Inside Canada's SWAT: An RCMP Tactical Leader & Sergeant Major | Seb Lavoie

Seb Lavoie is the most decorated operator most people have never heard of. Over 20 years he went from a French-Canadian kid with no childhood memories to a soldier, a covert air marshal, an ERT tactical operator and team leader, a court-recognized tactical expert, and the Divisional Sergeant Major over 8,200 people — then pride cost him his leg, and faith rebuilt him.

Hostage rescues, the Surrey Six gang murders, an explosive breach gone catastrophically wrong, the cost on his family, rock bottom, and the conversion that changed everything. The Vanguard Wall’s first RCMP guest and first international guest.

▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wyy01D7FYT8

CHAPTERS
00:00:00 Introduction
00:09:00 Why He Can’t Remember His Childhood
00:14:30 Growing Up French-Only in 1970s Quebec
00:19:57 Bruce Lee on a Black-and-White TV
00:23:19 From Kung Fu and Muay Thai to BJJ
00:29:36 Becoming the Bully: Juvie and a Path of Destruction
00:33:13 The Roadside Moment That Pointed Him to Policing
00:39:38 Bouncing, Labor Disputes, and the Quebec Biker Wars
00:43:59 Weekend Infantry Basic with the Van Doos
00:50:13 Why He Left the Military for Policing
00:55:25 Inside the RCMP: Canada’s National Force
01:02:45 Depot: One Academy, Paramilitary From Day One
01:17:04 Posted to Tofino Speaking No English
01:29:12 Combatives Training and the Cop He Chose to Be
01:41:50 First Time Things Went Bad on the Street
01:48:38 The Parking-Lot Talk Before a Bar Fight, Outnumbered
02:04:54 Complacency, the 501st Stop, and Soft Shifts
02:22:16 Where He Was on 9/11 and What Changed
02:27:47 Going Covert: The Air Marshal Years
02:38:06 Chasing ERT: Canada’s SWAT
02:51:17 ERT Selection and the Training Pipeline
03:01:44 First ERT Call: A Machete and Two Hostages
03:13:47 Becoming a Breacher: Explosive Entry
03:24:39 Six Executed: The Surrey Investigation
03:49:20 Maritime Tactical Ops: Taking Down a Boat
04:03:32 Stepping Up to Element Leader
04:19:30 Leaving the Team: The Cost on the Family
04:31:11 Divisional Sergeant Major for All of BC
04:39:56 Leadership Dilemmas and Delivering Bad News
05:00:09 The Decision to Retire
05:07:35 Compartment Syndrome to a Below-the-Knee Amputation
05:17:45 Finding Faith Later in Life
05:26:26 The Moment That Changed Everything
06:00:46 The Roots of Orthodox Christianity
06:23:05 Building Raven Strategik
06:35:56 Final Word: The Power of Discernment

🔗 Connect with Seb Lavoie
🌐 Raven Strategik: https://ravenstrategik.ca
📚 Books — Raven Praxis Press: https://ravenstrategik.ca/raven-praxis-press/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slavccmdr

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Transcript

Host 0:09

Set, dude, we finally made this podcast happen. We've been talking about this for a while. I found you, I think not too long after I found Evan Properus. Um, I noticed, you know, you you had like some orthodox stuff uh kind of on your Instagram page, and I was super fascinated. And then I, you know, dove in and realized like, you know, again, man, you're like another one of those like warrior monks, which I find is awesome. Um, so you know, you and I uh connected and then um you know we started talking and then we did your podcast prep. And it's just been super fun to get to know you. You have such a great reputation. I've had, you know, other Canadians that I've I've talked to in law enforcement and the military, everybody knows you. Um, so it's kind of a real honor uh for us to be here. And you're our first international guest uh coming in from Canada.

Seb Lavoie 0:56

You got Timu Evans here. Sorry for all the Canadians.

Host 1:02

No, dude, we're uh we're we're stoked to have you. I remember one of the things that you told me uh because my Instagram thing, because I haven't fixed it. I think it's been the same since like I started this thing, but it was like, you know, stories about red-blooded Americans. And I was like, dude, you need to come on the podcast. You're like, I I I thought you only talked to Americans. I'm like, oh no, man, I need to fix that. Um so thanks for being here, dude. Well, thanks for having me, brother. Um I'm gonna start your your intro. Uh hold on. Can I just give it?

Seb Lavoie 1:27

I got a couple things for you. Hand out some uh for me, heck. Some gizmos. Brought you a few items. All right. That's for your office, of course. Dude, check this out.

Host 1:44

Man, that's awesome. That's like uh extremely handmade custom knife, dude. Yeah, bro, this will look uh great mounted right up here, dude. Certainly will. Thank you for that, dude. I wish I had a little mount for it, but what a what a great warrior's griff, too. What's that, bro?

Seb Lavoie 2:01

That's the entire scene of Christ's crucifixion slash overcoming death on our behalf, and that can go anywhere.

Host 2:10

Is this what you would call an icon?

