Nuanced. - 55. Bud Mercer: RCMP, Winter Olympics & Chilliwack City Council

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Aaron Pete and Bud Mercer sit down and talk about Bud’s service as an RCMP officer, working as the Chief Operating Officer for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic & Paralympic Games Integrated Security Unit, and becoming a City Council member in 2018.  Bud Mercer is an elected City Councillor for the City of Chilliwack, British Columbia. Prior to being elected to this role in 2019, Bud was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Plenary Properties LTAP which is an affiliate company of Plenary Group Canada. Plenary Group, formed in 2005, is Canada’s leading Public Private Partnership (PPP) Developer employing people across Canada with offices in Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver and most recently Ottawa.   Prior to Bud taking on his responsibilities as the CEO of Plenary Properties LTAP on the 1st of December 2010, Bud was a member of Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Bud joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1976. His career spanned 34 plus years and throughout those years he served Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the far north and points between. He has extensive policing experience at the City (municipal), Provincial, Federal and International levels. In Bud’s last 10 years with the RCMP he served at Command and Executive levels within these business lines. In these various capacities, Bud represented the RCMP while working in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia.  In October 2007, then Assistant Commissioner Bud Mercer assumed responsibilities as the Chief Operating Officer for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic & Paralympic Games Integrated Security Unit. In this role, Assistant Commissioner Bud Mercer was responsible for all aspects of security planning for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Assistant Commissioner Mercer commanded approximately 15,000 personnel and had responsibility for a budget in excess of 550 million dollars.  In 2009 Mercer received the Order of Merit from the Governor General of Canada in recognition of his 30+ years of service to the citizens of Canada and in 2011 the Meritorious Service Award from the Province of British Columbia in recognition of his leadership and professionalism in leading the planning and execution of security requirements  for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games.  Bud is married, has four children, 7 grandchildren and lives in Chilliwack in the Province of British Columbia.  Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Bud Mercer. Bud's a nickname. That's what my mom called me. My real name's Gary, but that appears on my passport. And when my mother yelled at me, she always used my first name. But other than that, it's been Bud all my life. I'm married. I have four kids, seven grandkids.

I've had what I consider to be a, you know, a great upperc. upbringing. I come from a military family. We, you know, we never had a lot of money, but we never really wanted for anything. You know, Mom and Dad seemed to always get it done. I grew up in my formative years in Europe at military bases where my dad was posted. When my dad retired, Mom and Dad and the family moved back to St. John's, Newfoundland, where I finished high school, went to university. and then from university, I joined the RCMP. I spent just about 35 years in the RCMP.

I've worked coast to coast, the far north points between as we were posted across the country and everywhere else. In my later years, I did manage to work at the executive level in the RCMP. I retired as an assistant commissioner, and I traveled internationally, both at work and presenting and doing one thing or another. My last job with the RC&P was the Olympics. I was actually in Tokyo at the time when I was called and asked if I would take over that file.

And once I got off the floor, because I'd never envisioned myself heading that way, I was just a policeman. I was working on, I was responsible for organized crime and national security for the west side of the country. Hence my travel, and never envisioned that I'd be asked to take on the responsibilities of security for the 2010 Olympics, not something that was in my strength portfolio, if you will.

But thinking back on it, I'm not sure who would, because it's something different that only comes around, obviously, once every four years, but for a country probably once every 30 years. I accepted that role And as my wife would describe it It's three to four years of our lives We'll never get back Leading up to 2010 After the Olympics, I retired

I moved over to the private sector As many federal employees do And worked as the CEO of a large Canadian company in Ontario I committed To the owners of the investors of that company of that group that owned that company that I would be retired before I turned 60, which I lived up to and moved back to Chilliwack at that time where we had kept property and family and grandkids were here.

Amazing. Pardon me? Amazing. And then you moved into city council. Yeah, you know, I originally had no intention of that. I was coming back to Chilawak to retire, but I quickly learned that after the pace that I kept in the RC&P, especially culminating in the Olympics and the pace of the job I had in the sector that I worked in, that I couldn't just go from 120 miles an hour to zero and wake up on a Monday morning in a coffee and wondering what I was going to do next.

Although I had hobbies and I had fitness and I had the outdoors, I had woodworking, I had golf, it just wasn't enough. And after about a year of that, fortuitously, I would suggest timing-wise, I was approached to run for counsel. When I was first approached, the proposal or suggestion was that I would run for mayor. But I knew in my heart I couldn't do that. I'm not wired that way. I'm not physically, not physically experience-wise, I'm not ready for that. And I've learned throughout my life that putting people in the wrong positions at the wrong time would be disaster and felt then and still feel now that people who fill that position should have

had spent time on council so they don't waste the public's time for the first year learning how to do the job. And so I declined that offer, but shortly thereafter, I was approached with the people that were willing to help me with the campaign to run for city council. At that time of my life, you know, after almost 40 years of public service, it seemed to to be where I knew in my heart it's where I wanted to be and it filled a niche in my life

and I felt that I had something to offer. Me being a city counselor, I think if I was successful, would provide a different look. I'm not a developer. I'm not real estate. I'm not an accountant. I'm not a business person.

I would feel kind of a different niche on a group of seven, if you will. Amazing. Well, let's start, because you're a person first. And I think with politics, It's so easy to forget that. And you see some of the negativity that can take place in a campaign. It's easy to forget that you're a real person with family and a life.

So let's start with more about your growing up. You mentioned that your father was in the military, and then you entered into the RCMP. How did you feel that kind of call to service? How did the RCMP kind of end up on your radar? Well, interestingly, I'm not. enough, my dad was a military policeman in the military, and even more coincidental. Our travels throughout Europe, as dad was posted, my father was a dog handler as a military policeman in the military.

And our transfers across Europe were simply dad moving from base to base setting up sentry dog or police dog sections in those communities, or in those bases, and then It was established, set up, built, people were in position. Dad would be transferred to do another one. So interestingly enough. So it was an easy nexus, I guess, for me to go to the RCMP, to become a policeman. But even more coincidental, my formative years in the RCMP, 14 of them were spent as a police dog handler. Yeah, so lots of coincidences.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to interviewing a person named In. Aaron Courtney, who was a police dog trainer. And what he described was one of the challenges is, like, developing a relationship with a dog and then having to let go of that relationship. So what was playing that role sort of like for you? Well, you know, it's, it's, I get that. And please don't get me wrong. Like, our whole, my whole life still, a lot of my life now still is around the dog, right?

but after 14 years of doing it professionally and then always having dogs in my life and tagging along with my dad when he was setting up these sections in my very early years, I was with dogs. Dogs are one of the greatest creatures on earth, right? And their love is unconditional and doesn't have any bounds. But when a dog changes handlers

and you feed them and love them and walk them and exercise them and spend time with them, they quickly changed their loyalties. So, you know, when I was a dog cutter, I went through four dogs in my 14 years. My first dog was a great working dog and a great dog to have at home. He could be trusted with the kids. He was a social dog and fun to be around. And when that dog retired because of the, you know, the animal.

Injuries in the pace of life that a police dog, the toll that takes on them, oftentimes around that seven or eight year mark, they, you know, they'll get an injury that doesn't heal so quickly or has a long-term effect on the dog. I guess much like people, like when you're your age and you're sprain your ankle. In a week, you're fine. When you're my age and you spray your ankle, you'll be limping for three weeks. It's kind of the same with dogs, right? So, you know, my wife and I found a home for that dog,

and we were comfortable, you know, liability-wise, because, you know, these dogs can be aggressive and they're trained to be aggressive when they need to be, but we're able to find a good fit. So for me, moving on in my career with a new dog, it was sad but easy because I knew the dog was going, you know, to a good home and a person would take as much great care of them as I did. My second dog, because dogs are different just like people,

It was a working dog And let there be no mistake It wasn't fond of my family It wasn't fond of my wife When I came home from work It went into its kennel And it was a completely different dog When I was I drive around at night

On duty with this dog My first dog would be up With its head on my shoulder The second dog would be in the back of the truck Curled up sitting there watching me But wasn't really interested in socializing It was a completely different relationship

Right So when I came home with that dog, it went straight into the kennel. And, of course, I would walk it a couple times a day when I wasn't working, but when it went to work, it was all business, and our relationship was great that way. So when that dog retired, it had saved my butt so many times and had been involved in a catastrophic incident where part of its neck was broke with somebody that slugged it with a 30-out-six rifle, actually, and actually broke the rifle over the back of its neck during an apprehension.

So when I retired that dog, I couldn't give it away because it was too aggressive and it had that. It's just the way it was wired. And we ended up keeping that dog until it was ready to say goodbye. So, you know, dogs are different. Every dog's different just like people. Yeah, that's amazing. Can you tell us about the other two dogs because I think this is tough work having these

relationships and I think a lot of people don't get to see the behind the scenes the day to day of being an RCMP officer and the role that you play in our communities. Yeah, so go back about our training centers in Annasville, Alberta, which is just south of red deer in Alberta. And when you train to become a dog counter, that is our training center. It's the only one the RCMP has. Anybody that's an RCMP handler knows that's fail well because usually your first dog's about four months long.

And then if you're lucky, any subsequent visits after that, hopefully you're shorter because you're trained. It's just the dog that needs to be trained. So, and the RCMP trains many other police forces and has visitors from all over the world at that. at that facility. So back to your question, I'm sorry. The other two dogs, you said you had four dogs.

Sorry, so after Luker, which was the second dog, the one that was less sociable, and I always, when my wife tells the story, she would say, you know, because the RCMP and the federal government put up facilities in your backyard, it'll be a sidewalk, a pad, a standard kennel set up. So the dogs are very well contained, and it's secure, and it's very professionally done. And when I would have to be away or something without the dog,

and my wife would have to feed the dog, she tells the story of, you know, approaching Luker's kennel, and she could hear him growling from the time she walked out of the house. So she kind of had the FU attitude. I'm here to feed you and you're growling at me. So she would throw the kibble through the fence and fill up the bucket with a water hose without opening it. That was the only dog I had like that.

The third dog was a great dog. It was during a time in the world where all world police forces and military units across the world were buying dogs from around the world and training dogs to be explosives dogs. There was a lot going on in the world that created that environment where the marketability of dogs. So everybody around the world was brokering and selling dogs. My third dog was a dog out of Czechoslovakia, and I trained with it very quickly. but it had some shortcoming so our time together didn't last very long. I finished training with it and we kind of hoped things would work out and took it back to field, went to work with it, worked it for four or five months and

things didn't work out and I went back into training. But it was a wonderful dog and a local real estate lady here by the name of Leslie White and I know she would mention, might be mentioning her name. She took the dog and she's taken several police dogs from the lower mainland when they've been retired and given them a wonderful life and she took on this dog. This dog's name was Jeb. My fourth dog was my last dog and I trained quickly with that dog, a great dog. And after I'd been with that dog about a year, it was my time.

I was offered a position in the training kennels. It would be a promotion for me to Sargent, to go to Annisfield to live, and I accepted that position. But during the period before we were to move, and we had a house hunting trip set up, and we had a realtor pick to sell our house where I moved to Alberta. The family was ready for it, but before that happened, a little bit of a side job that I had within the RCMP. I had put together I was a recreational climber and it was during a time of protests across the province in Clayquot Sound and Bellacula and forestry

and logging and mining and the RCMP decided at that time that they had to have a team that would be capable of taking and being trained and technically capable of arresting people that were hanging off ropes, off bridges and off boats and trees and I was given that nod. So I had put together a six-person team that was referred to as the aerial extraction team. And much of my life during that period of time for a few years was traveling the province and sometimes out of the province to protests where there was injunction orders and arrest orders made for individuals that were doing one thing or another.

In one of those incidences, as I go full circle to point, I had a bit of an incident coming out of a helicopter. And it created, I had a serious back injury. And that happened just before I was to go to Ennisphail. And as a result of that energy injury, my transfer to Ennisphail was canceled because the belief was by the surgeons that I wouldn't physically be able to fulfill that role as a trainer where you're on your feet running eight hours a day with people training, people you're training with police dogs. So that was a change in career for me. So that was kind of the incident that ended my time in the police dog services section. So I finished about 14 years. Fortuitously for me, there was a position open at Chilliwack Detachment,

and timing was on my side, and I became one of the watch commanders here in Chilliwack under Jack Skrine. What's a watch commander? That's the person he or she, a sergeant, that's responsible for the general duty police. policing for 12 hours at a time. So most police stations are certainly the one in Chilliwack. I won't speak for most. You know, there's a four-watch system for this. So there's four teams of people working 12-hour shifts.

Each team of person, people obviously has someone in charge. That's the watch commander. You're kind of the on-duty kind of chief of police on the road for 12 hours. Wow. What was that experience like in comparison to watching over dogs and training them? One seems like there'd be a lot of positivity. and I think the challenge with managing a team or being out in the field more so is that things are always arising and it's perhaps more chaotic? Well, you know, one of the things about my role in the dog section is I carried a number of profiles with me.

So for me, it wasn't just about being a police dog handler. I was also part of the emergency response team or some people called SWAT. So that filled that adrenaline also. niche in my life. When you're a dog handler, you're always at the pointy end of the stick, you get called to everything. So I don't want to say adrenaline junkie, but maybe that's what I mean, but you're always, he always seemed to be in the front. I was also one of the half dozen people in the country that was an avalanche dog handler. So I spent a lot of time training in on skis as part of that avalanche profile. So it's a whole bunch of things in my life that went with being a dog

Handler and then also the aerial extraction team, which had nothing to do with the dog, but my skills that I'd learned over the years in rock climbing and those sort of profiles. So I had a whole bunch that every time the phone rang, I knew it would be something pretty cool, right? And I was fortunate enough, or some might say unfortunate enough, to be involved in most of the major incidents across the West and certainly in the province of British Columbia. You can go back in time and name them, I can tell you how I was involved, just not because of bud, but by virtue of the areas that I was working in. So when I left that and became a watch commander, it was certainly a different outlook, you know, instead of being at the pointy end of the stick and all the time with your heart rate, usually up high and, you know, the physical fitness, you were always at something and it was never easy. Being a watch commander opened up a different part of my life.

It was about leading people, leading people with different personalities, with different needs, skill sets with different needs. And, you know, maintaining that responsibility as well as the job on the road. So it was diametrically different for me. And there was an adjustment time for me, too, because I was very much a just go get it, get it done. I don't need help. This is what you've told me to do.

This is what I'm going to do, and I'll get it done. And to someone that had responsibility for other people. So I did have a bit of a, and I made mistakes, but I did have a learning curve. Right. And, but it worked out for me. That's really interesting that you, at one point, were able to put in all these different hats and be more outdoors and develop, like, skills and be more on that front inside. was that something, it sounds like it was meaningful work, that like everything you do as an

RCMP officer is perhaps more meaningful, that it's, you're making a difference and you know that what you're going into is a complex situation and every decision sort of matters. What were those experiences, you kind of described it as like being, like, there's a lot of adrenaline in that. Did you enjoy that part of it? Absolutely thrived on it. Absolutely thrived on it. And, you know, and a lot of really bad people that were hard to catch one to jail, right?

Like, it was a good job. It was a great job. For me, when I look back at it, you know, I've been asked what, you know, my fondest times in the RCMP, and it's hard to separate them, but certainly, you know, my first, you know, 14, 15, 16 years in the RC&P doing those kind of jobs. and being lucky enough to be at the pointy end of the stick. Maybe that's the way I'm wired, too. I think my wife would say that's the way I'm wired, so it was a good fit.

