know if you've ever heard that name
before, but in, in the alpinism world, kind of
a big name passed away a few years ago, but he
had just record runs up a lot of, uh, very iconic
mountains with little to no gear and, and just
like no time at all.
But at some point of pushing, pushing,
pushing, and driving things like you do
with the different activities you get into,
you reach a point of diminishing returns.
And in Ueli's case, he's no longer around anymore.
He had a fall on one of his trips, did, not
adequate protection.
That mental management process and that mindset
of knowing enough, like, what is enough?
When do you have enough?
Do you find that difficult when you
start getting into these different endeavors
that you get into?
Like, what is the, what am I going to be happy?
What's enough.
Well, I'm going to reframe the
question for you.
Okay.
Was that gentlemen going to a destination
or is the journey that he enjoyed?
Which one?
Ueli or?
Yeah, Ueli.
I mean, it's the journey that he truly enjoyed.
Right.
He wasn't going anywhere, right?
So now let's, let's, let's take Ueli, with
the same fire inside of him and let's sit
him on a porch for the last 30 years.
Actually let's sit him on the porch at the time
of death and say, we just extended your life
30 years and you can sit here and watch the
birds and the cars go by.
And then.
Say hell no.
And then go back and say, okay, look, we're
going to return you 30 years before, but
on one of those climbs you're going to be done.
You would pick that.
I can guarantee it.
For somebody like that, I would have to agree.
A hundred percent.
So, so for me, it's, we're acting and this
is just, it's just a societal thing.
And I think it just has to do with the
fact that we're so comfortable, right?
If you were in Somalia right now,
I grew up there.
You wouldn't be thinking that far in advance
because you've seen people die left, right.
And center incessantly every day.
So you're not, you're also could be very,
very different.
We're seeing death as this big monster.
None of us is coming out of this alive.
None of us is like this isn't, this isn't a
destination type thing, this is a journey.
And he died doing what he loved the most.
It would have been no different for me if I
was dying, doing some tactical operation,
hopefully by not something completely
stupid that I did.
Sure.
You know, and or, or somebody else did
that now they have to live with that.
But if, if we were to take all the complex
complexity outside, you know, out of it
and say, okay, you stood up for what you
felt was right at a time at which somebody
needed to step up.
And you like many before you have done have
sacrificed your life.
Sign me up.
Very good point.
I just, I just think that longevity versus
intensity, I'll take intensity of
my life, you know?
Um, and that's just.
Every man dies.
Not every man truly lives.
That's just, that's just how I feel about it.
I just, I just truly think that if he was
given the choice, he probably would have
picked the same choice.
I like that.
Yeah.
Well, one last thing I have here.
Yeah.
That was actually going to start with this, but
we kind of went through and are in a route here.
But when I look at the podcasts that you've been
doing right recently, I, you see the number
of podcasts and places that you've been, uh,
you've been speaking.
It strikes me that it's similar to working
out it's similar to JiuJitsu and that you're
training for something.
Am I correct in the, in that casual observation,
are you training for a, uh, for something?
A podcast marathon.
Your, your own podcast or to be on certain
podcasts, hopefully in the future?
Or is there, do you have a goal in that?
I mean, it would be semi disingenious to
say I don't have a goal.
I mean, my goal is always to get better.
Right.
And I like to be, I like to have conversations.
I love to have conversations.
It's especially productive to way,
you know, bilateral communication
conversations.
Um, and I like to do it because I know
that, um, I, I have an ability to generally
connect with people.
So I, I know that there is value to it.
So I, I really enjoy doing that.
And I don't overstate the value of it.
I don't think I'm critically important
or anything like that.
But what I do think is that there are certain
conversations there ought to be had that we're
not having, that I would love to be a part of.
And if going on bigger and bigger platform is
something that's down the road for me, I
would, I would love that.
I would love that.
Here's the other thing.
And that's something that surprised quite
a few people, but I also would be totally
okay with going a podcast and not speak
about policing at all.
Right.
At all.
I can, I can have conversations about a
million different things, and I'm not suggesting
that during an entire three-hour podcast,
I'm not going to refer to an experience that
I had or something, you know, because
it's been a part of me for so long and it's
taught me some valuable lessons, but in terms
of the actual topic.
Uh, it could be absolutely anything.
I just love to have conversations and I,
and being on podcasts really feels good.
Like I love to do it.
I love to do it.
I think it, I think it's, and so people
have suggested, you know, you, maybe you
should have your own and all these other
things, I really don't want to do any editing.
And I, and I don't think I'm that great
of an interviewer's to be honest with you,
and maybe I become better or, you know.