Seb Lavoie 2:12

No, not really. That's a Russian, it's just a Russian slide cross.

Host 2:16

Yeah, dude.

Seb Lavoie 2:16

Orthodox cross.

Host 2:18

Super cool, and it's actually got some stuff on the back as well. Awesome, bro. This will definitely get hung up here as well, man. I can't get enough uh of uh of Jesus in this podcast room, that's for sure.

Seb Lavoie 2:31

The obviously check this out.

Host 2:37

Was this um what what what coin is this from? Is this the RP RCMP coin? This is the emergency response team. Oh, nice, bro. This is your tactical coin. It'll be be great, man. Somebody's getting kicked off that rack.

Seb Lavoie 2:50

I don't know. You might have to start another rack. There's a lot of good coins on there.

Host 2:55

Awesome, dude. Thank you, brother. You're welcome.

Seb Lavoie 2:58

Man, it's like Christmas. Yep. One last one. This is um this has come straight from my completely unnecessary gi collection. And it's uh one of the first ones that I designed when I was on the on the emergency response team. This was our team gi. We paid for them, but but they were that's what the guys use when we train. Oh, so that's I think your size, you should fit that. Dude, I'm gonna pull this out. Yeah.

Host 3:28

Just cool little write up in the back. Oh, nice, man. Lower mainland district emergency. Man, you guys had your own geese? That's sick. Yeah, bro. Oh, it's even got the savis parabellum on them. Sivis basim parabellum.

Seb Lavoie 3:44

Yes, yeah, dude.

Host 3:46

What an awesome gift. Uh, Seb knows that I'm a one-stripe blue belt who uh stopped training for a while. So this is God and Seb telling me to get my lazy behind back on the mats, man. That's what an awesome gift, dude. What a real honor. This is pretty cool, man. Um, and very thoughtful. So I uh I can't thank you enough. We have uh we have a bunch of stuff for you. Very well. I just don't get them on camera. But very cool, man. Thank you for thinking of us, dude.

Seb Lavoie 4:14

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Host 4:16

Yeah, I'll um I'll make sure I send you a picture of my of me getting my behind choked out wearing your gi. Hopefully, I don't disrespect you too much. Thanks a lot, brother. Um, before we get started, dude, I get to make you feel uncomfortable for a minute. I uh I like to write introductions. Do I say stuff here?

Seb Lavoie 4:35

Huh? Do I have to stay here?

Host 4:36

Yeah, you get to go for this part. Um I spend time writing introductions to say all the things about the guests that the guests would never say about themselves, especially if we met each other in public. Um, but getting to know you, man, this is uh probably only a small piece of who you really are. But anyway, without further ado, I had to learn how to say your last name twice because I wanted to make sure it was perfect. But Sebastian Levoix was born in Montreal. His mother was 15 years old, his father was gone. They moved 11 times before he met finished high school. He remembers very little of it. There was no man in the house, so his mother put the boxing gloves on herself and taught him to fight. She trained him until he was nine, and then one day he landed one on her. She set the gloves down and said, Okay. In that time frame, Bruce Lee found him on a black and white television. By Seb's own telling, Bruce Lee became the philosophical father he never had. Twenty years after that boy first put his hands up, he was wearing the red surge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. By the end of his career, he would be the divisional sergeant major for the entire province of British Columbia, accountable for the wellness and operational readiness of 8,200 employees. In between, three years as an infantryman in the Van Douze, one of Canada's most decorated French Canadian infantry regiment, four years embedded as a covert in-flight safety officer, Canada's equivalent to the U.S. Air Marshal Program, 12 years on the Lower Mainland District's Emergency Response Team, that's Canadian for SWAT, five years as a breacher, five years as an element leader, and two years as the team leader of Blue Team, leading 24 men through the hardest work the West Coast generates. The court designated him a tactical operations expert in 2016. After the RCMP, he built Raven Strategic, a leadership and protective operations consultancy that's trained corporations, militaries, and police forces in two countries. He still runs close protection details on contract. He can't tell you who. He protects. That's the deal. He's built a teaching framework called Introspective Leader. Five dimensions a leader operates across, five mechanisms that destroy them, five flips that build them back. It's the kind of teaching that only lands when the man delivering it has actually held 24 lives in his hand and 8,200 more after that. Corporations, militaries, and police forces in two countries have brought him in to deliver it. One line anchors the whole thing. Comfort is where growth dot goes to die. He came to Christ as a grown man, Orthodox specifically, a path almost no convert in North America takes. And he's now finishing a Master's of Theological Studies at Helena College, Holy Cross. The boy who couldn't remember his childhood goes to a small parish in southern Alberta now. He calls it being transformed from the inside out. The memories, he says, have started coming back. He also has a master's of international security studies. There's one more thing. In 2021, Seb had a small, unnecessary minor cosmetic surgery that would later develop into compartment syndrome. That compartment syndrome started a domino effect for 12 surgeries and ultimately led to a below-the-knee amputation. Seb, being who he is, he decided to turn tragedy into triumph and would receive his first degree on his BJJ black belt two years later. He sits across from me today as the first guest in the Vanguard Wall podcast history who's not from the United States and has become what I would be consider a good friend. Welcome, brother. It's great to have you here. Thanks for having me.