It was a good fit for me. And I love the responsibility. You know, when they say, when I was called and told, there's a very bad guy who's killed somebody. There's a very bad guy who's hurt somebody badly. There's a very bad guy who's done something very bad, and this is where he thinks he may or may not be. he may or may not be armed

often they were and we need your help and I love being in that position it's my boss used to say at that time he said you're like a basketball player in the last 15 seconds of the game you want the ball and it's a tie score

you're the one that wants the ball and that's and I enjoyed that feeling in those roles in the RCMP I wanted the ball did it ever was it ever exhausting or draining to have that type of onus that like if something goes wrong either you're in danger your family's in danger that's often how i think perhaps civilians think of it more is like you're putting yourself in harm's way and um like there's that idea of like two police officers

having to show up at the door uh to talk to your wife or something did that ever make you want to pull back or what was that kind of experience like i think i speak for most police officers in that role that when you're in the middle of the job you don't think that way you're focused right you're focused your training kicks in your DNA kicks in your focus those thoughts come afterwards i think um you know as we continue this discussion i think my family more was more at risk later in life than it was early in my career um early in my career it was just uh you know me the dog the backup, the team that I was with, but you often don't, more often than not, you don't think that way during the incidents it's after when you debrief and you talk about it and think

about it, you're realizing you have the WTF thoughts. Right. There seems to be waves of love and hate for the police. Like at the peak of like what was happening with Robert Chikansky, that was like a peak of like people were not fond of the police. I'm interested to know what, like, that was like as a police officer, to have those ebbs and flows with your relationship with the public. Did that ever impact your, you at all?

Yeah, I think emotionally it did, but it never took my eye off the ball. Not only in my early life, but in my later life in command and at the executive levels. You know, it was disappointing often. I found often it was and don't get me wrong the RCMP like any police force has its warts absolutely right but what I didn't

what I excuse me what I felt was horribly unfair is that you know when I would be running a detachment like Chilliwack I'll use that as an example where we would go a year with absolutely no public complaints stacks of thank you letters lots of letters of concerns but letters that we could take care of, visit the person that's talking about them.

They may not be happy, but they're appreciative that we were there and explaining. So no complaints of harassment, no complaints of within the force, or within the detachment. So you go through these periods where, you know, you're firing on all cylinders and things are working good, and you've got a great team, you've got great leadership, you've got great young members, and everybody's working hard. and then something would happen in some corner of Nova Scotia and the RCMP would be painted bad across the country. Right, like if you took the words RCMP off of the name and just talked about Burnaby, just talked about Surrey,

just talked about North Van, people would find out that we actually have a lower percentage of harassment and those kind of complaints probably than any police force in the country. But when you're impacted by something that happens, in St. Anthony, Newfoundland, or Fogo, or somewhere up in Carcross, Yukon, and it's painting a brush for the men and women on the road in Surrey, I think sometimes the other story or looking at it in a different way would have been helpful, but it never was. It was, it was sad. It was hard to work through. And, you know, and I, I've, I've spoke to many media people

and leaders around the world over my career. And I'm struck by a discussion I had with Ian Hannah Mancing when I asked them a question about the unbalanced reporting. And, you know, the focus on, for example, I'll make it up again, but Burnaby, RCMP, because something happened with the Halifax RCMP. And how that was fair and how that was fair and how that that's balanced. And the answer he gave me was, but he said, a thousand aircrafts land safely every day at Vancouver Airport.

Not one of them is a good news story. Right. And it kind of speaks volumes. And, you know, the Canadian media is a different breed. And I, you know,

potentially I'll take a hit over saying that, but it's true. You know, I remember during the Olympics, where the media attention was so horrific or terrific, depending on your perspective on security for the Olympics

and I would do interviews with Canadian media and I always felt uneasy, right? Because I felt that there was this effort to find the I gotcha moment. And I always remember doing a media interview with

Good Morning America or NBC. It was an NBC, whatever their morning show is. At that time it had Matt Lauer and Katie Couric I believe at the time. And they did a half hour interview with me about security and I talked about the things I could talk about and the entire apparatus and how we fit in with the Vancouver Organizing Committee. And it was such a comfortable

interview and my point in this is I remember that I got a phone call from their anchor one morning and his question to me was quite simple. He said, we're going to run the interview this morning and is there anything that you said that given the four days it's passed between the interview and now that you wished you hadn't or if you'd like to change because we'd like to give you the question again we don't want to put you on the spot never would happen with Canadian media and it's just I always felt it was just a different environment so when I think about the RCMP and I'm obviously being defensive like 35 years right but I don't think it's always balanced I guess is my point

Yeah, that's got to be difficult. And that's why I ask the question is because these people, RCMP, police officers in general, they play a role in our community, whether we're paying attention to it or not. And I think it is true that we don't get to talk about the good as much as we would like. Because it's not a good news story. I find that frustrating because I would love to sit down with RCMP officers all the time. And I think there is one, I think it's Delta Police Force. it's doing a podcast where they're interviewing police officers and talking about what they do so that people get more information on what's actually going on.

What does the average day of a police officer look like in comparison to one event that kind of makes the news? And that's, it's discouraging because it creates that us versus them mentality. Very much so. And I think that that's so like taking a criminology degree, you get to see the problems just having an us versus them mentality creates. And while I understand perhaps frustrations with like how perhaps in the US police is done or things that we don't agree with in other ways regarding policing, that doesn't mean that our policing is a problem. That doesn't mean that we need to paint the whole brush across all of Canada or just kind of make general statements about things.

And it's very, I can't imagine what it would be like to be going into dangerous situations for your community. Like, it's, you live in Chilawak, you're protecting Chilawak, and then to have a story that's making it seem like you're not the good person in the story, that all our CMP officers or all police officers are part of the problem or that they're inherently imperfect. And of course, people are imperfect, but they're trying to protect the community. And I think we, we maybe lose that. And we often talk about how firefighters don't seem to fall into that category. They get to, they get all the positive news stories. Yeah, I think in some ways that's true, you know, but I, my wife and I, just before bed last night, where I was channel surfing, and BBC had a little documentary story on Newfoundland from BBC, right, the British Broadcasting Corporation. And that in itself made me stop to figure out what was that. It was interesting when you talk about the podcast and Delta Police, because here's a BBC. story, where they're actually interviewing on a network the size of BBC, a RCMP officer sitting at a coffee table in a very tiny restaurant on an island called Bell Island off the coast of

the mainland of Newfoundland. And they spent six or seven minutes, I don't know how long the interview was, but on the on-air program. It was like a five- or six-minute interview, and what he talked about was his joy. He's not from Newfoundland, but wanted to move him and his family to Newfoundland because what he had heard about the people and how welcoming it is, and it's a different type of culture and whatnot, and that he loved working in a community where they looked at him not only for his job,

but also for where he and his family were as human beings. So he could fit into the community, and they recognized that he was coaching ball. he recognized that he was coaching girls something else like floor hockey or ring hot ringhead or something like that and how warm and comforting that made him and he says you know sometimes he said i'll get called out and i'll attend a call at a house so he didn't say what kind of house what kind of call it was so i'm going to assume it might have been you know a disturbance or a fight or something like that i don't know what it was but he finished off the interview he said but working in a community like that he said I handle those calls, and he said, often before I leave, they invite me to come back for supper, right?

So, you know, it's kind of a different world, but I think you're right in that it's important before we throw all these stones to actually peel the onion back a little bit. And I don't know any police officer, and don't get me wrong, they're bad police officers, and I've been responsible for the units that have investigated them. But almost a huge percent, huge, huge, huge, huge, unbalanced percentage of police officers, all of them go to work every day trying to do a good job. But they're human beings and they make mistakes. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't or we shouldn't in my time be held accountable.

I've always said that the standard for police officers should be higher, higher when it comes to integrity and honesty than anybody else because it's a matter of public trust and confidence. I couldn't agree more. And I'm interested in your thoughts because you sort of mentioned it, that it's RCMP. And so that goes across all of Canada. And so one, like, if you're a business, you think of from a brand perspective, you're really exposing your brand to risk because what happens in one side of the country impacts perceptions on the other side of the country, which kind of leads into the idea of municipal policing. It's something that some communities have been really interested in. We see how. Abbotsford's moved to that direction. Surrey seems to be, I would say, I guess, flirting with the idea. It's unclear what's going to happen with Surrey. But I'm just interested in your perspectives on municipal policing because it's sort of touted as the solution to so many problems. I think it's more complicated than that. But I'm interested in your perspective for perhaps Chilliwack or just your perspective generally. Well, generally, I think you hit it right in the head, but it's way more complicated than that, you know, and, you know, nothing I'll say about it will come across as anything else but unbiased. So, because of my backgrounds, I'll kind of stick to the facts instead of putting labels on them. There have been communities that have looked at their own police forces. Richmond under Mayor Brody did it. I think Coquitlam did it. I think North Van skirted with it for a bit. In at least two of those scenarios that I'm describing, the review was done by KPMG.

And, you know, KPMG is obviously a large, incredible, you know, corporation. It might be a Fortune 500, I don't know, but it is a very big international firm. But it was interesting what came out of all of the studies, which is why places like Richmond and Coquitlam and North Bend are still with the RCMP. And the two outcomes were, one was surprising and one not so surprising. But the first one was that municipal police force is far more expensive, far more expensive. Because you don't get to rely on the systems that are universal with the RCMP, such as information and radios and the IT side, the file management side,

things that are embedded and in place nationally and tried and true and other countries copy. Yeah. But aside from that, the surprising outcome from those reviews is that communities, when it comes to policing, actually have more say with the RCMP than they do with municipal police forces. And the reason for that is in the RCMP contract, the officer in charge or your chief of police reports directly to the mayor and the CAO, right in the baked right in the contract. with the city police force, that chief does not refer or report to city council reports to a police board. It's a police board that reports to city council. So you would have seen some of the confusion and consternation in Ottawa. And you saw how hands off the mayor had to be because he had to keep saying,

listen to the chief reports to the police board and were rating for the report and the recommendations from the police board to get to council. So I'm oversimplifying it, obviously, but those facts are true. And those communities found as a result of those reviews that they were better off with the RCMP than moving off on their own. I can't explain what's happening in Surrey. You can read any one day how Mayor Brody is blocking this from being decided and won't release the figures to the rest of his council and they're going public. I think it's going to be an interesting election in Surrey. Um, from a practicality point of view from me personally, um, you know, one of the things that happens, and I'll use you as an example is a citizen of the city of Chilwack.

Uh, if Chilwack, uh, if something bad happens in Chilwack and we move, lose a couple of kids, I'm making this up for a point please in a park. Uh, if we need a helicopter, we'll get five. If we need two dog handers, we can have 10. You can have 12. We can have 15. If we have to do a ground search, you'll have 100 police officers here from across the lower mainland in a blink. That's what you get when you have the RCMP. You have that capacity.

When you're a city police force, it's a little harder. That makes sense. And I think a lot of people might be surprised hearing about the, that they report to a police board. Because what we sort of hear in terms of just people having thoughts is that Abbotsford, It works better and that it's more community involved and community driven. And so can you give perhaps your perspectives on the differences between that feeling of community that maybe municipal police forces have in comparison to the RCMP? Because the complaint seems to be like the RCMP doesn't feel as like right next door kind of community friendly

as municipal police forces as I've seen with Abbotsford Police Department. I think that goes back, and you know, you heard me say a little bit while ago, I'm not suggesting for even a minute that the RCMP doesn't have its words, just like other police forces, right? I know during mine a time in the community, what we did every year was we went out in public forums across the city, and I was responsible for the Fraser Valley, so I also did it in the other communities, where we would have these open night sessions where town hall, meetings where the communities would come in and tell us, and I brought in a facilitator and talked about what are your priorities for policing for the city, because it's not all the same. It's not all the same in Boston Bar as it is in Chilliwack as it is at Hope and Agassizier or Kent, right? And so, for example, in Chilawak, it was about seniors' crime. It was about property crime. It was about schools. And through the facilitator, we were able to

build a list of, and I'm not talking about 911 calls, those are always going to take care of, be taken care of. But outside of that and the pure crime, what does the city want from their police force? What do you want them focused on? And those results became a live document. And then at the six-month mark, we went back in front of the community and said, this is what you asked us to do. This is how we did. What do you think? Do you want to change what we did? Do you want to change how we did it? So I think when I talk about what the warts are, I think one other ways the RC&P is not doing a great job

is having the level of community involvement in the selection of their chiefs of police. I think that could be better because everything starts at the top because there are detachments that are doing everything that Abbotsford is doing and more. But it starts with the leadership. So there has to be a good fit in the leader with the community and with the mayor and council and the community, the fact of the community. And I think when that fit is right and you're interviewing the candidates and you're asking the candidates how they're going to liaise with the community, what they feel about community policing, what do you feel about school liaison, what do you feel with this, what are your priorities? when you find the right person that has the right fit with the community, you have everything that everybody else offers in policing and more because it's the RCNP.

Interesting. Do you think, because one of the challenges we have in perhaps politics is such a small number of people actually go out and vote. And so you have this giant majority of people who don't vote and then have complaints about how things are run or our council is not doing this. our MLA isn't doing that or like just they're frustrated but they're not at the meetings was that do you think that that's maybe a challenge as well is that the people who are willing to share their opinions on what could be improved aren't attending the meetings to actually help generate change well let's let's go back a little bit like if you talk about and I'm and I'm not a social scientist right from the get go like put that on the table and don't want to be but um but um You know, when they talk about doing surveys, generally as people that have a complaint or the people that will fill the surveys out, the people that are content or happy, unless they have a real reason to generally don't fill it out, right? And I think in some ways, in some ways, that could be a bit of a positive correlation or analogy about elections. It might be wrong, right? But, you know, you go on social media and, you know, I wish I didn't have Facebook because so much of it's positive.

But sometimes for me, it gets overshadowed by just those few posts, right? Just the few posts. And it's people that are getting on Facebook and being super critical. Like, if you've been on that, Chilliwack, beware. Like, oh, my God, sometimes when you read that, you just want to pull your hair out, right? but I think to your point, people that are happy or not so willing to post all the time, people that may have a grudge will. You know, and I just read one here the other day, you know, I was very much involved in this whole band for, and it's one of the things that I ran on was the environment. And, you know, plastic bags have no business in our landfills.

And, you know, I was very vocal about that. And I'm not taking credit for it because a lot of counsel felt the same way. But we managed to get that across the finish line. And that came after so much work by staff with public meetings, press releases, surveys. It goes on and on and on and on. And then I read this screaming post on Chilliwack Beware about why are we banned plastic bags? Why is that a surprise? How could that be a surprise to us?

why didn't the city do a better job of telling us what they were doing? Like, why didn't? And then, of course, you've got those, the host of weekend keyboard warriors joining into the conversation and just churning the butter, so to speak. Yeah. And I'm thinking, you know, how is it possible that we could have done a better job with that? Unless all of us took up one-seventh of the city and went door-to-door knocking. Like, I don't know how we could have done any better.

Yeah. Whether it was the progress, it was Instagram, it was the web page, it was setups and malls, right? And overwhelmingly, the people of Chilliwack wanted a better green solution for our city. They wanted to be leaders, not followers. And then you go on social media and you don't read any of the good stuff. It was just this non-stop. I don't say dribble, but I know you get my point. Absolutely, yeah.

I can imagine trying to make such a positive difference. being very confident that you're acting in line with the values of your community and then having to read something like that that basically misreads the whole situation and makes a decisive comment about something without really understanding. Before we move on from the policing side, the early part, I'm interested to know if there are any improvements on that front end that you would make. The one that comes to mind for me personally is always that four on, four off, two nights, two mornings, because I know people who work those shifts. And that's physically and mentally draining to try and switch from doing two mornings, two nights, to having your next two nights

trying to recalibrate your system. And it's just, it's one change that stands out to me, but maybe I'm missing something. I've never been an RCMP officer. I don't have any experience. Am I missing something in regards to the four on, four off, the hour system? Well, we both are missing something. I have to go back in time a little bit. I had reached my tenure, not my tenure, but I had been in Chilliwack here for a while. And this is kind of a funny story. And I had been pretty vocal about Ottawa's involvement in something at that time, which should have been left to my decision-making.

And I felt that I knew what was best for the community because I'd actually asked them. And I didn't want to be fitted into a mold, which is probably what you're talking about with the R.C. And I'm happy to say that that doesn't really exist anymore, but at the time it, at the time it, um, it, uh, it did. Um, but I fought back and, um, you know, I got my way. So fast forward with this a little bit. And I'm at a regimental dinner, which is when you're up in your, your red surge and, right, and you're, you're wearing all your brigalia and it's the formal part in the history and the culture, uh, of the RCMP. So it's a dinner, not a ball. So it's just for the members themselves. It's not members. and partners. And at that time, the commissioner was in town.