But I just, um, I just prefer, I just kind of
prefer being a guest, if that makes any sense.
Oh it does.
You know, when I started this podcast, I hadn't
listened to it really, any podcast prior.
I was on a podcast, a friend of mine had me
on his podcast, he's got a local business
here in these, uh, teaches new hunters and,
and, uh, that was fun.
And then I, uh, went down, I saw Steve
Rinella, he's got a Netflix show called
MeatEater, and he's a.
Yeah, I follow the show.
I watch it, Joe Rogan and everything.
I just love the show.
So got to meet Steve and Janice and a few
of the other people on there and actually
became good friends with one of the people who's
with MeatEater there.
And, uh, I thought, well, this is kind
of neat, but entirely outside my comfort zone.
I've got ADHD, I have a conversation up until
a point where I loose interest and usually
that's why I just get up and walk away.
That's so this has been a for me something to
share my positivity, and it's been a very positive
outlet to try and support others in the, uh, who
have similar interests.
And I've specifically not called this the,
like say the MeatEater podcast, or the, uh,
the firearms podcast, because those are only
small portions of things that interests me.
And it's kind of, in some ways, um, it can be
detrimental in the short term because people look
at the title and like, what the hell am I going
to be listening to here?
But I'm hoping that in the longterm, the breadth
of the guests and the breadth of what we're
bringing in with the underlying positivity, as
well as, as we do this, I can feel, I feel myself
very slowly getting a little bit better,
less um's and ahh's and better able to engage.
So similar to where you're at, uh, not only
as a positive thing, I found I've found the
podcast to be a challenge and something that
requires constant study, constant concentration,
research on people.
How, how do I engage better or better
equipment or whatever it might be so.
It's, um, definitely a different experience
hosting the podcast than being on a
podcast as a guest.
I don't know, I think, uh, if you ever do
want to, uh, take on that challenge,
I think he would do very, very well at it.
Yeah.
I've, I've heard that, I've heard that a few
times and I, I, you know, it's almost like
something, something in me says, um, now is not
the time type deal, you know, like it just, just.
Trust your gut.
Yeah and I've yeah.
The reason why I really, really believe that
is that I've pretty much run my life
like this, and it's always paid dividends.
And sometimes I could be having this conversation
with you and tomorrow morning, I'm ready to
have my own podcast.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like it, it changes.
Click.
Really quickly.
And then it's like, okay, the time is
right, knuckle down that let's get this done.
So it will be interesting right now, of course
I'm floating, right.
And at very living very organically
since retiring from a very structured and
regimented, you know, um, lifestyle over the
course of my military and then RCMP career.
Essentially, I've been institutionalized for
the better part of my adult life and so now I'm
learning to, you know, do things very organically
and I really enjoy it.
So we'll see, it's not outside the
realm of possibility.
I would love to hit, you know, the, the, the
Jordan Peterson to Joe Rogan's the, the, the,
the Jocko, if there's a, uh, you know, if I can
contribute something, if, if there's a, if
there's a feeling a true, a true feeling
that I can contribute something positive.
Right.
And that's that's that.
I wouldn't want to just go there just
to go with there.
You know, you look at me, I'm on the
Jocko podcast and what am I talking about?
Well, whatever.
Oh, you'd look back and you wouldn't
be proud of that.
No, exactly.
So, yeah.
Very cool.
So maybe we'll just wrap this up with, if we did
another podcast, what, if you could do a podcast
about anything, anything.
Pull it out of a magic box and say,
this is what we're going to talk about.
What would you want to talk about?
Wow.
That's um, that's a tough one.
If we could do a podcast on absolutely anything.
Or would that just change day by day, depending
on what's currently?
No.
There is so many subjects and so many things
that I'm interested in.
Um, and I think we have a vested interest in
absolutely everything that surrounds us, right.
And so we could talk about, you know, kids
and raising 'em and we could talk about outdoors
and, and, and, and we could talk about travel.
We could talk about, you know, like, I mean
the animals and the list just goes on and on, you
know, animals might get weird though here, it's
a hunting podcast, right.
So we'll leave the, leave the animals out of there.
You know what I think it'd be fun
to talk about?
What?
Your new business and starting it and
the challenges of running a business.
Sure.
The other thing that'd be kind of interesting cause
I got a sense I could be wrong, but I think
there's a spirituality to, uh, to the martial
arts and to you and what you do and how
that guides the mental management process, which
we didn't even touch on.
And I think that whole aspect would be a very
interesting one to talk about, but maybe, um,
maybe we just put a pin in this one for now and
uh, go get some food.
Yeah man.
I'm all for spirituality podcast down the line.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much for being on this podcast.