Seb Lavoie 7:56

That was uh slightly uncomfortable.

Host 7:59

Yeah, it really is. I always look up people like, hey man, who who's that dude you just talked about? That's uh that's kind of the fun thing for me. I I I always tell people I get to say all the things about them that they would never tell somebody if they met them.

Seb Lavoie 8:11

Just a few points of clarification for you there. Um I was an element lead first before being the team leader for Blue. So there's a few years as an element lead, which is a rank lower. And and so the team leader position in theory was held for two years, even though the lower rank, so the corporal rank or the element lead rank is also a team leader position, if that makes any sense. Yeah. So it's just kind of a little nuance. But if you're from the team, you're you're you weren't a team leader for that long.

Host 8:40

Yeah. No, no, no, I appreciate it, bro. And that's that's uh that's how you do it. There's some dudes out there that uh that allow things to be said about them that aren't true that definitely come back to haunt them.

Seb Lavoie 8:49

I am not one of them. I'd rather I'd rather shut down like a ball of flame than making it any making anything up. Yeah, uh, the other thing is my black belt, I got it before my injury. So yeah.

Host 9:02

You have said publicly multiple times on multiple shows that you don't remember your childhood. What is that like? When did you first realize that most people can remant remember certain things and it's really hard for you?

Seb Lavoie 9:13

I don't know exactly when I when I first realized that that was the case. I mean, I would have been I would have been quite young, probably I would say me mid-teens, maybe 17, 18. And I just realized that I had very few memories, and I had very few physical memories because we didn't have any pictures or anything. So I didn't have anything to sort of spark up my memory in a way, or or even trigger memories, you know, from a visual standpoint. And so I just I just realized, man, I I I don't know why, but I'm not I'm not, you know, remembering things in in the way that other people sometimes do. And so yeah, it was an interesting sort of introspection.

Host 9:56

And take me back to, you know, your earlier days in Canada from whatever you can remember. Tell us a little bit about kind of you know your upbringing. And I mean, obviously we hinted about it in the introduction. Uh, you know, your mom was 15. Um, what was it like growing up?

Seb Lavoie 10:12

Yeah, so um, you know, a 15-year-old is is what you might expect uh obviously as a mom and the challenges that come come with that. Now, 15-year-old in the 70s wasn't exactly 15-year-old today, but it still was extremely young even at that time. Now, compounded with the fact that mom was in a multiracial uh relationship, my father was black, she, you know, there was additional challenges that that she faced uh both societally and personally, just with her age and the age difference between him and her. And you know, I I uh believe, uh according to a book that I read, my aunt wrote that there were some issues of you know, uh environments that weren't necessarily safe as a as a youth. People that maybe weren't necessarily safe for me to be around. And I'm just opening right up out of the gate. But um, but my aunt was sort of a a person, a a rock, sort of an anchor for me as a young man, and she has stepped up, she was 12 years old, holding me to prevent me from you know going on the ground and touching things I shouldn't have been touching or being with people I shouldn't have been with, those types of things. And so very, very early on, it was quite apparent that despite the fact that I was I was coming to bear and and mom was gonna have me at 15, she clearly wasn't ready herself. And and I don't blame her. And um and so that's when sort of my my aunt kind of took over uh in the beginning just to kind of sort of bridge that gap. And so my very, very early childhood memories are non-existent. You know, it's it's all year say and and and stories that I was told later in life as an adult. What I remember from my ch from my childhood following that is the constant movement. Constant movement. I was in 11 different schools, I never really wrapped up a year of school in the same location. I never got to keep you know the friends, so to speak, that I the the friends, the friend base that I built as we were, you know, negotiating the school year and moved impromptu and just I see it as providence now because it it built a person that's very capable of of going somewhere else and making making it home on short order. So it's not all the stuff I'll be talking about today, none none of this is is anchored in victimhood. This is providence, right? Like it made me the person I am today, and I I get to look at this and say, if it wasn't for this, I wouldn't be who I am today. Not poor me. I went to eleven schools. But further down the line, later in my service or later in my life, I was able to live, you know, leave my province and go to another province and and rebuild a life there. Well, that's not given to everybody because a lot of people grow true grow roots like trees. We we want to stay in comfort says, you know, the place that I know is the place that I want to stay at. And so all of those things I see as as providence in life.

Host 13:25

I I think that's saying is tough times make tough men, right? Sure does. Um what what was kind of going on in your house? Was there was there any other stable like adult an adult presence that you know you kind of gravited gravitated to? I mean, I would imagine you moved a lot because your mom was either trying to find work or a stable place to live, and that's probably hard when you're younger and and you have you know a young child as well.