So I received a phone call from the commanding officer at the time who was deputy commissioner, Beverly Busson, and who's now a, in Ottawa. And she said, the commissioner's in town. Is there any chance? We have room for the commissioner. at the regimental dinner on Saturday

because she was coming to it. And I said, well, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so anyway, so we're sitting at the head table and I'm hosting the meal, so the dinner, so I'm in the middle. And I've got Deputy Commissioner Busson, who's the commanding officer of the province on one side,

and I've got the commissioner on the other side. And the commissioner, during the dinner, he turns to me and he starts saying, you know, I hear you've been having some issues with the center, as he called it. And I said, I'm not sure what you mean, sir. And he says, well, I understand you've been openly critical of some of the areas in Ottawa and the headquarters structure. And I said, well, sir, I don't have issues per se. And I'm trying to be careful, but I'm not going to not tell him exactly what I think.

That's not part of who I am. hear it. I'm just trying to figure out how to say it. Yeah. Right? So I said, it's not that I have issues. I said, sir, but as you know from your experience, as I'm turning my fingers together and crossing them on my leg, I said, things happened by the minute here. And we're three hours, you're three hours ahead of us. And I said, the way it's

structured, you're wanting me to ask for permission to do certain things as they're happening, but you don't have anybody in Ottawa, they can pick up the phone and say yes. So they're being critical about it in the morning because they slept through my nightmare that night. And I said, I have to have the ability to do business and make decisions and approve operational plans. And I can't be, often I can't wait

for somebody to answer the phone. And if there's nobody there to answer the phone, I have a decision to make. And I said, so that's my issue. It's not my issue. It's not with the people. It's the structure. And then he lived into me with, well, you know, maybe the problem is that we don't have operational people working in Ottawa.

And he says, have you ever been to Ottawa? Are you bilingual? And he started into that. And I'm thinking, God, this is not going to end well. So he turned to the right and started talking with somebody else. And Deputy Commissioner Busson, who obviously overheard it, leaned over to me and she says, I'll protect you. Right. So, fast forward this. Get to your 12-1. I know this is a real circular. No, it's good. So I don't know how long it was after that, but I got a red flag on an email and it was from officer staffing in Ottawa.

And I went, oh, my God, I'm going to Ottawa, right? Because this is the place that manages everything. And I thought, oh, God, I can't deal with this right now, right? And I didn't even open it because you can see when people open your messages, right? So I ignored it and went on a day later, it's still there. And I said, talk to my wife. And I said, tell you. I said, we may be on our way to Ottawa, right?

And her answer was, are you going to tell the kids? Right. I said, now, let's just leave it. And I ignored it for two or three days. And I didn't answer, but it was always there. And every time I logged on my computer is this red flag. Anyway, so it's like Friday. And my office assistant blessed.

walked into my office and she said, I have officer staffing on the line. Did you tell them I'm here? And she said, I did. Should I have? I said, oh no, right. And I said, yeah, okay, it's Friday. No point in having a good weekend.

I'm thinking, where am I going? And I picked up the phone and it's office. And they said, have you seen our email? I said, oh, I don't think so. I said, but I've got a couple hundred here on my screen. I said, what's going on? And they said, well, we have a position that we want to fill at Charles Stewart University in Sydney, Australia. And they want a senior police leader from Canada to attend the school.

So it was like a month, is their master's degree in public administration. And it was a school in Sydney that catered to, and in Sydney in Australia and New Zealand, And if anybody who's identified to perform at the deputy commissioner above has to have a master's degree in public policy. And this is their school, much like the military as a school and whatnot. And I have no idea how my name got floated, but that's what the red flag was about, not me being transferred to Ottawa. So I said, yeah, but I'll have to check and blah, blah. So anyway, I ended up attending Charles Stewart University in Sydney in Manley. And, but when I went there, I found out that because I was an add-on, I was joining a group of police leaders.

And this was the end of their masters. They had done all of the other work in the credits leading up to this four-week session I was attending. And part of this session was starting your master's thesis. So I was writing a thesis with them, and they were doing it as the final. step of their master's program, they were the defender thesis. But for me, that's all I was doing for this four weeks

is doing the thesis. My thesis was on the damn 12-hour shifts. Right. Back to your point. Twelve-hour shifts are not good for you. They're not good for policing, full stop. You take on a file on your night shift. It can sit for four days while you're off.

It's not good for policing. It's not good for your body. I worked the 12-hour shift. My wife worked the 12-hour shift. You know, your first 12-hour day It's really a 14-hour day by the time you get up, you come home. Your second 12-hour day is just a little bit better. And then you come home and, you know, you kind of channel surf and fall asleep. And the older you get, the worse it is.

Then you try and sleep in the next day or get a nap because you know the story. And your first, your last shift ends on your first day off, and you don't want to lose that. So you try and stay awake instead of going to bed. And it's messy. It's not good for you. you. And one of the last things I did in my time in Chilliwack before I was, I had mentioned I'd come here as a watch commander or sergeant in Chilwack. And at that time, I decided I would compete to join the officer ranks, which is a different program. It's handled out of Ottawa. Officer staffing is Ottawa. The general uniforms you see from constable, corporal sergeant, staff sergeant is handled in the provinces. So I competed at the officer level and I was successful and I moved on. I ended up being in charge of Chilliwack in 2002.

I originally went to Surrey when I was commissioned from Sergeant to Inspector. I was sent to Surrey, but I came back in 2002 in Sargent at Chilwack and then 2004 in charge of the Fraser Valley. Just before I left here, we got rid of the 12-R- Chefs and went to a different model. you were doing peak period policing. It was a 10-hour shift. And it had all kinds of benefits. Well, there was almost mutiny. Right?

Like, after I left, I'm not sure how long the commander who took over for me kept it, but it wasn't that long. You know, it definitely was a period of unhappiness. It was done for all the right reasons. It made sense. But people hated it. Interesting. So it's not clear that there's a better model than the 12-hour four-on-for-off.

Not when you need 24-hour coverage. I think there is a better model, but it's been with us for so long. It's baked in culture, right? And, you know, it works well for, you know, major crime and property crime units and drug units. You know, the 10-hour model where you might get an extra day every second weekend. I get it. There's a work-life balance. but when it comes to frontline policing and the 24-hour requirement I don't think

there's a real appetite to move off it I don't personally I don't believe it's good for you and I think I think it should be gone I think when you look at other models around the world you probably have studied some of them with your degree but you look at New York City where you you might be on night shift for 30 days right because your body gets into that routine and it becomes your routine instead of the switching back and forth, days, nights, days off, sleep, don't sleep. Like, it's not good for you, but that ship sailed for me. Right.

So, yeah, that does seem difficult, and especially when you've developed a culture. And I'm wondering if you can, we'll lead into, like, the role you played as a leader of the police, but I'm interested in that cultural element. You talked about the regalia, you talked about some of the clothing. Can you explain to us that side of the culture that people also perhaps don't understand. They don't see, maybe they see an RCMP officer in the red on a horse, but they don't get that backstory. And I think that that's something we could do a better job of communicating to people because it used to be, in my opinion, something people were proud of to see that RCMP officer on that horse in the red. That was like a staple.

but that's starting to fade away and I'm not even sure what it means or where it came from or how you go about selecting that clothing. Well, that clothing, you know, comes from the March West, from the Royal Northwest Mount of Police or the Northwest Mount of Police, the Royal Northwest Mount of Police. That has been the uniform over history.

Very much like the military uniform. You know, everybody has a history that's been around that long. City police forces haven't been around that long. The RCMP goes back into the 1800s when the West was settled and they determined that they needed to have law and order. That's when the Northwest Mount of Police was formed. So it's just history. It's our connection to the Queen. You know, and even that's now starting to erode across society, not just in policing.

I read an article the other day about how many people in Canada by sense, by, by, um, by, um, survey tool I want to sever the ties to the royal family and it may

come to a day I guess when we do do that I don't know but the red uniform is part of

the culture of Canada is when people think of Canada they think of the word A

they think of the red tunic on the RCMP you'll still walk into stores in Vienna you'll still

walk into stores in London where you'll see postcards with the RCMP in Red Surge. It's a symbol of Canada with the Canadian flag in a mountain behind you, right? I don't see that changing very much. When you're in training for the RC&P, it's a very small part of training. It's your formal uniform that you wear once in a while and you make sure it fits and

you go to parade and you have a regimental dinner to remind about the culture and those people before you. It's part of the ceremony when you have a dinner where there's a seat that's set with nobody at it to remember the people that have died on duty. It's just part of the culture. I think organizations that have culture and celebrate their culture are stronger in the long term than organizations that don't. But it doesn't take over from policing the people, the young ladies and men on the street that are doing the policing have that red search at home and they wear it when it needs to be worn. I suspect they're all proud of it, but they're much more proud of the work they do day to day.

Yeah, I think that I agree with you. I think it's important that you have a community and when you were kind of talking about how it's a private get together. I know with the military they have like, I don't want to call the military bar. but I imagine they call it something else. But communities where you're able to debrief, relax with people who know what you're going through, who sort of have an inclination of the stressful day that you just went through because everyday people are going to maybe misunderstand or not understand a joke or something like that.

And that's one of the benefits I felt with criminology was that we all got very good at understanding each other's sense of humor. because when you're talking about murderers and psychopaths and when you're talking about some of the most heinous crimes that have taken place, a little humor, a little bit of light-heartedness is important when you're talking about those heavy topics. And I think that those are important, but again, you just need that space to be able to kind of decompress. And some of those comments and jokes are never good when they're taken out of context.

Yeah. Right? And the RCMP does not have, as the military, if you go on a base, military will have its own lounge, its own mess hall, its own bar, its own that. The RCMP really doesn't have that. I think at most headquarters across the country, like Vancouver headquarters and Winnipeg headquarters and whatnot, headquarters, they'll have a lounge and a bar, but it's more, I think at this point in life and time and culture, overgenerating. Those places now are more for retirement parties, Christmas functions, as opposed to a place to go and drink when you're done. The RCMP doesn't have that. But I agree with you that these, I think these get-togethers are important and I hope they continue.

It's about culture. It's about history and it's about the people before you. Absolutely. Can you tell us about moving into those leadership rules? Because I think that leadership is a word we use a lot. A lot of people think they know what it means. but I don't think they do. I think it's a far more complicated concept than people realize because I'm watching,

I don't know if you've heard of Jaka Willink, but he's an ex-Navy seal and he's very interested in leadership, but his argument is basically the most people, if you put them in a supervisor role, if you put them in a main role, their idea of being a leader is bossing everybody else around and immediately kind of being like, you need to go do this because I'm in charge now and they've got this mentality of what they think a leader looks like. And I guess when you're in like small businesses, when you get that supervisor role, while now you're in charge and you get to dictate people's schedules and stuff. And I think a leader is often lifting other people up, hearing and trying to deliver what your team needs

and trying to put people in the best roles they can so they can thrive. I'm just interested in what that change over from the adrenaline, over to being a leader, and overlooking a team, what that change was. like for you. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't, it didn't come easy, right? When you're, when you're a person wired like I was to just, which way did the bad guy go? Get out of my way. I'm going to get you. Right? I got a dog. I know what I'm doing. This is my focus. And then for me, I was fortuitous ending up being a watch commander because it allowed me to learn to be a leader. I think some of it comes naturally, but a lot of it's learned and you have to have people who are

mentors, even if they don't know they are, right? Like I remember watching Jack's Grine, who was my boss. He probably didn't know I was watching him, but I was learning so much from him in a good way. But I also watch people in a bad way. And, you know, in your mind, I think if you're smart, and I think most of us are, you know, you recognize that's what, I want to be like that, but I don't want to be like that. So, you know, mentoring doesn't have to be a label. It can be something you do in a day-to-day activity. It's good to have a mentor,

but it's also something you should be doing all the time. And my time as a watch commander taught me, I think the most important lesson I learned being a watch commander is the word team, right? That your strength is your team. It's not the individual. It's not you. It's your team. And more importantly, or just as importantly in that, I learned that as their leader, everybody needed something different from me because not everybody's the same.

And I learned that very, very quickly and maybe a hard way, you know, at times where I made mistakes. I had people that didn't need to hear from me every day. They knew what their job was. They knew what they needed to do when they come to work. They knew what they needed to do during work, and they knew what they needed to do before they go home. And they like to be part of the team, but they didn't need my constant reinsurance or great job or how are you doing. And yet I had other people in between and other people at the end of the spectrum that didn't function right unless I was always stroking them, so to speak. Right.

Yeah, how's your day? That was a great job you did on that. Let me read that. That's a great model for other people. How did you, you know, you did a great job on that. How are you feeling, right? If I had tried that approach with some of them, they would tell them to go away, right? And I learned that about people and being a leader that everybody wants the same thing.

You just have to go about it differently. Everybody doesn't need to be engaged at every minute. And some people, sometimes it's a generation thing too, right? and sometimes it's an age thing, but you had to learn what everybody wanted. The other thing I learned with having a smaller team of about 15 is as a leader, you have to know when to be autocratic

and when bullets are flying, you need to be autocratic. But when bullets aren't flying and you're making decisions about what we're going to do, consensus and input and involvement of your team is critical. Because the more they understand developing which way the North Star is, the more they're going to be on board

and all move in the same direction. But when you have their respect, they also will understand when the chips are down, you're going to be autocratic. And that's the only way it can happen in that environment. So I learned little lessons throughout that time. And then when I decided to compete, is what it is actually,

it's an application process and interviews and papers and all kinds of things when you want to wear the white shirt or as it's called by people in the RCMP, there's a process you have to go through it. And there was at my time, I don't know what it is now. And when I was, I went through that process, and when I was commissioned,

it was at a time in Surrey when there were too many gun calls during a shift to comprehend too many armed robberies in a shift. People were dying. The risks were going up. And in Surrey, there was a decision made by, in that time, Chief Superintendent Terry Smith and Superintendent Al McIntyre, who were the two leaders in Surrey at that time, to move to an urban model of policing. And one of the things in an urban model of policing is they had a commissioned officer on 24-7, which was unheard of in the RCMP. Commissioned officers ran detachments and ran policy units and stuff like that.

But they just, in an urban policing model, they wanted four working. working for and for off. They wanted four commissioned officers that had previous experience on Ert, SWAT, were leaders and commanders, and that could be on duty 24 hours a day, 12 hours as incident commanders. So when there was those incidents that happened, they always had a commissioned officer to take responsibility for the incident, not the day-to-day noise calls that came in. but just the incident. So I was fortunate enough to get one of those positions when they were created. So I was kind of maybe commissioned a little bit out of cycle before my turn

because I had the skill set one that they were looking for. But more importantly, I think I was in Chilliwack and I could start tomorrow. I didn't have to be transferred in from somewhere. So I was in the right place, the right time. After two years of that, I came back in charge of Chilawak. So everything I had learned here in Chiluac is a watch command. was now kind of on steroids. But I was fortunate enough always to have a good team.

And I was always allowed to be involved in making sure that I had a right team through the staffing process. But Chilawak for me was still a time, I think I had 100 people. And it was still the right size for me to know everything that's going on and to be involved to the extent that I wanted to be. I was in every morning for the watch briefings at seven. But I learned something from it because I made mistakes. And I remember taking over a detachment of my immediate admin staff that reported directly to me and were in my spatial area, in my office area. They had a great, I think, a great work-life balance.

They were good people, hardworking. But along came Bud, right? and Bud was up at five in the morning and up in the office at six because that was just the way Bud worked. And very quickly I saw my executive assistant

coming in earlier than she always did. I saw other people start to come in earlier than they always did. And I was upsetting what was working only because I was a leader and that they felt that they had to emulate me to keep me happy. Right. And I learned, you know, I learned

as I went. I learned as I as I went. It was a mistake of my part. And, you know, we corrected that and talked about it. And, you know, I kind of fell on my sword, so to speak. And you don't have to be like me. I'm a fool. I get up early because I want to be up early.