Seb Lavoie 13:47

Yeah, absolutely. And and also there was a tracking history there where her mom moved equally as much. So she was she was very accustomed to this as well. And so that in itself, you know, the cycle proliferates as it were, right? But um, in all fairness, yes, she was very young. She didn't have a specialized CV or something that would make her highly marketable or anything. And so at the time, that was what people did. They they moved so they could do the work, and you know, she did that so that she could provide for us, for me and my sisters who would come later down the line. But there is no real no, there was no male figures to speak of in the house, really. You also grew up bilingual. Were you bilingual or was it just French? No, I was I grew up in French only. I did not speak English until 2000. What was it? 2001. Really, 2001. And that was my first year as an RCP officer in an English province.

Host 14:47

Oh, that's that's gonna be a fun story later on. That's kind of why I I I put this in here. Um, I mean, yeah, I mean you weren't really bilingual. What was French the main language spoke? Because I know Canada, you have like the French Quebec. Is that what correct? And then um, you know, the the west coast of Canada speaks more English. Where you grew up, was everybody speaking French?

Seb Lavoie 15:08

Or yeah, primarily. There's some you know English neighborhoods, but uh we weren't nowhere near there because we were on the North Shore, and the North Shore is all suburbs of Quebec and it's it's all French.

Host 15:20

Is it uh is that and I'm assuming that's what they teach in the schools, is French as well?

Seb Lavoie 15:23

Yep, that's it. And so I did learn some English, but I mean the level of English that you learn in school is you know swear words is uh is inconsequential in terms of building a language base, I can tell you that.

Host 15:36

Yeah. I mean, your mom didn't have another man in the house, and so she decides to pick up and put boxing gloves on and and and and teach you to box yourself, I guess. You know, walk walk me through that if you can remember any of that. And you know, did you guys grow up in a tough area? Was she just trying to make make sure you toughen up or what what was that all about?

Seb Lavoie 15:54

Yeah, there's a there's a bit of an interesting dynamic here because my mom was what you might call an old school liberal, not not today's liberal.

Host 16:06

Very different.

Seb Lavoie 16:07

And yes, very different. And and she understood that this was a a necessary skill set for a young man that didn't have a dad. But she also was very reluctant to kind of cut me loose and say, hey, those are tools that I'm giving you. And when the time comes, you have to be you have to be prepared and and capable of doing so. And you also have permission to do so, you know. And it's it's a conversation that's important with kids. Like, where's the where's our line in the sand? And what are we what are we prepared to to accept before we you know use those skills that we're working on? And so for me, there was a lot of it was physical skills, and I could do the physical things, but I was struggling with that line in the sand and what could or couldn't have done in the context. And so, you know, eventually down the line, you end up, you know, face and and this is again not a not a not a sob story, but I wasn't black and I wasn't white. For the blacks, I was white, and for the white, I was black.

Host 17:13

Yeah, that must have been kind of confusing as a kid. So how did you like how did you figure out where to fit in, or did you learn to become a chameleon to try to fit in where you can?

Seb Lavoie 17:22

Yeah, I think part of that is true. I think I did, you know, learn to fit in. I lit, I I did learn to take all the stabs at me to take them away from other people. I don't think if I I don't I don't know that I outgrown this, but now I do it for fun. Back it was different. Um but but yeah, it was a it was a and and and at the time in the 70s in Quebec, it was not multicultural in the North Shore at all. So all those suburbs were not multicultural. You could count on one hand how many people were different in a school. And so now, you know, you you you get the picture of where where this is going. So eventually, of course, you the bullying and all the things that kids are doing, except there's less skids to spread it on. Yeah.

Host 18:09

So you did did you get bullying and picked on a lot at school?

Seb Lavoie 18:12

Yeah, yeah. I was I was bullied um, you know, extensively as a youth. I was I was bullied all the way to grade 12, which is our first uh year of sorry, not grade 12, grade seven, which is our first year of high school.

Host 18:26

Oh, really? Yes, sorry.

Seb Lavoie 18:27

Yeah.

Host 18:28

So I you know, you would go on in in your career in your life to become, you know, very renowned in martial arts. Is that kind of where you think that initial love was born? Um, because I know we're about to talk about kind of you watching, you know, Bruce Lee on the black and white, but is that kind of uh was that was it this thing where you were born to want to try to defend yourself against all these other people that were harassing you? Or what what was the love for martial arts early on?

Seb Lavoie 18:52

Mm-hmm. I think I had a fairly loving relationship with martial arts quite early. I started very young, but I was by no means a serious practitioner. Yeah. You know, I was just being a kid running around kicking and jumping and doing things.

Host 19:08

Grabbing the nunchucks and stuff. Yes, exactly.

Seb Lavoie 19:10

There was no real there was no real rhyme or reason or uh or real you know framework to that structure to that learning. But in terms of weaponizing martial arts or or not in a weapon sense, but in a defensive sense, yeah, certainly that was a catalyst, you know, the the bullying and everything. And so eventually what would happen is during one of the summers, I grew six or seven inches and I started bench pressing, doing all the things, get me, get myself physically ready, but physically different. And I returned to school sort of much bigger, much faster, much stronger, punching harder, and and also more mentally prepared to defend myself if things were happening, because I wasn't gonna have another elementary school into high school, if that makes any sense. And so I made there was a conscious, willful decision there to change the circumstances rather than waiting for somebody to kind of bail me out of there, you know.

Host 20:06

You've described seeing Bruce Lee on the black and white television and and something switching in you. Walk me to that exact moment, the room, if you remember the show. Like, what was it seeing Bruce Lee and the way he interacted on the screen that really spoke to you?

Seb Lavoie 20:20

Mm-hmm. My first exposure to Bruce and my first sort of light bulb moment was watching him in interviews. I wasn't so concerned with his martial arts because the first time I saw him, he wasn't he wasn't doing anything martial arts related. He was having a conversation with an interviewer in this, I believe it was an interview in the 70s. I remember I I forget the name of it now, of course. I I sometimes remember, sometimes don't. 20 years of service. But um, and and in the interview, it was quite apparent that the the interviewer was attempting to make fun of him, essentially. You know, that's at a time where Asians in America were about as welcome as I was, where I was, right? And they were caricatures in the movies, and they would have like outlandish, out outlandish roles that were completely insane, you know, from one end of the spectrum to the other. And there was a lot of uh, I think, attempt to diminish and discredit him. And I'm not saying it was nefarious necessarily, but that's what the show was about. And then Bruce Lee was just standing there answering stoic, you know, stoically these existential questions. And I'm sitting there as a boy listening to him, thinking to myself, like this this man is brilliant. Like I'm not sure what he's saying. Yeah, but he sounds brilliant and he's very confident. He has a lot of care charisma, he's in good physical condition, he's he's he's you know, he's a bunch of things that a young man might be looking looking uh you know to to emulate, if if especially if that young man has a set of circumstances that lends itself to that.

Host 21:59

When you first started doing Martial arts as a young age, when did you start actually training per se?

Seb Lavoie 22:03

Seriously?

Host 22:04

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 22:05

Not until about 11 or 12. 11. Yeah.

Host 22:10

And and did that, you know, fundamentally kind of change your confidence level and and your uh you know, your I guess your confidence and your ability to not only protect yourself, but but also, you know, strengthen your mind as well?

Seb Lavoie 22:23

Mm-hmm. Yeah, certainly it it did, as as any crucible or anything difficult or anything self-imposed, especially. You know, I'd reached a point, I'd I'd reached sort of a breaking point in my own mind. Like if I'm not doing something here, something's gotta give. And also I'd started internalizing other people being bullied, bullied around me. And so this is sort of where the journey, you know, as a quote unquote protector started in my own mind. Even though I was protective before, I didn't have the physical capacity to be the protector I was hoping to be. And so for me, this was this was the realization that, hey, if I get myself sorted, I can help myself and I can help others as well. And so, and so there was a real catalyst there and and a willful decision to engage in that process and really make it, you know, as serious as I could. And I got really serious.

Host 23:19

BJJ wasn't big in the in the 70s and 80s. I think it didn't come around until probably the 90s, maybe. And then, you know, the two so what were you training back then?

Seb Lavoie 23:27

Ready for this? Yeah. Wu Shu. So Chinese boxing or Kung Fu is what I started with. And eventually that would evolve into Muay Thai in my teenage years and my later teenage years and in early adulthood. And I didn't start BJJ until 2007. But BJJ, my biggest real, just like anybody else, or almost anybody else, the realization was 93, UFC 1. You know, and and and I remember that uh being there as a teenager with my friends, and we're, you know, we've been debating these same martial arts questions that people have been debating for thousands of years that were all answered in, you know, three UFCs.

Host 24:05

Really? Those were it was wild to watch Hoyce Gracie. Wild. You know, these dudes down and you know, choke them out, and that's when, yeah, you know, that's really when that whole you know scene exploded. Um, did you have a physical change after after training for a while, like mentally, physically? And and what was it that you think that gave you the change, the change? Was it the discipline, uh, the instruction, or was it all of it?

Seb Lavoie 24:32

Yeah, I think it has to be a combination of all of those factors. You know, I think as humans, we have a tendency to really silo our our life experience. But I think that in a lot of cases, we are so multi-realm and all of these things are interconnected. So everything you do, you know, a pulley system, as it were, you know, you pull on something and it pulls on something else. And so for me, I would say it was a multi-realm experience. Part of it now for me is spiritual. I'll leave that aside. But even before that, there was a decision that was made. That decision was based upon forced circumstances. Then there is an action plan that has to be implemented, you know, and so I start I start sort of framing that and building that, and then there's a person of influence that comes in, and I now see a pathway. So that sort of, you know, jumps in there, and then I put all those things together only to, you know, sort of action the plan that I had, which was essentially just be left alone and have the capacity to defend myself and defend others if I needed to. Were you getting in a lot of fights as a kid? Not really, no.