This is not what I want from you. You already do a great day's work in the hours that you keep. But anyway, it was a... I've shortened the discussion, but it was a long discussion. but over a period of time but what I also learned is you know going back to and we all develop our styles right

and having a hundred person unit is a stepping stone to the other places I went I was fortunate because that's a great size that's a great size to be a leader of as you learn how to take on more responsibility and grow and move up in the organization but one of the things that I did there in later life it came back to me was

every time we had a cadet that would come in and I don't suffer fools wisely so I could see on my detachment who's working who's not working who's spending more time complaining about warm water and the water cooler like then doing their job you know you get the point

but every time I interviewed a cadet after they had been in the detachment for about a month with their trainer there was a standing meeting that usually lasted about an hour. It's much like the one we're having, you know, and I would learn a little bit about them, their family, where they're from, where their aspirations are, how are things going so far, your likes, you don't like.

And I would always end the interview with two things, and I would ask them, what do you expect of me? What do you think my job is? How do I make you succeed? What's my job? And some of them would be sat back in their chair and stumbled and not know how to answer. and you'd have to help them through it and start the dialogue.

Some were very forthcoming while your job is, da-da-da, right? And then before I would end it, I would say, you know, well, you've got a decision to make. And you need to make your decision with me fairly quickly. And you could see, you know, they're sitting back a little bit because they don't really understand what's coming. And I said, what I've learned in life, I said there's people that squawk, bitch, complain,

and do little else, and they follow each other. And there's other people that soar, they work hard, they give you 100%. They have criticisms, but they also have solutions. And I said, so for me, you have to make a decision fairly quickly in your career. And I said, and I had a picture of a bald eagle behind me. I said, you can be like an eagle, and you can soar. You can work alone when you need to and work with others when you have to, and you can get the job done.

And if you do that, I'm going to take care of you, and I'm going to try and fulfill everything you've just told me to put your aspirations. I said, but if you decide, and I reach over and I open my drawer, and I pulled out a rubber duck, and I put it in the table, and I said, if you decide to be a duck,

the thing about a duck is they quack a lot, they shit a lot, and they follow each other. And if you decide to be a duck, you probably won't get much from me. Yeah. And I said, this is the decision you've either already made or you still need to make. And I did every interview that way. And fast forward this like 20 years later, I'm walking in the Willowbrick Mall.

And a lady comes up to me and she says, are you Budmer, sir? And I looked at her and I said, I'm not sure. And she said, I think you are, sir. She said, used to be my boss in Chilliwack. And I relax. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't recognize you. And blah, blah.

And she said, I've always remembered her discussion. And just so you know, I decided to be an eagle. That's beautiful. I really love that because I think people need to be encouraged in that way, that there's the carrot and there's the stick. And to not reach your full potential, to get lost in the squawking and complaining, you miss out on life. It's not just that you don't get the promotion.

It's that your life is less full. It's less meaningful when you, you're distracted by those things. And there's always those people who want to talk about last weekend and the drama and who's this person hanging out with and what's going on now. But you're you're distracting yourself definitely from the role of being an RCMP officer, but you're missing out on the meaningful work that can be done, regardless of whether or not you're at Save On Foods or you're an RCMP officer, meaningful work can be done. And I think we're in a weird time right now because people don't feel like their jobs have an impact. But I certainly notice when my partner and I are checking out at the grocery store and the person definitely does not want to be serving me. And we miss out because when you get that good service, it reminds you of the difference that person can make in your day when they're super friendly and they're, hey, how's your day going? Everything like, oh, you found everything okay. And you're like, this is just nice. I feel like respected for my time in choosing to shop at this location. And you have a better day as a consequence of that. And it's so easy to get. get lost in that minutia but you're you're calling someone to be to be more than they are at that time

or you're giving them two paths to choose from and I just remember my favorite professors in school playing that role like there was one professor I fell asleep in his class and then he he came to me and he's like there's something going on because you're you're smart person but you can't be falling asleep in class like you've got to be more than this this is not high quality person And that woke me up to, well, now I'm being disrespectful. Other people are going to take your class less seriously. My actions don't only have consequences for me. It impacts his confidence in delivering the material.

It impacts the people around me feeling like, oh, maybe this doesn't matter. It has a cascading impact, and I think we can often forget that we play a role positive or negative, whether we like it or not. We don't get to remove ourselves from having an impact on other people around us. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm also reminded, and you know, I don't remember where I saw it, you know, and it's the other lesson in leadership, right? It's not about, a lot of it is about, you know, in when to go and when to slow, one of my favorite expressions. It's also about making sure that where it's possible, the more people involved in directing how to get to the North Star. I'm not sure that much. might be at a Kaplan and Norton's book on management, but, you know, the nurse star philosophy, the more people involved in that,

the more you'll get the buy-in and the more you'll get a sense of direction and commitment and effort and results. But one of the things that I also learned the hard way, because I made a mistake, was, and I go back to my brother sent me a video clip, and I don't honestly remember the context of why but I remember the clip

and it was like this camera moving through a crowd as people were walking up the street and every time a person would go by the camera there was words that came up and like so the camera's going down and a guy's coming, he's got a face and it says my prostrate numbers were too high

I hope I don't have cancer the next lady was It's my daughter's birthday, but I don't have enough to buy her a present. The next person was, I can't wait for my date tonight, the first date with a girlfriend. The next one was, I don't know how to tell my husband I have cancer. I just found out. And it just, it made me, you know, realize that, you know, everybody's got a story. And everybody's story is going to have an impact on how they look, feel, and react today.

so don't jump to conclusions. And, you know, and I made that mistake once, only once. That's incredible. What role do you think owning your mistakes as a leader plays for other people? Because it feels like it creates the space for people to acknowledge their own imperfections, but it seems like it's a trust-building process. Like when you were showing up too early and you fell on your sword, it seems like that strengthens people's faith in, like it seems like some leaders think they need to pretend that they don't make mistakes, that they can do no wrong. And that seems to breed as a serious distrust in those leaders, particularly when they're in other roles. But those challenges, it seems like you're okay with admitting when you make mistakes and owning that. And I'm just interested to know what impact that had on the people around you.

Well, I don't know. I can only assume. You know, I think leaders that fake it will create the ducks that will follow each other and quack a lot, right? Because that's what they'll talk about. I think, you know, admitting your mistake demonstrates that you're human. You could be a strong, great leader with lots of baggage and experience. But if you don't, if you're not portraying a person who's human has integrity, makes mistakes, I think it's a mistake. And I don't think you'll ever get what you can get

and develop the relationship and the productivity from your people. If you're somebody that thinks you can fake, people are smart, right? And we should never underestimate that person behind the till or the person that's collecting garbage or the lawyer that's signing your real estate people, regardless of who they are. They're all brilliant in their own way. way. And they'll read through you like a book. Even if you think you're being smart in the way you behave and you carry on and you lie and you're disingenuous and you're building a

persona that's not human, they'll see right through it. You'll tear down an organization if you're like that. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think my favorite part about the podcast space is I think people have a problem with underestimating truck drivers, and so knowing that truck drivers are one of the primary listeners of podcasts today because of their long drives, they've learned and I'm sure are listening to educational pieces, and they're getting huge educations in comparison to people who don't get to listen to those things. And I think that it's an opportunity, like I didn't consider myself intelligent until I started listening to neuroscientists and people that I didn't think you would put in like a box and say he would listen to that type of person.

I think people would be surprised at how much you can learn from people that you wouldn't expect. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So moving forward, what was the, what was managing the Olympics? Like, you talked a little bit about the media that you were dealing with at that time. Was that an intimidating role to take on? Like, what was that, what was your thought process to moving into that position?

It was a bit scary. Right, like I was a chief superintendent at a time, and I, you know, I had a great job, right? The commissioner, despite our interactions sometimes back and forth, he often referred to me as the most senior officer in Canada that was still fully operational, not bilingual, and never been to Ottawa. And, you know, I never, I think I might have said thank you. You know, try to add a little bit of wit and humor to comment like that. But in my mind, I always thought to myself, well, I've got to where I've, I'm at where I've got to. I've never applied for anything.

You've put me in the positions. I'm feeling that you're making a little bit of fun of right now, right? But him and I got along. I'd want you to be misled by that. But, yeah, the Olympics was a scary thing, only because it's so foreign and so much rests on your plate like so much and it's unfamiliar territory

to anybody like who can you turn to and say how should I start I'm going to be running security for the Olympics like there's not a lot of people you can just reach out to and the other thing is

Canada does it different right and I think for good reason when you look at other countries that have had the Olympics it's kind of command and control by committee and the U.S.

is terrible for that. You know, when you have a major incident or something like the Olympics or major events, if it's near Park, you've got the Park Police, if it's nearest, you've got the sheriffs, you've got the local police, you've got the FBI, you've got the city, and it ends up being a real bifurcated command structure.

Canada did it very simply. The RCMP is in charge of security for the Olympic, full stop, and there is a person that's in charge of that apparatus, that enterprise, and that's the position I filled. So in one way, it makes it a little more daunting and scary, but in another way, it makes it, it's cleaner. It's much cleaner, but it's only clean if you have the right people, and I certainly have the right, had right people.

What made it a little bit more difficult for me is that I was replacing somebody that had been in the job and that person's departure wasn't voluntary. And so I was moving into a position that had camps, right? You know, supportive camps and maybe not hate, but maybe not so support, right? And so I knew that going in, which was helpful. But, you know, in the lead up to the Olympics, I had over 500 staff in that planning, environment in that role

you had not only the day-to-day job of preparing the apparatus to secure the 2010 Olympics but you also had the IOC's expectation so I had kind of a job description which was my primary responsibility

but I had the IOC and the IOC expected the person in my role like in every Olympics, not about Bud, every Olympics that you had visit countries that are having the Olympics, visit countries that have had the Olympics, visit the IOC and do presentations to them.

So you almost had a little bit of an agenda or job description with the IOC as well as your substantive job, which is protecting Canada and the Olympics, right? Right. What is the IOC stand for? Sorry. International Olympic Committee, right? And then, so that's the IOC.

That's the governing body for the Olympics. And then every time there is an Olympics, there's what's called an organizing committee locally, so Vanock, the Vancouver Organizing Committee, or the London Organizing Committee, they call them OCOG. So there's the IOC and then the organizing committee and then the security. So John Furlong was in charge of Vanock and I was in charge of the security apparatus for 2010. But so, you know, the time commitments were, it was over the top.

I think I probably put on 110 to 120,000 airways. miles each year. I was in Ottawa every second week. And often in other country, you know, once a month, including my day-to-day responsibilities, not only being a father and a husband, but also my job organizing.

So hence my wife's comment about three to four years of our lives will never get back. But I won't leave you even for a minute with the thought that it wasn't one of the most you know, rewarding experiences of my life in spite of that. But it was different, but it was a big growing thing. So, first of all, just the issue of taking over for somebody, you know, there's a period of trust and timing.

I don't know that I ever got everybody all over on board, but probably most. I had a phenomenal command team. But what it did for me, and, you know, I talk about this, when I speak publicly, is that I was until that point, someone that had the capacity to be involved in almost

everything and anything I wanted to be. I had to kind of hold myself back. But I did have the capacity to do it. But it wasn't good business to do it. But I had the capacity. When I went to the Olympics, I had no freaking capacity to take it all on.

It was so big. I remember walking into the building on my first day and there's this big massive countdown clock. And there's like 1,281 days till opening ceremonies. I don't think, ah, lots of time, right? But it went so fast. But one of the things that I learned, because in the first few months,

I think I was almost physically ill. I felt I was failing a little bit. I couldn't keep up with everything that I felt I needed to keep up with. Despite as much reading as I did and as much time at work as I did, I was physically exhausted and I don't know what the the trigger was you know as I think back

I don't remember exactly what it was when the aha moment went in or maybe it was an aha moment over a month or a week or maybe it's something my wife's, I don't remember what caused it but it was a growing thing for me to let go

and trust the executive leadership that I had and to let them do their jobs. I didn't need to exactly know that. I didn't need to exactly do that. What I needed to do was to set the parameters about what I did need to know about and when I needed to know about it. I didn't need to be in their corn flakes, right? They were experts. I had women and men that were phenomenal. I had 500 full-time staff. I had an executive level of

the best of the best. And when I learned that lesson, life got a lot better for me. in the lead up over those 1,200 days to the Olympics, where it became overly personal. The media was part of it, but it was also the, what I'll call the protest element. Because you're in a position where you know everything, and that's the area that I kind of focused on. You know, when you're a leader, you think about, you know,

what's your threat assessment? And my threat assessment didn't say that I should be involved. My personal threat assessment didn't believe that I knew I didn't need to be involved in everything they were doing. But for me to do my job, I needed to know what was happening locally and internationally on the threat side. And I spent a great deal of time focused in that area. And I had a robust process in that area that kept me informed. And equally so they were very well informed. both locally and internationally through federal partners and all of the above.

On that side, you know, there was, and the disadvantage you have, of course, is that you know things you can't talk about, right? And I knew that 95 to 99% of the protests that were going to happen during 2010 were legal, and they were legitimate. And as I often said, I don't care where you. you protest, whether it's on Burrard Street or on top of your toilet seat. Like, if it's legal, it's not my business. In fact, I'll help you facilitate it, right? You have the right to do that. But I also knew, because of things I couldn't talk about, was that there was 5% that were more McAlbanian.

There was groups that were on the dark sides of websites showing members Photoshopped with the head of John Furlong, hanging by the hair with blood dripping out of it. There was, and I showed that picture at a Vancouver Council meeting when they were accusing me of my security methods being to, they called them McIlvainan, right? Sorry, what does that mean McIlvanian? Evil. Okay. And I said, well, how, I said, if I didn't, and I took it out, and I said, if I didn't look into that, would you think I'm doing my job? And I said, because this is what you're not seeing and that I can't talk about.

And I use that as an example of some of the material. Well, when I started to be engaged in things like that, it became known to me through the groups that they were starting to talk about my family and the fact that I had two daughters and things like that. And all of a sudden on my cul-de-sac, there was cameras going up and there was just additional layers of security around the family and around the vehicles we drive or my kids drove, my wife drove. So it was a little bit hard in that period, but, you know, we all found our rhythm. as we move towards the Olympics and what we need to do happened and as I always said publicly in the media

is that security is important and they would ask me how will you know if you've succeeded and I said it was simple I said I'll know I've succeeded if we go through this Olympics and what people around the world remember is the Olympics

the podium the beauty of British Columbia and Canada and the athletes and I said if that's what they remember from the Olympics I think I will have been successful and they said well how do you know if you're unsuccessful and I said I'll be

think I'm unsuccessful if after the Olympics people remember the security they remember seeing people carrying guns they remember this incident or that incident they remember a violent confrontation between police and protesters. I said, if security becomes the story, the Olympics all have failed.

And I said, that's why we have to do security smartly. And I had the team to do that. And we did do that. And we came in under budget. And the media ran a story that we came under budget because I inflated the budget in the beginning so that I would look good at the end. That's awful. No, but that's the way the media has.

handled it. I remember, you know, just a quick side story. I remember, you know, I lived in Vancouver for about 60 days, right in the Olympic period, right? And in Richmond, actually. And my wife would come in and we go up for dinner and I remember getting a phone call. We're at dinner in Stevesden at the Seafood House in Steven in Richmond. And my phone went and went a second time and I said, I got to take it. And I just went outside. And it was my media people. And they said, but we've got CBC pretty much on hold here and they're making a demand. And I said, oh, what's that? And they said, they want you to do an on-camera interview before 8 o'clock tonight or they're going to run with a story from information that they have.

And I said, well, I'm not really interested in doing a, you know, an on-screen interview tonight. I said, what information do they have? they said, and the anchor's name was Brown. I forget his first name, but Brown. And the information they had, and if you might remember from the Olympics, I back up a bit, I might have 500 full-time staff, but I had close to 16,000 during the Olympics. And we had three cruise ships that we had at South Terminal there in Vancouver

that were used as hotels. And we used as what we bought the cruise ships for, those periods of time. We had thousands of people on the cruise ships because there's just not the hotel capacity, right? And we also had two theaters of operation, which complicated things. The Greater Vancouver Theater,

but also the Whistler Theater, of Operation. So it was difficult to have that many people, so we had cruise ships. So the story that this Brown gentleman from CBC was running was that the police during the police, somebody, RCP members, as part of,

of the ISU, the Integrated Security Unit, had snuck a prostitute onto the ship in a hockey bag. And if I didn't go on camera to discuss that, that's the story they were going to run with. So it was like blackmail, right?

And I'm thinking, oh, God, right? Well, obviously, I have absolutely no choice. You know, but to do the interview, I said, but the lady's name was done, I said, do you have any background? And she said, not right now. but we're scrambling to get you something and I said there's no suggestion at all this is true and she said nothing absolutely not but we'll we'll have something

said okay so quickly eat say goodbye to my wife go back change go into my office where they're set up for the interview and by the time I get in there I found out there was stuck somebody snuck into it with a hockey bag but it was the engines boats come with staff, right? They run all the motors and the mechanics. So they don't go home just because we've rented the ship. There's still staff on board the boat. So it was one of the staff from the works down in the engine compartment.

I don't know what the proper word for them is on a cruise ship, the people that run the motors way, way, way, way down low. But he had snuck a relative in a hockey bag because the crew ship was going to reposition itself to a country that that person wanted to go to and couldn't get there legally. So he brought her in a hockey bag and had her downstairs because these are massive cruise ships.

Like you'd never know. And it was a relative of his and that he was holding in her room but he had brought her in a hockey bag. But that's, but so those kind of things were happening non-stop. But the ability to let go and let the teams do their thing.

Meese focus a lot on the offshore and domestic intelligence, in spite of some of, you know, the collateral damage, I'll call it, to your psyche and your family, you know, it was there. But we worked through it. And it was interesting during the Olympics, because, you know, I had quite a sound command structure set up. And, you know, our operation center obviously is working 24-7, and I had the right command. commanders from all over the place. I had my equivalent from the London Olympics was shadowing me because their Olympics was next. So actually during the Olympics, like, when the opening ceremonies happened and the Operation Command Center took over with all the commanders,

they knew what I needed to know about. Right. And my life actually got as simple as it got for three years. Because all the work hard. work was done. And these commanders, he and she's, were so good, they ran the operation show, and they knew what they needed to call me about. And I, like, I remember one night, and I think Shelley was in town again, but I got a call that they had stood up Health Canada, and like, as soon as they said that this is bad news, right, because some of our radioactive sensors had gone off around BC Place, and that is not good news.

That is not good news. That is terrible, terrible, terrible news. And the whole apparatus that we had practiced for was mobilizing. And so it was obvious that our training and the exercises had worked over the last two years to that. Because everything was, and they gave me the brief, and I said, okay, I'll be in. and I had it in. And anyway, so what it turned out is that someone was taking some kind of injectable medicine for some kind of condition.

I'm not a doctor. I don't profess to know at all. But they had discarded the kit or the medical, the needles and whatnot. And I guess it's an isotope that has a radioactivity to it into an outhouse outside of BC place. And it had set off one of the same. sensors on the sweep, and that's what it was. Yeah, that must have felt good. Oh, heart rate, heart rate, heart rate, heart rate, heart right. Wow. But there's a, there's things like, there was a few, there was a bunch of stuff

that happened, but we managed to keep it below the radar and keep the focus on the athletes and the gold medals. Yeah. That is incredible. For, do you think, because we, we know that being a police officer is difficult often for the spouse, for the family members, it's just stressful to know that your family member is going out and you don't know what's going to happen in that day. Would you say that during the Olympics, that was the toughest time on your family, the impact on your family? I don't think they were worried for my safety. It was just the amount of time that, you know, dad was gone. Yeah. It's not like that whole job was not like when they knew I'd been called out to chase somebody that had dumped a car after a robbery and was on foot.

wasn't that kind of fear it was just dad's gone again I think when the camera started going up it got a little bit more real but you know I think you know the way we talked as a family the reassurances were there I think one of our children

wasn't quite old enough to understand it but yeah do you feel like you like it seems like it was pretty thankless in terms of the general public and the response for media it was a thankless

job do you feel like you were recognized appropriately for, because that's a lot of sacrifice and a lot of stress to carry, particularly when you're trying to, like, manage like an avalanche, like you're trying to control where this thing's going to go. When you sort of recognize the people around you, it seems like it got easier, but do you feel like that was a worthwhile role in the respect you got from your peers? I'll answer that. I'm just going to go back a second because I'm always careful about.

not taking credit for anything, I don't do. I never managed an avalanche. Those are skilled snow scientists that predict and manage them. My job as a dog handler was when there was an avalanche had happened. The dog had the ability to locate people under the snow. Oh, sorry, I just meant like you're managing, like, something beyond your control and it's like... I just don't want anybody to think that I managed avalanches. Fair enough.

Not my skill set. They're great, educated people. I'm just not one of them. You know, I think internally, like my bosses were over the top. You know, Gary Bass, Al McIntyre were the two, who are, you know, friends to this day. They recognized how busy a job it was, and they were great people to work for. The commissioner, in spite of his, some of the, this is a different commissioner than the one at the dinner table. It was the next

one. You know, in spite of sometimes his rantings and ramblings, he was supportive. And I like to quote my wife because every time I needed somebody with a specific skill

set that was somewhere in Canada, I only had to make one call and that person was immediately transferred. We had a robust exercise, as I get to the point, a robust exercise. Like, Everything we did was tabletopped and exercise to death, trying to make it fail. And I found out that there was a constable in some detachment in Western Canada

that had been a lieutenant in the military who was responsible for their exercise program. Like within 16 seconds, he was transferred, it was cut, and he was coming to me. And he built a team of ladies and gentlemen that had backgrounds in exercise planning. and they had carte blanche across the entire organization from me to walk up to you that's planning deployment and shift schedules to walk into that person and say everybody stop, your computers, just shut down, what would you do now? They were continually stressing and pissing people off,

but breaking things virtually and saying, now what would you do? So there was also the informal exercises like that as well as the tabletops and the actual exercise. exercises that led up to the Olympics. So I had the support of people that knew. Yeah, there was a lot of criticism, but like I've taken that a lot of my life. You know, and often it's because I can't tell you everything.

Like I can't. There's no way I can and survive. Sometimes it's a safety of people, but I can't tell you the whole story. So criticism came with the job. After the Olympics, I made sure that my staff were recognized. I stayed along long enough to make sure of the 500, many of them were, it was their retirement song, so they were retiring, but many of them needed to be transferred out when the job was done into.

I made sure to the extent that I could that they all got what they wanted. I made sure they all received the order of British Columbia, you know, for their efforts. I made sure they were all recognized. And for me, I was satisfied and happy with the job we had done. I was more important to me that the immediate people around me were happy. I didn't need a global thank you. It wasn't that big.

I did receive the order of merit from the Governor General. you know, which was pretty cool. But I didn't need the day-to-day accolades. In fact, you know, in the years leading up to after it, I did speak around the world in London, Singapore, and other areas. And, you know, when they asked me what to do as part of this big discussion, I said, nobody can do it themselves. You have to have the best team in the world if you want to succeed.

and I said, that's the only comment I'll make that she'll thank me for in four years. That's beautiful because, again, it goes to your ability to be a strong leader is to make sure that the people around you get that recognition at the end because it's often, as you said, people have their own stuff going on, but to show up and make sure that the job is done properly, make sure things are communicated and things don't fall apart during those periods despite maybe home life problems or challenges with income or, whatever is going on in their personal life

to show up and do great work deserves to be recognized. And it seems like your ability to recognize those people played a big role. Did you retire shortly after that then? Right after. You know, maybe July, maybe July of 2010. And, you know, I'll

just go back to finish that thought off. I remember listening to, I don't remember his first name, Burke. He was the general manager of the Canucks. I think that's his name. Anyway, I heard him speak at a conference, and it always stuck at me. No, he was a guest speaker at a dinner.

That's what it was. And I was a comedy made that always stuck with me throughout the latter part of my career was that he was talking about leadership in hockey. And he was saying, you know, when the Kinnucks organization succeeds, put the players in front of the mic. He says, when we fail, I'll take the mic.

and there's a message there right yeah so after the Olympics probably about July I got a cold call from a gentleman I never met heard of I don't know anything about it and he was representing

a group of international investors that had a Canadian company that was worth the project they were on was worth about $3 billion and they had been shortlisted by a treasury board to win the project

and as part of the technical assessment of their bid now that they were shortlisted was that they had to expose what their business structure and companies they had to create a company in Canada and it was the project was in a part of the government where foreign investors

weren't, were welcome but not not behind the curtain. And so they had to create a freestanding company in Canada. And I was offered the job of the CEO of that company. Wow. So at that time, I had 34.5 years service, I think, that's about right. So, you know, reaching that 35 is when your pension max out. You know, the private sector, as I came to learn, was quite lucrative.

And there was lots of In that position I have to be really careful about what the position is I'm going to talk gray and I apologize for that No problem But I was working in a part of government That did a lot of interesting things It was around public safety

And This organization would exist inside the organization And anyway I was successful And they were successful with their bid And I was hired by the end of the year. So I actually, I guess I stayed on salary until, you know, the first part of 2011. But I actually started with them on the 1st of December 2010.

Wow. Yeah. Did you enjoy that work? Was it comparable at all to the work you did with the RCMP? Or was it completely different in your mind? Completely different. It was also, you know, as you can probably, we tell from everything we've talked about.

In my later life, I was tied a lot with Ottawa, with government, with the prime minister's office, with our national security advisors, equally so on the provincial side, just because of my role in the Olympics.

But in this new job, I learned a lot more of the side of business within the government that I have no interest in going back to. I wasn't, I was I wasn't quite ready for that. I learned very quickly, and I was successful, but that wasn't my favorite part of the job,

was the dirty business of politics. Yeah. And I think that that's the tough part because that's what people kind of imagine when they think of politics, unfortunately. Then you move back to Chilliwack. We always kept property here, right? Because I said, as I said in the beginning, I'm going to retire before I'm 60. We did have a house here that we kept because we were first time. My wife and I were going to be empty nesters.

We were leaving our daughters. The boys were older. So we rented them a house, and they graciously kept a bedroom for us when we visited in the house that we were renting. So that was kind of nice of them, don't you think? Yeah. But before that, after we had sold our house and rented this house for them, we had actually bought property. And our intention always was to come back to that property, which is where we live now. Interesting. What made you choose Chilliwack? Just because of your lifelong experience here, because you sort of have a lay of all of Canada for a lot of it. You've worked and trained dogs in Alberta. You've got an experience likely in Saskatchewan. What made you say B.C. and Chilohat?

Well, first and foremost, our kids are here. And I think we had one grandchild here before we came back. and you know Shelly and I had talked about where to retire because I had worked you know in Australia and Asia and we loved England you know so that kind of the world was our oyster so to speak if that's an expression

I've heard it somewhere but like you know there's other places we could have lived and we talked about that but you know family was and our daughters and our sons and our grandchild at that point And we had two grandchildren in Ottawa. So first of all, we made a decision we're going to stay in Canada and visit those areas that I've worked in that I'm able to take Shelley too.

Some of them we couldn't. So we have visited many and most of those. But we decided we'd stay in Canada and where to stay in Canada. There wasn't much of a discussion. It was going to be Chilwaukee. We love the time we spent here. We love the mountains. We love the outdoors.

The Fraser Rivers, the Chilwack Rivers are our favorite place on Earth. The trail systems, the ability to walk out and hike for miles, walk for miles, small enough that if you take the time to meet that cash register person, that they'll remember your name next time. Small enough to do that. There's a certain, and our kids, so there's a certain magnet to all of that for both Shelly and I, and we were like-minded. And, you know, financially, we could travel to those other places. Incredible. We'll talk about your moving into council next, but I'm just interested to know what that journey has been like with you and your partner, Shelly. That's a lot of different things to go through. There's a lot of adversity in the four on, four off. There's a lot of work with the Olympics. Can you tell us about how you met and just sort of that journey with your partner? Yeah. So Shelly and I met in Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories. I was a young police. police officer there, younger police officer there, and Shelley worked for the Department of

Education there. I think she was the admin assistant to the superintendent of education for that area. So we met in Fort Smith, and that's when we became a couple. Shelly sacrificed a lot with her moves because she very smart, intuitive, you know, hardworking. Our DNA is quite similar in that regard. And it was always her that took the kick in the guts when we got transferred and moved. So she went through many careers over the years. When we got to Chilliwack the first time around, I was actually in that,

we were actually in northern Alberta. And we were transferred at that time to Nelson, BC, and that would have been 91. And we had a real estate agent picked out, ready to go. And we had sold our house up in Peace River in northern Alberta. And before we left on our house hunting trip, the staffing called us and said, have you ever been to Chilliwack?

And we said, yeah, thanks, but we're going to Nelson. And do you like Chilliwack? Yeah, thanks, but we're going to Nelson. And what would you think of Chiluac? It was one of those kind of discussions. What had happened? I don't know what happened, but my transfer was changed. And we changed gears, fired our realtor in Nelson

and found one quickly here in Chiluac. This is where we were transferred to, and that was 91, 90, spring in 92 or something like that. So Chilliwack is the only place that Shelly's ever been where she's actually been able to stay with a career. And, you know, fortunately for Shelly and for me, she started off as a radio dispatcher here for police fire, became a supervisor, and then later in life became the manager of the 911 Police Dispatch Center here for the Freezes. or Valley. So that's the career she retired from just a couple years ago. But she's the one that took the

shit kicking, if you don't mind me saying that. Yeah, for sure. Over our transfers across the country back and forth, giving up careers, finding new ones, being a mother, having a husband that was always on call. Never mind his day, never mind the shift schedule on the time you're off

being on call. So it's not just about being away from work. When you're not at work and you're paid or your phone goes off, dating myself, Pager. But, you know, I was always on, always on the go, always on the go. I remember times in Northern Alberta where, you know, during the summer, a lot of the calls, because, you know, I wasn't going to good calls, right? They wouldn't call me if it was good.

And I spent a lot of time in a Twin Otter flying into communities in the south part of the Northwest Territories across northern Alberta. and some of the times I would get my sleep on the floor of the Twin Otter on the way to my next call and then I'd be done there and they'd have to drop me not at home but somewhere else that was calling

so it seemed to be like that a lot so it wasn't for Shelly it was the uncertainty of what I was doing right the time away from home where she's the only parent with two busy young ones yeah she carried the lion's share that's incredible and I'm just grateful to be able to hear your viewpoints of what she's been through because I think that's what makes it admirable is that you're willing to pay your respects to the sacrifices that she made because she's often probably not getting media interviews not that it sounds like those have been overly fun either but like interviewing Brian Minter and having him kind of say like my wife never gets the do I think she deserves for all the sacrifices so that we could have this business like people.

People don't realize that it's a team effort behind the scenes here. It's not just one person. It's not just me. And you've done a great job in our conversation, just highlighting the people around you that have made all the larger successes of our community or of the Olympics possible. Yeah. And, you know, the other part, too, is like, just by nature of the job that I had, and I'm not suggesting other police officers don't have similar. But this is before we did critical incident stress debriefings. and, you know, psychologists were dealing with that debriefing PTSD process, right?

And my venting was my wife, right? Like I would come home, this is before any of that existed, but those conditions still existed. And some of the stuff that I became involved in and did or responsible for or help clean up after or find, And much of it, much of it was absolutely horrific, beyond X-rated, right? Beyond X-rated. And, you know, Shelly's the one that listened. Yeah, I cannot imagine what you see when you're a police officer. And I think it's important that we remember that. It's important that we keep that in mind when we're talking about the role of police officers in our community is that they are seeing things that we would.

we would never want to see ourselves. And it's interesting that you put it as X-rated because we have rating systems and some of the things you have to deal with in those circumstances are incomprehensible to the average person who's worried about whether or not the playground's safe or worried about whether or not this road's going to be perfectly assessed. Like the real problems most of us are blissfully unaware of. And I don't mean to say it was all bad. Yeah. Right, but, you know, when you're working for, you know, as many years, as many police officers do, even if there's only one incident a year, they're cumulative, right? And they do have an impact. And, you know, when you're working in areas where the only thing you're being called to are the bad things, there'll always be a proportion of those things that you'd rather forget.