Host 25:38

Looking back, what do you think Bruce Lee actually represented to that that younger Seb? Was it the violence or was it the agency?

Seb Lavoie 25:46

I think it was the intersection of both. It was that quintessential warrior scholar type. And a lot of people don't know this. If you've never listened to Bruce Lee speak, go do it. It is worth its weight in gold, right? And so, yes, his martial arts was his martial arts is discipline and and and the again the the multi-realm um performance that he had in a in a context of martial arts, but also the ability that he had to be so cool, calm, collected, articulate, thoughtful, caring, you know, all of those things. And so you can remove one of those and create a completely different person. You know, take a really good leader that has all these skills and attributes and remove care. What happens? You know, and so and so I think that for me it constructed a very uh wholesome or fulsome persona, so to speak. And it wasn't me trying to be him, it was me developing in me with some of those tools.

Host 26:56

Yeah. What were you uh into in high school? Sports, were you playing sports at all?

Seb Lavoie 27:00

No, it was in high school that I was martial arts focus primarily. So I was I was training lots, I was teaching at school as well. Um, you know, uh self-defense classes at noon or whatever noontime, and I didn't do it every year because I unfortunately didn't stay to in school long enough to do it.

Host 27:20

But uh how was that in high school too? Bouncing around all the time and constantly having to pick up, go to a new place, somewhat get established, and then you're picking up and you're going to another place. What does that do to a high school kid?

Seb Lavoie 27:33

I'm not sure what it did to me. I mean, I I was by then I was quite um acquainted with the process, you know, and I and I really didn't uh skip a beat. Now I I should say that also I wasn't moving nearly as much as I was as a as a young man as a as an elementary school student.

Host 27:51

Did you spend like your high school years in the same place?

Seb Lavoie 27:54

Switched a few times, but in comparison to, you know, my elementary school journey, I was pretty stable.

Host 28:01

So what um what did you do after you graduate high school? Um, what was kind of the next phase? And I know there's like a a point because I remember we talked about it um in a in your podcast prep where kind of you you saw uh like kind of explain what was going on in Quebec in your high school years. There was a lot of like almost mob land style wars and biker gangs and you know there's some violence.

Seb Lavoie 28:24

Yeah, it it was uh it was a a very sort of tumultuous time in in the province as far as the biker wars was concerned. So that came in the sort of early to mid-90s. There was a there was a a biker war between the rock machines and the Hells Angels, essentially. And that came to a head with uh an eight-year-old boy being blown up in a in a vehicle-borne IED, like in the middle of a city. And these guys were atrocious, you know. They would, they would, they would find them with anti-aircraft weapons wanting to blow one guy in a club lineup, you know. And so they it wasn't exactly the smartest of of them all, but they were all crazy. And so the the landscape in Quebec was horrible for the nomads, especially just a bunch of savages, right? And uh not in a way that we sometimes can appreciate. Yeah. That of course would impact me a little bit later in life because when I was bouncing and doing all the things, and I I had to contend with that during my high school uh years. I I think I was my own my biggest problem. I didn't need anybody to create issues for me because I did that all on my own.

Host 29:36

Were you getting in a lot of trouble?

Seb Lavoie 29:39

Yes. I I I was. I you know, I was I was now by that by that time I was a little bit bigger, I was I was stronger, I could, I I could do things, and unfortunately, just has can happen when things turn, they can turn to the point where you become what you dislike. You know, and I and I didn't actively victimize people willfully or go out to bully people, but I did end up being a bully in in essence with my teachers. You know, when something didn't go my way, it was like make me because now all of a sudden I'm this physical being that has capacity. So now I can sort of throw my weight around a bit, and so I did that. I was arrogant, I was um condescending, I was you know, violent at times or or abusive, you know, and uh I mean I've I've essentially become what I swore I would never become as a youth, essentially. And so that led me down a path of sort of destruction in in terms of academic achievement. And so I didn't finish a single one of my high school years normally, it was always by way of coming back in the summer or being, you know, sent away until or repeating a year or whatever the case may be. So I ended up ultimately going to Juve in as a as a young man for seven days after an incident uh in a fight. And um, and I I that was sort of a catalyst for the the school system to simply say we don't want him back. We don't want him back. So I I I never I never got go you know got back to school. And so I ended up completing my education or my grade 12 education two years later when I decided to take my life back in my hands. And so I went to adult learning and I started from scratch. I started from grade seven in all of my all of my classes.

Host 31:51

And and Canada, do people normally graduate high school around 17, 18 years old? Is that the norm?

Seb Lavoie 31:56

Yeah, 17, yeah.

Host 31:58

What um I mean, I know you you so I I'm assuming you didn't graduate high school and you had to go back in later, but at what point did you kind of walk away and start going into your adult life?

Seb Lavoie 32:07

Wait, are we adulting?

Host 32:10

I try not to, bro. It's it's it's kind of really hard.