Absolutely. So then you choose to move into running for California. council. You mentioned that there were people who sort of came to you and said, hey, we got to get you into council. Can you tell us about what that was like to have the community sort of call on you? And it sounds like a lot of the positions you've been involved in. You've been called not saying, look at me, I'm great, and you should elect me, but you were asked to do this. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, it's humbling, right? And you kind of sit back and go, wow, you know, is this something I really want to do? I just retired.

But like I said, I'd reached a point in my life where I tried retiring for about a year and all the hobbies were great. And it's wonderful cooking because my wife was still working part-time, a full-time actually when I came back. And it's always wonderful to have supper ready for your wife when she comes home. But I needed to be doing more. And there was a little bit of me that was missing and not having that sense of responsibility.

You know, when I remember, when I did finally retire, Shelley would tell you that we'd watch TV at night and I'd reach for my device probably 30 times in the evening. And that was just habit, you know, looking for the briefing note, looking what happened in the last 10 minutes somewhere in the province, right? Because I was in the position where those briefing notes would be coming in and I had some responsibility, you know, for what was going on elsewhere. And so there's a, it's a real, when you work and you're that busy all the time flat out, it's not easy to just retire.

Yeah. But anyway, so, yeah, and like I said, you know, my first approach was from somebody that wanted me to run for mayor. And, well, that was humbling. I think I'm smart enough to know that that wouldn't be fair to anybody. I don't have the experience. I'm not. I just don't have that. Why would, you know, pick somebody that's,

and I knew, because it's a small city, I was aware I'd heard that Ken Poppa was running. I knew Jason Laman. I felt that he would be an absolutely outstanding mayoral candidate, and there was no need for Bud Mursher to be in part of that. And I didn't think it was right for the city or right for me to be that person, either even if I did one, win. I wasn't ready for it.

It was an easy decision. And those positions are full-time jobs. And at that time, I wasn't looking for a full-time job. So I bailed on that gracefully, but thank you. And then shortly thereafter, I was re-approached by Clint Hames and Chuck Stam, actually. And it was their pitch that I run for counsel and that they would help me with the process. Went home, talked to Shelley about it. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

and but a little bit of me thought, you know, I can do this and I have something to offer that's different maybe than everybody else has. Yeah. What was the final move to decide to run? Or was it just that conversation that made it clear that you were going to move forward with this? Because luckily, a lot of your positions have not been that public, but now it's not just whether or not the, it's not a, it's perhaps not a meritocracy, in that you have the credentials and it's a clear cut.

You have to go campaign, which doesn't seem like something you've previously had to do. So what was that thought process like to say, now I have to get in front of people and start telling them my story and why I'm the right person for the job? So the deciding factor was my discussion with Shelley, right? Like nothing would happen if it's been too long where it's been my thing. Right? So she was all in.

And I didn't know what to expect as part of the campaigning. Like, I'm very comfortable talking to you because we're having a discussion. You know, the last part of my life I can't talk about, I've signed documents. It's part of the Official Secrecies Act. I can technically go to jail. So there's things about my life I can't talk about, but I'm very comfortable with you talking about everything. I'm not comfortable, I wasn't comfortable with the campaigning part. I have to be honest.

It's, you know, you, it's a continual where you have to talk about I did, I am, I've done. And in most of my life, I have done a lot of things, but I've had great people around me. And the credit's not all mine, but when you're running, you almost have to make it sound like it's yours. And I'm, I'm, I grit my teeth when I have to use the word I so much. Um, the Olympics wasn't bud. The Olympics was a phenomenal team, right? Um, and, uh, phenomenal families behind the team. It wasn't bud.

But, yeah, during the, uh, election process, when you're on the stage and you're talking, you physically do not have the time to talk about a team. you're given a 60 second snip where you can only use the word I and maybe a we without making it sound so wishy-washy it doesn't make sense and I have a disdain like I would never want to go to my grave thinking and that's how I corrected you quickly about the avalanche thing

like I have a disdain for people to take credit for things that they don't or they were only partial and they're not acknowledging the efforts of people around them. The election campaign doesn't allow for that. And it's not because it's set up that way. It's maybe it is because you can only talk in snippets, but you have to get your message out. And I find that part of it uncomfortable.

Yeah, it's my least favorite part and why I'm hoping to, I was bugging a lot of people about how I believe this is hopefully the future for people to be able to talk about why they're running, their mindset, their background, because it's long form. We don't have to make it all about you. We can really get to know you in a more meaningful way than what are your views on the housing crisis and you have 60 seconds go. And like people get super uncomfortable. And if that's, we're not going to have the best ideas come forward if that's going to be our approach long term. And I do understand the counter argument, which is basically, well, people are only like, if a thousand people are

coming out who are going to be voting, they only have so much time in the night. They don't Oh, I get it. I get it. But, you know, like, you go to those, I remember I've never been on this, I've been on the stage speaking to the world press, but I'm talking about things I know about, right? And I'm prepared, I'm briefed. I've got staff there with their fingers crossed hoping I stay on script, right? But I'm confident in my message and my ability to speak and think on my feet. But, you know, when I decided to run, I knew. that I don't have the same background and everything as some of the others in certain areas. So there's a certain danger in me, and I wouldn't never do it anyway, but there's a danger in me in crossing the line and pretending to be something I'm not. So I made it very clear that my priorities, should I run for counsel and should I be successful, will be the issues that I'm passionate about, and I believe I have the ability to contribute it on. and I qualified those

and I identified those as public safety was one of them obviously for obvious reasons. The other was parks and trails because I've spent a lifetime on them here and I'm passionate about them. My biggest one was youth and families and I

said numerous times during the election kids should come home at night stinking and needing a bath not because they've been playing damn video games all day but because they're using parks and our trail systems and things that are encouraging them to exercise and be outside and lower taxes and the environment. I'm going to stick to those areas, and those are the areas I can feel that I can contribute on.

And those are the areas I think that I could speak a little bit about, right? And then on the stage, and you're all sitting there, and the first question that I got was green buses between here and Abbotsford. I didn't know there were green buses. And it forces you to chatter and try and make, I don't want to say honey out of horseshit, but it forces you to try and be something, maybe you're not. I could probably talk a little bit about it more now.

Because I've been in the environment listening to people like Jeff Shields and Jason who sit on the Transport Advisory Committee, like you learn through osmosis and listening. But it wasn't a question I could even handle, and it's not why. I was even on the stage. And I only use that as a small example of how I found it awkward. You know, I obviously I did get an opportunity to talk about things like supervised injection

sites and homelessness and parks and stuff like that and the environment. And I'm grateful for and I did well in the election. But those are also the things that I focused on over the last four years. Yeah, that is the difficult part is that you're being asked about topics that you, like you're not on council yet. And so you're answering hypothetical, like, it's not clear exactly what role counsel plays on X issue. And then you're being asked, like, well, how would you fix this? Or what would you do differently than everybody?

It's like, how am I supposed to do? And poor Jeff Shields, right? Yeah. First question he got asked was about supervised injection sites, right? And Jeff's an accountant. He's incredibly intelligent, a great guy. He could have handled a plethora of questions. But they, you know, A, did well.

But I'm using that as point. I'm not poking fun at him. He's brilliant. Yeah, it just shows the imperfect kind of process that we put people through the ringer to see if you're up to the challenge, and perhaps it's not doing a terrific job at, like, making it clear what the issues are and what the most appropriate questions are to make sure you're going to lead on the issues that matter to you. Or that you can contribute to. Yeah. So you've now been in this position for nearly four years.

The first question I'd like to ask, because you've done such a great job of it previously, is, is there anything you would have done differently? You've done a great job of kind of reflecting on maybe mistakes that you've made. And I think that that's the challenge when I ask my peers, like, what are your thoughts on politics? It's like everybody's giving these glossy answers. And so I'd just be interested to see, is there anything you voted on that you would have changed your vote on today? Is there something that you think of that you would have done differently over these past four years that sort of stands out to you at all? Yeah, you know, I think back to, you know, there's several things. You know, I had little bees in my bonnet, you know, after being elected that people had talked about.

And I thought, you know, I'm going to find out about that, so to speak, right? It's humbling when you finally ask the question. And I remember being, there was a lot of criticism about Evans Road. It was a bit like a roller coaster. And so I always remember, like not day one, but shortly thereafter I go in. And I sit down with Peter Monteith,

who was just absolutely a brilliant human being. And he's retiring and we're going to miss the CAO. He's just, he's everything, right? And the capacity for everything. And he sat back and he says, yep, it's pretty bad. I said, well, let's fix it. He says, well, here's what happened. We tried.

When you take off that top lawyer of asphalt and dirt, there's about six meters of peat. And he says, if we were to take out all the peat to put in the proper fill, to keep that road perfectly, you know, airport runway flat, it would cost multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, millions of dollars. because we're sitting on a peat field in Evans Road. What is Pete? It's spongy, it's, you know, like Burns Bog. Okay. It's soft and spongy.

Right. It's not fill, right? So, oh, okay. I know, well, and I got to look, well, what about, why isn't the, you know, why isn't the pavement repaired? Why is it still look like that? BC Hydro.

Our contracts allow them to dig it up, and they have to patch it. But then they have to put the final patch in within a certain period of time as part of the standard contracts when Fortis in BC, right? And they're 90 days behind, and we can't top-cote it until they do their part. Okay, right? So everything I thought about, and I should have known this, right? I should have known this.

But one of the things that I learned really quickly is be careful how hard I throw stones, because there's always the backstory you should understand. before you launch, right? And nowhere is it more obvious than in the city council and the way the city works. And it's not a bad thing that the city works this way. Like you look at all of the, I was on fire about the Vedder Road south of Watson, the telephone poles in the middle of it. And I found out that, you know, that had been planned.

It had been planned properly. We were given prices by BC Hydro and timeframes by PC. BC Hydro, and they failed to deliver. And they don't. There's no ramifications when they don't deliver. So when they're supposed to be there in the month of March to take all the polls down so we can finish top coding, all they have to do is say, well, we can't make it. Now we're scheduling it for April. Right.

Or we can't make it, we're scheduling it for May. And if you drive down Vitter Road, you'll notice we're still waiting for it. But it's not the city. Like we're handcuffed by a number of things. Um, affordable housing is another one. Um, like we should be, the city should be investing in apartment complexes and renting it out and become an apartment, uh, renting business. Like, it can't happen. You know, we should, uh, invite, you know, buy, we should go into debt by millions of dollars to do X.

Well, that's not great business, right? Going into debt. And there's lots of reasons for that. And I didn't understand what the reasons for. I do now, right? Because when you go on debt, if you own the condominium, you're living in and you pay taxes, you're going to have debt reduction charges added to your tax. And it's hard to manage and govern in an environment that has to jump through those many hoops and levers and jumps, you know, when you're creating debt for the city that somebody has to pay for and that it

has to be done in a certain way if you want to keep your tax rate the same. And I, I, you know, And I didn't realize, I didn't understand business and property taxes, right, that business and property tax, so business and industry taxes, commercial taxes, are built on a multiplier of the residential tax rate. So if we can keep residential tax rates down and our multiplier down, that's why we attract so much business here. If we start going into debt and our taxes go up, the multiplier of those taxes means commercial and business taxes go up. and then we start losing the business to other communities. So, and I'm not trying to give you a lesson in civics and economics. No, please do. But I'm pointing out that it was humbling for me because I didn't know any of it.

So I came in and you asked me where if I had changed, I think I should have slowed down a little bit, which is never, as you can tell, it's never my style to slow down for anything. I use the expression, if your fists are bleeding, use your elbows, just don't give up, right? And I think I could have just toned that down a bit when I came in. because I really didn't understand and I should have taken the time to understand before I shot my mouth off. Yeah, it's also tough though, right?

Because you're running with the idea that you're going to make a difference. And so it's tough to think, like, I'm just going to go in as a learner. Like, your belief is that you're going to bring something to the table and you're going to push things forward. Day one. Exactly.

And I was able to accomplish what I wanted, but it didn't happen on day one. Yeah. Right? And you also learn really quickly that you can't take anything personally. And one of the nice things about this council is we're getting it done. There's a lot of good stories, and there's probably some bad, but there's a lot of good stories.

We get along as a team, and I can assure you we do not ever agree on everything, nor should we. But it's respectful, and we get along, so it's fun to go to work. Because you do see things happening, and those things I committed to are things that I've worked passionately for. I'm at a bit of an advantage that I'm technically retired, so I don't have to appease a boss for 40 hours a week and then do my counsel work. You know, I have the capacity and have had the capacity to take on things that have been time-consuming. Interesting. So your chair for multiple different things, one of them is like community safety, public safety. Can you tell us, I remember you did an interview, I think it was with the Chilliwack Progress, it was, I want to say 2019, and it was just around bringing in more police officers. And you had met with, I think, Mike Farnsworth, in regards to making sure that rural communities, not just Chilawak, but rural communities have the supports and resources necessary.

Are we on the right track? Are we moving in the right direction from your perspective? Yeah, I think so, right? I think, you know, just to build on what I did say, when I took over office here, I said that, you know, because there's a lot of criticism. There was this defund the police stuff and a number of other things and, you know, why should we do this when they're not doing next? And I said, you know, the first thing you have to look at is you've got to peel the onion back a little bit before you speak, right, and understand what it is you're actually saying and what it actually means. and you have to know at the core of what's going on.

And one of the big indicators in policing, as you'll know from your studies, is what's called police to population ratio is an important one. But that ratio is only important if you assume that every person and every community is wired with the same DNA, right? And there's no other way to say that graciously. So it's kind of a misleading stat, but it's important as a consideration. But one of the most important considerations is what's called criminal code caseload per member per year.

And what was happening is Chilliwack is they had one of the highest criminal code caseloads per member per year in the province. And the stats are kept by the Solicitor General's office, which means every police officer in Chiluac is like, in some cases, three times busier than another police force. like I think at one point Vancouver City Police it was like 39 criminal code case loads per member and Chilweck was 144 per year Abbotsford was

almost equally alarming so what I said is before you start barking about police officers not being in school and police officers not doing X, Y and Z you have to make sure your police force is healthy and that's a phrase I used over and over and over again because the Chilliwack police force was not healthy. You cannot exist and do the nice things if you're running 144 criminal code caseloads per year.

What that means is to stick to a commander is one of every one of your people is near burnout and all they're doing is chasing 911 calls and there's no time for the proactive thing. So what I've tried to do over the last three to four years is to make sure that the resources that we're getting are feeding the areas that need to be fed. fed. But what we've also done is we've encouraged and funded people in the proactive areas, like the community resources team that are looking after, like things like prolific offenders. So they're taking care of those of, oh, you know this, you're a doctor, you're a student of Dr. Daryl Plexas, right?

Of course. Yeah, close friend. Yes. He's actually coming on soon. Oh, good. Yes. Please say hi. Absolutely.

You know, so those teams are through crime analysis are looking at the people that are creating a disproportionate number of calls in crime for the community and targeting them. It just makes sense. It's called intelligence-led policing, right? It's going after prolific offenders. So physically giving the police money to fund positions in that area.

Physically, last year for the first time ever, we gave the police people, for the downtown area because it's a priority of the city to build up the downtown area make it look like it's looking and to have a cadre of police officers whose only job is downtown so they're not being pulled into here and there and there we're funding them to be down town on foot and on bikes we want police in the downtown area part of the revitalization we worked with the police to which is not done is actually to civilianize and make municipal employees of some of the positions that don't need gun-carrying officers so that our police officers are actually doing police work and not things that could be done by municipally hired staff who have the same expertise. They don't need to be sworn officers. So there's been a real change, and Brian Massey, who was a superintendent, was so open to this

and such a great leader and building teams in that regard. You know, it's been a successful journey. We're not done. We still have lots of crime, and we still have a ways to go. But the police force is certainly healthier, my word, than I believe that it used to be. And not just because of me. It was an easy sell to my mayor and councilor colleagues when it was put in the context the way I saw it. They supported it all.

Yeah. And I think that's important for people to understand that often 80% of the crime, it's 20% of people commit like 80% of the crime. And I don't think people often realize that, that there are these prolific offenders. And I think having the opportunity to be a native court worker, you see how much more complicated things are because then you arrest someone for perhaps a low level crime and then they have a bail hearing and then they're released. and the belief in that people get very frustrated by that. They don't like the idea that people are getting out again. But the reason that we do that is because they're innocent until proven guilty. And so there's a process that we still have to go to.

And the question that the court is more asking is, like, is this person going to commit the same crime? And what you do in the courts is you basically try and help that person make the best case scenario for how they're not going to go commit that crime. So they're going to go get treatment. They're going to start attending alcoholics and all. They're going to start attending counseling sessions. They're going to start trying to improve their life.

And then when they're released, whether or not they choose to follow that is their decision. And then that still impacts our community. And that's where things get even more complicated. And that isn't part of the city's role. That falls within our Crown Council, our judiciary. Those are the different systems that are taking place because I see that on Chilliwack-Bowares. How are they releasing these people again? And it's like, well, that's how our bail system is.

designed is with the belief that you're innocent until proven guilty, and I don't think we want to look at changing that. There's problems when we talk about prolific offenders, but there hasn't been a good, a good solution to that kind of challenge, I think. No, and, you know, that's part of the problem. And if you just advanced that discussion that, you know, you've started on there, you know, release on bail. And I'm willing to bet without having a stats in front of me that 40% of all the calls that the

police attend here are not police calls, they're not police issues. And as you've often likely heard me say, the problem we're having in this province and maybe this country is that when another part of government is not doing their job and things go sideways, it becomes a police issue, right? So release on bail. And you and I both know, bail, probation, bail can come with conditions, probation can come with conditions, but believe it or not, those areas of responsibilities don't work after 4 o'clock at night.

So guess who's doing your bail checks and your curfew checks and your probation checks? It's the police. It ain't their job, right? But we as taxpayers are paying for it because another level of government isn't funding the resources to do it. 40% of the calls the police get, which is part of what the Public Safety Task Force is about, and now the governance structure, those are the warts, if you will, that were exposed,

is that the police are doing so much in this community paid for by the taxpayers that is not a city responsibility. And you talked about, you know, Minister Farnsworth. I traveled to Victoria to speak with him. The meeting was set up. He graciously gave me a full hour. And we talked about things like,

When I was a sergeant here on the watch, like Chilliwack City through tax dollars, pays for RCMP people to police the city. Back in 97, 98, 99, when I was a watch commander, we had a city component, it's much smaller than it is now, but we have a provincial component. The province is responsible for policing all of the areas outside of our city boundaries. Those are called provincially funded police officers. At that time, we had six to take care of everything from Caltus Lake to Columbia Valley, Chiloac Valley. Righter Lake. Anything that's not within, well, part of Rider Lakes in the city, but anything that's outside the city boundary is provincial responsibility. We had six.

When I was elected in 2019, we had seven. they've increased our provincial complement of policing by one. So that was my message when I visited the minister. And I was there representing the regional district because I also fill a chair on the regional district as well as the hospital board. And the same goes true for Ottawa and everywhere, right? Sorry, not Ottawa.

For Hope, Boston Bar, everywhere in the regional district. It's the same type of scenario that the provinces completely dropped the ball on provincial policing. So I laid it all out for them. Before I got there, we wrote a letter to the province saying, you know, we need blah, blah, blah, and laid it all out.

The letter I got back in 2020, 2021, was the same letter I got when I was the chief of police in 2002 here in Chilovac. I got the same letter back with it, is that we provide provincial policing to the RC&P. It's up to the RCMP to determine where the money is spent, which is just a whitewash, horse crap answer that nothing could be further from the truth.

So this is what I brought to Minister Farnworth. And he was able to, he spoke with me as, you know, man to man, so to speak. It wasn't, I was speaking to the minister. He was speaking to a city counselor. You know, we just talked about the inequities and what was going on. And he committed to, he committed to that. We didn't hear anything for a while. but spend some time with Kelly Padden, you know, who took up the torch as well when it was laid out in front of her.

And between the meeting with the minister and having Kelly Padden on board or MLA for part of the area, you know, we were able to see increases in our numbers on the provincial side. Amazing. And so that's a major accomplishment to be able to know that things are starting to, it's not just a letter. And it seems like that must be one of the challenges is getting in the room and having just a simple conversation. But when things are going through so many people in between, it's like it might not reach. Oh, it's like a duck and cover game, whack a mole, right? It just, it's frustrating. It only works when you can speak one-on-one.

Interesting. And so you're confident moving forward that things are going to continue to improve. Because I did see that there's like police officers walking the streets in downtown Chilliwack now, which seems like a major. Ain't that great? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the new superintendent, Davy Lee, he's doing a good job.

And, you know, so far he's been supportive of this as well. So, you know, the credit goes to him. Amazing. And so you're also involved with the parks and recreation. Can you tell us about some of the updates? I know that Little Mountains looking at having some sort of change to it, like a trail area or something. Yeah, so it's parks and trails, not parks and rec.

Okay. Parks and Trails. So on the Parks and Trail side, that's probably I keep touting it as the very best committee in the city. It's the most motivated human beings you'll, you'll ever meet or here in a committee meeting, right? There's no bantering. These are people that are up on their Saturday, Sunday with picks and forks and building trail systems. You know, they're passionate, passionate, passionate about what they do. So over the last years, I think we've added a full kilometer of trails. And if you think about that, that's not like laying

cement. That's back breaking work. You know, going through forests and side hills and switchbacks and everything. You know, we've added five more community parks to neighborhoods across the city. The list goes on and on. One of the priorities last year and this year

is making all of our parks have accessibility equipment on it for kids with every capability or disability, right? Making the footing in the parks all wheelchair accessible, making the paths around the park hard so that kids can ride them like they're on a road. So there's stop signs and everything is they, the pump track. I don't know if you've been to that. Yes. That was a score.

That was a good one. some money from the government as far, part of a grant, and it's the longest pump track in North America. It's competition rated and ready to go. And this year we acquired additional funding to build a child's track that prepares the kids to get on the big track. Right. So, so many good things, you know, the completion of the rotary loop.

We're a bit on the back burner now, but there's a bridge going in over the Chilliwack over the Vetter River that cuts the loop in half so you don't have to do the 20 plus kilometers, you'd only do 10 if you want to. No way. Yeah, so many, there's so many good things on the Parks and Trails side. Part of it, too, is like Little Mountain. And I know the whole world wants us to buy Little Mountain. I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. No problem. Yeah, you know, in a perfect world, we buy everything. up on Little Mountain and make it our rainforest park. But that's not in the cards at this point. But we do already own 40 acres up on Little Mountain. The city does.

And there's a number of development areas. And part of the development process, the way the city is structured is that when you're developing, the city can come in and negotiate and select lots of land that we're going to take as a park. It's part of the development process for, parks and trails. So at the end of the day, we will have a continuous loop of trail that's part of the

little mountain plan, but will be a continuous loop around the mountain. I fully expect that there's parts of the areas of land that are owned by developers, that parts of them will be donated to the city. right like if you're a developer and you had i'm going to make this up five acres but one acres of it was an undevelopal cliff undevelopable cliff you're better off donating it to us otherwise you've got to pay tax on it forever and you can't use it right right so we will acquire more land as time goes on and there's a the park society is a very uh aggressive and forward moving group of people bless them bless them and they're looking to fund raised even by more of the property from the developer and looking for the city to match the funding that they raised to help acquire more land.

So there's lots of things that are possible in the future, but I think what you can bank on is there will be a continuous loop trail around Little Mountain. And I used to live, we lived on Little Mountain when we came here. I know the area intimately, our kids and family and dogs spent hundreds of hours on those. trails, it's the right thing to do. Especially in the environment we're in, creating parks and green space is actually part of the net zero emission plans because you can cancel the bad with the good in some ways. Not completely, but owning that type of forest within your community is good for the environment. It's good for the community, but it's also good for the

environment because it is in a small way an equalizer for some of the bads. It's part of it. I don't even suggest it's everything. You can't have 50 million trucks and have a park and then it's all okay. I'm just saying it's part of a healthier green community. What has it meant to you to see perhaps community champions in various areas? Because perhaps most of your career you've been focused on the tough things, the challenges in the community, and now you're seeing people pop their heads up and being like, I want to save this area. I want to do this good.

I want to make this difference. What has that been like to kind of get to see the beauty of community? So Gandhi was right on point when he said the health of a community can be measured by its volunteers and nothing could be more true than Chiluak. There's so many good people here

that step up and go right out of their way. Look at Mike Choka who left us far too early with the Bulls of Hope and stuff like that. And there's more mics in this town. Greg Gaghanes, who's an emergency doctor, and he's on the Parks and the Trails Committee, I forget the exact word, I'm going fast here. The Park Society, right?

So energetic, so committed. And there's so many people like that in our community, and that's what makes the community, I think, great. Yeah, that's incredible. And so what else are you involved in? Because I know your vice chair of the mayors, task force for inclusivity, diversity, accessibility. Yes.

So, yeah, that's a mouthful in many ways of that community because it came about as a result of, and we could talk about it for hours and we don't have them, but there was an episode in council where people were there wanting rainbow crosswalks, and it frankly blew up, and rainbow crosswalks weren't approved. And as a result of that,

there was a decision make, let's try and make a more holistic approach to inclusivity, diversity, accessibility in our city, create a committee, get the right people on the committee, and establish what our community should look like and where are we failing, how can we improve, you know, what can we do better? So that community existed, but to go back to the decision, and unfortunately for me, the media picked it up not quite right again. And because I am not against Rainbow Crosswalks at all, not at all. What I said was that the Transport Canada Safety Council nationally is the Safety Committee that creates the standards for crosswalks.

And they create the standards for liability and also for safety for provinces and municipalities. They determine the width of the stripe, the length of the stripe, the color of the stripe, the reflective quality of the stripe, the lacquer that's put on them, how it looks from 100 feet in rain and fog, at what speed. There's a reason for the standard as it exists. So my position was, I support rainbow crossbox, but not on streets. We have the Heritage Center. We have the rec centers. We could do rainbow crosswalks and those. until the Transport Advisory Safety Committee says and has a change of heart, that's the standard

the city follows. If they change it, ask me again, right? I can't, I don't know and I can't comment why other cities are not following it. They've made their own decisions for their own reasons, but Bud Mercer is not against Rainbow Crosswalks. The ones I am against, as I've articulated, why? And if the standards change, ask me again. So back to the inclusivity, so the MTFIDAs, it's as it's called Mayor's Task Force, Inclusivity, Diversics, it's a mouthful. So across all those areas, even like around accessibility, we have committees that have pointed out to us where our crosswalks are wrong, where our ramps are wrong, where our bus stops are wrong, where we're lacking, where the bylaws can change, where the signing. has changed, and as the results of those committees and mtified as work, those things are happening.

The task force tasked our public arts committee with coming up with diverse art, which demonstrates accessibility, diversity, and inclusiveness. That's what our public safety are the task force tasked our public arts committee with doing. They're the ones that have come up with the rainbow colored birds that have been installed downtown, the banners that are going up for Pride Week,

Pride Month downtown, that all comes as a result of MTFIDA's work and the city's work. So there's a whole bunch of things that are going out that I'm so proud of, but Jason, love myself in the mayor, I'll co-chair that committee, and it's got a brilliant, diverse group of people on the committee.

So let's go to social media. How did they interpret this? and continue to and continue to those birds downtown it started out with you can buy them in Walmart for $9.95 right? Yeah they're little

plastic birds you can buy at Walmart you can buy them in a set or Amazon or something these birds are structured they're meant to be outside they're owned by an artist I believe was from Holland that's now living in England

they represent inclusiveness they're rainbow colored when they demonstrate acceptability and inclusiveness. There's another couple of phrases which I forget. So what happened was the public arts committee thought rather than waste any time

let's take a picture of these birds bring it to council and say is this something worth pursuing? So that went out in a package that council gets in preparation for council meeting which is a publicly accessible document, the council package, right?

Everybody reads it. Someone took the picture of the bird, sent it to the artist, and said, were you consulted? Is this a copyright infraction? Now, you have to, as you know from criminal, you have to go back with mens rea. What was your intent? Was it an intent to steal?

Or was it the effort to see if counsel would agree, with a public arts committee to contact the artist and ask for that's exactly what it was yeah right um the artist responded no um i didn't give permission for this and then that became the story that we were in copyright infraction minutes after council approved it the city did contact the artist he is part of the team he's fully engaged he's being compensated he's led the process for us to have the birds to be installed downtown, not what the social media would suggest, but how things are just spun by a choice few that are just intent on continually doing whatever they need to do for whatever their motivations are. So, so as a result of that

committee, there's so many good things happening, both up with our First Nations partners, the education that the members of council are getting now on residential schools and history, our land acknowledgments, our signature block acknowledgments. There's an acknowledgement done in front of every committee meeting before it started. Municipal artwork is concerning, is including the First Nations perspective. And in fact, they're not just the artists as well, like the roundabout down at the Fetter Bridge. That one's incredible. It's phenomenal, right?

Shout out to David Jimmy. Yeah, absolutely. And what a great young man, right? And Derek Keph is another one that's... I don't know if you know about Derek, but Derek asked me... He was a podcast guest. I know, but he asked my daughter to marry him. Oh, wow.

Mind you, he was only six. But he was one of the clan that got together on our cul-de-sac every night's son, Brighton Place, and raised cane and played kick the can. We have a lot of history and he's such a brilliant young man and I wish him every success too but of course social media puts their own spin

we now have the indigenous leadership group meetings where we're looking at combining for grant application and projects in the city so there's so much going on it's not going to all happen overnight but it's going in the right direction

at the right speed. That's amazing I'm very happy to hear that and I'm just interested was this role what you hoped it would be these challenges with social media like sort of I guess comparable to you're doing such great work perhaps more can always be done nobody's perfect but was the role what you've expected it to be in terms of these more odd challenge these perhaps unexpected you couldn't have planned for social media taking these things and spinning them that was a probably what you were thinking when you were considering running. So what was that, what has that been like? It's more than I expected. Like, it's taken me out of my comfort lane because the things I was said I was passionate about,

like the taxes, like parks and trails, like public safety, like kids, getting them off into places where they want to play, making them stinky and needing a bath because they've been playing hard. All those things come naturally to me. And I don't want to say the reason. because there's still a challenge but it's more in my lane what I loved about this job is it's taking me out of my lane I never thought I would be part of the task force on inclusivity diversity accessibility but I've learned so much

and it's I've become passionate about it and I'm not going to give up when your fists are bleeding use your elbows you never give up who'd have thought that I'd sit on the affordable housing committee and be involved in the homeless action with the homeless with the community safety task force and the governance community, that was my project along with Clint Hames, right? So it's stretched me out at a time in my life where I needed to get off of my comfort band

and stretch the elastic a bit. So that part of it's been a surprise, but it's also been the best part of the job. Interesting. The one question I have that might, we'll see you how you react. David Jimmy came forward about a year ago in regards to Trutch Avenue specifically and having the name changed. I just recently interviewed Keith Carlson and he walks through Joseph Trutch and Colonel Moody, Colonel Richard Moody, and just how they were bad actors in history and the racist things they said, but also downsizing the size of reservations greatly during their time.

That was proposed about a year ago. So I'm just interested. I walked past those signs. They're just actually like a block or two away. They're still there. And I'm just interested in where those are at for having those names change. So the only one I've heard about. Is the Joe Stratz.

And we've agreed to that. Yeah. And it's done. I think we're waiting for First Nations to come back with the best name. Okay. Right. I'm pretty sure you can take that to the bank. Okay.