Seb Lavoie 32:13

That's scary. Yeah. Um, yeah, you know, 17, 17 was a rough was kind of a rough age for me, just still in light of some of my past behaviors, some of some of the the activities I was engaging in, um some of the drugs I was taking, even, you know, as a as a as a young man. And um 18 was where the light bulb went on. I did a close protection course. So as an 18-year-old, I had a girlfriend that was very grounding, and I was feeling for the first time in my life a certain level of stillness and a certain level of capacity to engage with the world in a in a very positive way. And so, 18 years old, I decided to take this bodyguard course because I I'd wanted I'd wanted to be a cop my entire life, but I just lost my way.

Host 33:11

And there was a I remember you explained that you watched the cops do something, and that's kind of when you your your light bulb kind of opened up to law enforcement. What was that incident?

Seb Lavoie 33:21

Correct. We were driving back from a school trip, and uh mom was on the bus, and we saw, and this is during the biker war, and we saw a bunch of bikers on the ground, you know, with their hands tied behind their backs with zap straps, and the operators or the SWAT guys were standing above them and just sort of, you know, maintaining security as as it were until the investigators could come and take it over. And so I remember asked mom, I said, Who are these guys? And she said, Those are the guys that aren't scared. Because unfortunately, the reality was in Quebec, cops were getting beat up and and stabbed and all of the things all the time. It was just a regular occurrence. If you pulled somebody over and that somebody had biker affiliation, perhaps with some bottom rocker on the line or something, you know, you you you would become the the benchmark or the qualifier, so to speak. And so cops were working it, getting it bad, and their families were getting it and everything. So a lot of them were very reluctant to engage. And so there was a very uh aggressive unit in Montreal police called Wolverine. They actually weren't just the Montreal police, they were Montreal police-led, but they had multi-agencies. Wolverine, you know, perfect name for them. And they took a lot of the operators from various teams, they built this tactical team, trained them properly, and and had them attached with Wolverine so they would do all the hits. So that's who I saw. I learned that later, of course. And uh, and that was a big catalyst. I said, I want to be one of them, and mom said, get to work, you know.

Host 34:53

Hey, one quick ass before we dive in. Month after month, 95% of the people who watch our content aren't even subscribed to the YouTube channel. If that's you, you can seriously help us out today by just subscribing. It costs nothing, it takes two seconds, and it can make a huge impact on everything we're building here. There's no podcasting agency behind us. We have no corporate backing. It's just me, a small team and an audience that really cares. Subscribing is the simplest way to tell the algorithm that this content is worth spreading. And it's the simplest way to support the mission directly. So hit the button and join the community. We appreciate all of you. Now let's get to this podcast. So I I think like after high school, if I remember, you you know, you kind of looked into um joining law enforcement, but not only did you not have a degree, uh, you know, explain what it's like to try to get hired in a law enforcement agency in Canada, especially in that in those years.

Seb Lavoie 35:45

Yeah, so so the Royal Canadian Mounted Police polices the entire country, but there are there are provinces where there's there's provincial police forces that do the primary policing and now and and municipal forces that do you know municipal policing. And so now you have three levels of agencies you're a federal, provincial, and municipal. And the RCMP in those provinces, so Quebec and Ontario, do not really have a quote unquote patrol function. It's more at the investigative level. And so for us as as a young man growing up in Quebec, we we saw the RCMP cars, but we never seen any of them, or we didn't see them do anything. Every time we saw them do something, it was always something grandiose, you know, it was always something of of something meaningful. And so I I attributed automatically the RCMP as being some sort of elevated entity, which which it wasn't. It was a police force, but it had a federal mandate in my province, and so my exposure to them was at that level. And so seeing them coming out was a was a was a treat. And you know, it was oh, the FBI is here, you know, equivalent, so to speak. And so, you know, as a young man, uh all I knew was municipal and provincial police force. So I tried to, I didn't even think of the RCMP. I tried to go to the, they had something called a conventional route, which is essentially you didn't have police technology, you would get hired on account of characteristic or attributes or things that they thought you might possess, and then they would send you to training. You would do your police tech through them, and then you go to a school uh that regulates policing in Quebec called Nicolette. So you would go to Nicolette and then you would do your your police, all your science, you know, your police science there. And then when you come come out of there, you would be hired by the whatever department sent you there. But that never panned out for me because I didn't have police tech or clearly attributes. And so I ends up I end up applying for the World Canadian Mount of Police. And originally when I applied, the application pool was completely shut down. There was nothing. So for the next six, seven, or eight months, maybe nine months, there was nothing. At that time, I was in the reserves, in a military reserves and infantry unit. And so, and I done my close protection course, which had led to the we kind of skipped the skipped, skipped the part here, but I went to the I went to the reserves and then we end we end up, you know.

Host 38:24

Yeah, let's let's let's go back because I interrupted you when you were um talking about how you went to the close protection course. Um so kind of take me back to there, you know, what led you into going to that course, and then you know, of course, we'll we'll talk about you going into the military as well.