For the other ones. Wow, this is a big dilemma, right? For me personally, if there's something that is offensive and brings up memories that make you cry, we should get rid of them. If there are things that are on the fringe and they're part of our history and they're not so offensive that they instill something, then we should have a discussion about it. I agree. But if something is like, look what the states is going through, right, when it comes to black history and they're tearing down the standards. statues and, you know, it's a real debate is to, do you leave them up and learn from history? And I land somewhere in the middle, right?

If the affected group can't walk by that statue without feeling anguish, shame, wrongly shame, tears, emotion, and it needs to go, right? If it's part of the history and it doesn't invoke those reactions emotionally and visceral, then we have to have a discussion about what the right thing to do is. But I think, you know, the best approach when we come up with things like those is to actually sit down to the First Nations community and say, what would you like to do? Yeah. Because, like, why would we not, right? If somebody, at no point in making it.

up an analogy. I know you know what I mean. But if something happened to my family years ago and it still haunts me and I have to walk by something every day, I'd probably have already pulled it down. Yeah. Well, and I think that's, I think you do land on the nuance of the conversation because I agree. I think that there are certain actors in history that we don't, we don't even need to remember them. But there are some that help us understand, like, we do land acknowledgements. And I think rightly so, some people ask why. Um, I'm, they're not my favorite. I think they can quickly become lip service. I think that, um, when I was at UF.E, I'd have professors reading off a little piece of paper. I hear buying not. And it's like, I know you, you have no idea what you're saying and you're not that invested. So let's leave from, for me, let's leave reconciliation talks to the people who want to be in the room. Uh, let's not make everybody do something. If, uh, either a small minority or a group of people are not going to be interested, let's not have them say things they don't believe or understand. stand or care about. I'd rather those, let's bring in the people who want to be at those tables,

just like Parks and Rec. Not everybody's at that table. You bring in the people who are interested in those conversations. People who, that's not their cup of tea. Maybe it's what's going on in Ukraine. Maybe it's issues on other, like what's going on in China. Like, there's different issues for different people. That's always where I try and land. And so that's where I lean. But with somebody like Joseph Trutch, we sort of need to know about who he is. And maybe a street sign isn't the best way, but we need to know that the reason that land acknowledgments are sort of important is because the idea was for someone like James Douglas was to have what Keith Carlson described as anticipatory reserves so that they would, as the community grew, there would be space for

indigenous people to have economies. We know that the reserves were set up, so they were far from urban areas, so they'd be less successful. We know that living in more rural spots are harder to do business. And so the idea for James Douglas was to set it up so First Nations people could thrive. And then Joseph Trutch comes along and says, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to downsize it and we're going to put them out in the middle of nowhere, which has caused, I'm super interested in First Nations economic development, which has created huge problems, because if you're up in northern BC, it's super hard to get a truck from that spot into Vancouver efficiently, so it costs more to do business. And so those challenges arise more for

indigenous people as a consequence of that. And so it's complicated what we should do, what the right answer is. And I think having the conversation, I think, is valuable because then people can see that do you want to erase this person from history? Is that furthering our goal of understanding history? Because you're, and maybe again, a street sign isn't the move, but you remove him from history, you white out his name and nobody knows who he is. We don't understand why indigenous people are in the circumstance they're in. So I'd like people to know more about our history and the challenges and the racist actors. Like Sir Johnny McDonald was the one who brought Indian residential schools across Canada. He's the one who started the program. That negatively

impacted tons and tons of people and impacted their ability to get educations and pass on family recipes, their language, their culture, their values, their belief systems to their family. And that has long-lasting effects. And so there is within the Criminal Code 718.2E to recognize those challenges. And I think it's just, it's a really complicated conversation. And I think with topics like name changes, you need to create space for that. It's not something I think we need to, like, I see how it's approached in other communities. And I get concerned because it seems like so black or white on an issue where it's like, you need to know history. And there's always that argument for knowing history and then it's like how do you best go about making sure people

know history um and i think that some of the nuances you brought up are just important for people to understand yeah and you know um for me you know you could take i think any person off the street whether they want to or not and um put them in a room and have them listen to elders who reflect back and either have had children forcibly removed from them or if they were one of those children who were forcibly removed at times and grew up in an environment that was foreign to them without their culture, without their parents, anybody who takes the time to learn and listen

would read the land acknowledgement differently. I agree with you. Absolutely no doubt. And I think that that is perhaps the light is that people are showing an interest in what does it look like to be involved in reconciliation? What does it look like for us to move forward more collaboratively? And I love the amount of work that people like Kerry Lynn Victor are doing

to raise awareness of the beauty of the art, the beauty of the culture. Because I think it's important to understand the negative parts of the history, but it's also, I think, valuable for people to remember that we're not down and out. We're coming back in a very positive way, hopefully. Yeah, absolutely. So the other thing I want to ask you about was search. and rescue. Something came up with that, with them having to use their reimbursements and reinvested into equipment or something. I'm not 100% clear. Could you elaborate?

It's just, it's crazy to talk to, and I'll end up venting, so I apologize. No problem. We have a group of individuals who give of themselves for their time, their expertise, they are the cream of the crop and the only thing they do is save people's butts many of them who shouldn't have put themselves in the position they are to be saved

and many of them simply by accident but these people give countless hours their bosses when they work for them give away countless hours when their pagers go off these are the people that are working in the back the back

country. And what people don't realize about search and rescue in the province of BC is each team has kind of tick marks or credentials, right? So some teams might be good for wilderness search and rescue and whitewater. And those are their ticks, right? So if they have somebody go missing in a cave, that's not a job they can take on mutual aid and other team comes in that has that capability and that credential because there's liability reasons they have to be trained and updated annually in those specialty areas they own chiluac search and rescue is one of the most skilled teams in the province with all of the credentials they have from whitewater to mountain rescue to alpine to avalanche um a helicopter a few teams are trained to sling underneath helicopters

right they're incredibly and they're and because of that skill and they're dedication, they also give a lot of their time in mutual aid to support teams that have an incident where they may not have that capability, right? And that's the way the system works. That's why the system in BC works so well. And when they're at work, they're entitled to their mileage to get to the call, and they get meal allowances to buy their lunch and their dinner and when they're away from home on the call. In Chilliwack, and they're not unusual to their teams in this province, they don't spend that money.

They spend their own money, and they donate that into their equipment fund to buy the very equipment they need to do to support the province in completing the search and rescue mandate. How is that frickin' possible? And I spoke at UBCM, and I speak at the regional district. I've spoken here.

I've spoken to the press. If they're not getting the cream of the crop equipment to do the jobs, to keep them safe as volunteers, and serve the people of the province and Chilliwack in area, something's wrong. The city of Chiluac, there's not many of those calls happen in the city, but the city of Chiluac provides them with the building and the land for the building,

and much of their maintenance and overhead costs, as does the, I think the regional district kicks in some two to each other things, but they're still donating their own money out of their pockets to buy equipment to do the job as volunteers for this province. Don't get me started. That's wild. It's just wrong on so many levels. Now, they are getting some money to buy things like trucks and stuff like that,

but there's other things that they need to do their jobs properly. And they shouldn't have to spend their own money or fundraise. Can you have fund raise? I'm going to fund raise so I can be a volunteer. Yeah, that is rather incomprehensible. And I only learned about the role search and rescue play. The fact that it's mostly volunteer driven, like, a few years ago. And that's mind-blowing in and of itself, the importance of those people in those dire situations.

They're heroes, right? Like, they're being called out non-stop. And they thrive on it. Like they're physically fit people crunching with, you know, gurneys and stretchers up the sides of mountains to get somebody with a broken ankle or a broken leg or a fall or an injury or someone that thought it would be cool to go up the side of a mountain in high heels and they'll all work out well, right? Like, it's full gamut of who, you know, from the dumb to the well-intended that have had an accident.

There's a full spectrum of people that are supporting and helping. but, you know, the province needs to respect them more. They shouldn't be spending their lunch money buying a rope. Absolutely. So here's a question for you. How do we fix housing? In 60 seconds or less, please. How do we fix house?

I'm just kidding. Well, I think we're, first of all, I think we have to understand what the city's responsibility is the province, Fraser Health and the federal government, right? So what the city does on how we fix housing is it's through our zoning and our bylaws. And I'm not going to be able to do it in 67. I apologize. You know, what we've done is, like, if you're building in an apartment thing,

the thing of builder, the impediment for a builder where the lot is parking because you've got to create so much parking for every unit that you build, right? So how do we insensitize a developer to build more small and micro units? Well, first of all, we cut even way more and half their development charges for each, of those two units. So there's incentive to build micro and small units. We cut down parking requirements in their garages and their underground. So if you build all of these at the normal size, you have to have this many parking spots. But if you build micro and small units, your parking requirements are dropped considerably to this. Many developers find that

attractive. And that's why we're seeing that happen. The other thing the city does, like Look at the Paramount. That was city property. The city donated the property on the condition that that become affordable housing. That was the city's property. The inclusive housing just here on Main Street and the city put in $600,000 in cash to make that happen in partnership with the provincial government. In the building south of the freeway, that big complex, the city entered into an agreement with the developer in CMHC. who dropped their interest rates on building for the developer

as long as all of the rental units were 10% below market rental for rent. So there's all kinds of things the city is doing, but they can't do it alone. The city can't just go out and start buying apartment complex and become a landlord. But we come up with the ways through development costs, waiving of the fees and everything to make it attractive. And we continue to do that.

I think the housing study shows in the next few years we're going to need 2,000 more homes and that's a mixture of everything from microunits and on and on. So it's a big problem. The other thing we do is we have what's called Comprehensive Development Zone where like Garrison, where you give them a big block of land and say it's not all RS1, say,

it's going to be a mixture, it has to be a community. And in those developments, we're seeing the micro when the small units come in, which is just good business again. The other thing we've done, the city, so before my time, is made basement suites legal. We've now made it easy for people on RS1 to have coach houses, so they have a rental income properties. So there's a whole bunch going on, but it'll never be enough.

Especially with just the influx of people continue to move out. from other... I guess somebody told me it's the fastest growing community in Canada. Yeah. City. Yeah, I think it was it was soy use or cam loops or something

that was the second or something like that. Yeah. So there's lots going on and I could go on and on with all the little things. But it's like many things in life, it won't be the one thing. It'll be a combination of the many things.

Yeah. And we continue to add things to our inventory, you know, of what we're doing to help. Whether it's, you know, reducing to, development costs, which is a big thing for the builder, to adding cash to a provincial. So sometimes when the province comes to us with money of the feds, they'll do it, but they want a

partnership. And it's either land or money. So sometimes we have land like we did with the Paramount, which is worth well over a million dollars, that property. We donated it. Right? It's gone. Other places where we didn't have land where they wanted to put something in, it was cash.

That was the $600,000. We put into that affordable housing complex. thereby the A&W just downtown. Right, right. So it's not, as you might see on social media, it's not that we're not doing anything. You know, we're doing our best with taxpayer dollars where we're having a lot of successes by being advocates.

You know, we're also now a designated community around hopelessness, which has given us, I think, $1.7 million to help with programs and housing and places to stay. And all of those things. So we continue to do that nonstop. But it's not a problem that's going to go away anytime soon. I wish I had the silver bullet. Yeah.

And I participated in one of those surveys. And for anyone who's listening to this, who thinks they've got the solution, I recommend you do that survey by the city. And it asks you, I think if you have like $1,000, how would you like that money allocated to all the different things you need in your community, from like hospital, like health care to street maintenance. Police fire. Yeah, all of it.

And you start to realize that it's very difficult to manage the money, to figure out what the best place to allocate the money to is. And that this whole enterprise of living in a community is very complex and that it takes a lot of work to try and allocate that money, to try and make a difference on something and to push one thing forward. And if you're focused on this thing, you're not able to focus all your money on this other thing. And that's just the complexity.

It's a terrible or a good balancing act, right? And people also may not all understand that when you get, let's say your tax, I'll make it up, if your tax bills $1,000, the city only gets about $600,000 of that, right? There's a regional district. There's other taxes which come off of what that taxes schools, right? There's a good portion of that $1,000. that the city doesn't even get.

Right. I didn't know that either. Yeah. So can you tell us just a little bit about the council you've been working with? You work with, like your team is very important to the running of our city. And so I'm just interested in what your experience has been sitting on council and having perhaps a team you didn't get to, you don't get to choose, but you hopefully have a way of all working together in a way that's collaborative and where you get a lot of

done and it sounds like that's that's sort of what you've been saying yeah absolutely um you know what i've what i've learned um is that everybody at the table has a skill set and a background and right now there's a pretty healthy mix between people that know about development people that know about housing people that know about money people that know about public safety uh you know and the list goes on there's a real um plethora if you will of skill sets at the table So when you do listen when it's enclosed or it's in open, you know, for me, you know, when an issue comes up that I don't have a complete finger on the pulse because it's a bit out of my lane.

And some of the issues that come up require an expertise too, right? You will have a Jeff Shields. You will have a Jason Lowe. You know, you will have a Harb Westering or a Chris Clude or a Sue. You know, there's always somebody that has background. an experience in almost every issue that comes to the table. What I do, like, I can't believe how lean the city runs. That's one thing that shocked me, right?

That they've been in that building for so long with almost people living in closets. But they're really reticent to even adding one or two people. Because the accountants keep thinking, well, it's not just a cost this year. It's a cost forever if we approve it this year. So the city, you only use that. an example, but the city historically and still runs very, very lean, but what an incredibly dedicated, like I'm going to an award, we're an appreciation seminar, appreciation luncheon this afternoon at our operations yard for all of the people that worked through the rain

event, the floods, the landslides, and da-da-da-da-da-da. And the mayor and council and I have funded that event this afternoon, but it's an appreciation for those workers. and we've, sorry, we've funded it out of our own pockets, but it's an appreciation event for those workers that didn't come home for a week. They were working every night with backhoes and trying to drain water and unplugging, right? And the list goes on.

I don't know what the length of time of these people worked like hundreds and hundreds of hours. Sure, they're paid for them, but that's not the point, right? And that's the kind of people the city of Chilwaukee has working over them. Amazing. I'm really happy to hear that. The question that might be on some's mind is, are we going to see you running in, I believe it's November? One of the things that kind of popped into my mind is that that challenge with the letter, getting the same letter in two different positions over time. The next, if hypothetically you say I'm hanging up my hat and I'm going to relax, the next person might not realize that that would be the third time receiving the same letter. or similar concepts to that letter of the progress that you've made so far in knowing what's been done, we would lack that expertise if you choose not to run again.

Yeah. You know, I'm going to, you know, it'll happen in the next couple months. I have to have some help around me. It just doesn't all help. It all doesn't happen at the same, by yourself. You can't do it by yourself. So as long as I have a team around me and I have support of, you know, family, which I believe I have, and I have the time and energy and capacity, and God

willing, I still do, then likely yes. So I'll make a firm decision here in the next couple months. You know, this is where I live. I love what I've done over the last few years and what I've been a part of doing over the last few years. And my role, what my role's been in that, but I also believe there's so much more to do. And I think I've learned from it. I think I would be better in the next four years than I would be in the last four because now I know how the system works. Yeah. Right? And I would look forward to that. I just have to have all those ducks in a row first. And I don't mean the quacking ones.

Absolutely. But it has been an absolute pleasure to hear about your journey, the work that you've done for our province, for our community, the hours that you've put in to making sure that our communities are safe. I would really like to appreciate you for that. The Olympics meant a great deal to me, as I'm sure it meant to many other people listening. And I would just also like to thank you for all the work that we never had to see, the security snafews that never took place because of great people like yourself and your team that were able to set such an amazing example and just give us fond memories. And the work that's still taking place on council today, I've been, I just had Tim on who lives right near the vetter.

and he's been so happy to see food trucks out there on the Vetter River where he's able to go grab food just a block away from his place. And I know that those really impact people. And I think municipal politics impacts us the most personally in our day-to-day lives. And I'm just so happy to see everything that's going on from the pump track to Spadina looking absolutely beautiful. There's just so much coming about. And I'm so proud to live here and to have leaders like you setting such a positive example. So I appreciate you being willing to take the time and share such an amazing story. You got a great program, and I was happy to be here today.

And thanks for listening.