Seb Lavoie 38:39

Yeah, so again, um I by then I decided, you know, I I want to be a I want to be a police officer. So what are some of the things that I could that I could start doing? And so there was a close protection course. The guys, one of them was Craig Best, one of the guys used to be uh uh a Secret Service agent. He was uh clearly an American, uh great, great man. He passed away. Um Andrew Basco was another one. So there was a couple of those guys that moved from the US, moved out to La Salle of all places, which is you know, sort of east of Montreal, I believe. Could be wrong, geographically challenged. And um, and they started a school uh there for close protection. And so that was my first exposure, and it was pretty wholesome when I look back now. You know, I I haven't been formally trained through police agencies. When I look back at the program, it was a very decent program. And so I was the youngest graduate, I was 18 years old. It was the first time an 18-year-old graduated from the program, and I ended up working close protection, you know, for two years after that.

Host 39:43

Um, what were you doing in those times? Was it just what um like high net worth individuals or or who are you working with?

Seb Lavoie 39:50

Yeah, so we we did, you know, labor disputes. So, you know, you have executives of companies, those types of things. So I was I was involved with that. I was involved with the fire strike in in Montreal at the time as the fire chiefs, and and firefighters don't mess around when things don't go their way. Like there was some sketchy things happening.

Host 40:09

Yeah, the uh firefighter union in America is pretty powerful as well. Um and um what you started bouncing at some point too, right?

Seb Lavoie 40:16

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was at around um 19-ish.

Host 40:21

So from about you know, 18 to 21 years old, you're doing close protection, you're bouncing to bars. Um, did you feel like you had any direction or were or did you really feel like you were working towards something, or were you just staying busy, or what was it?

Seb Lavoie 40:35

No, I knew exactly where I was going by then. By then, you know, I was locked on, and and I and I knew that a career in policing is what I wanted. And I everything was a stepping stone towards that, if that makes any sense.

Host 40:49

Yeah. At 19, you joined um the Canadian Armed Forces. Uh, talk to me about like that decision point, you know, kind of what unit you went, because then the Canadian military structure is a little bit different than ours. Um, but you guys have like a an active and a reserve, but your your military isn't as large. And um, so yeah, walk us through that process. Where where did you do, what the decision point was, and and where did you go?

Seb Lavoie 41:10

Yeah, and just to be clear, I didn't do anything in my military service. You joined, but I was I was a garrison soldier. I could polish a mean boot and I and I found myself, you know, so to speak, and discipline. But uh probably one of the best decisions of my young adult lives. You know, I I I joined the military at 19. I knew it to be a stepping stone for police. I wanted some level of discipline, I wanted some level of physical preparedness. I understood that operational readiness was probably different than how I was training, especially through the you know, the context of martial arts, and and and I was pretty unfamiliar with um how to do that and how to achieve that, or even if I had the stuff. And so signed up for the military, made it through, you know, written exam and interview and basic physicals, and went to went to um basic training. And basic training, I was with the 4th 22nd Quebec Regiment, which is in Laval, Quebec. And it's a it's a reserve unit, and my basic training was done over weekends, which in hindsight I wish I didn't. I would I would have preferred to immerse and stay than to break, feel comfort, and go back, you know. So at the time, a bunch of those guys had broken, broken off from a unit that was disbanded, an airborne unit. And so there was a lot of uh there was a lot of uh what's the word? Hazy. No, no, they they were pros, but but they were hard. You know, we started with 36, graduated 13 on my basic course, on my basic training, yeah. And uh and uh, you know, I all I remember from this really is lying there on the first day. You know, when your first day when they you get in there and you just you're just being ran ragged and your brain is your your body is physically outrunning your brain, it's outrunning your your heart, and all of a sudden people start dropping left, right, and center, and you're like, what am I doing here? You know, looking up at the at the lights flickering. That was me. That that was my very first realization. If I don't quit and I don't go anywhere, I'm gonna be successful. Like, why are people leaving? You know, I didn't I didn't really understand that right off the hop. That was my first realization and a true catalyst to me understanding that with the pain and suffering reward was going to eventually, eventually be.

Host 43:44

Was the military popular back then? Was there a lot of people joining?

Seb Lavoie 43:48

The answer is no. Like, we don't have in Canada, we don't have a military culture the way you do. We have some incredible warriors. You got, you know, some of them you know, like the Dallas Alexanders of this world and guys like. Like him and others that are in traditional um military units. Tons. Tons of decorated soldiers, all of the things. But if you compare it per capita, we don't have a military culture the way the US does. Not a chance. We're not even close. We have, you know, at the time, I think we had 92,000 all trades. Think of that. You probably have more clerks than that in in in you know, in some states. Yeah.

Host 44:28

Well, we do a lot of nation building, so I feel like we need a bigger.

Seb Lavoie 44:32

Yeah.

Host 44:33

That's always worked out for us. Um, man, go. So you I'm trying to process this. So you're doing basic training on the weekends. How long was that? Like how long, how how many weeks of that did you have to endure?

Seb Lavoie 44:44

I I couldn't tell you, right? It's 20 weeks or 22 or something something like that. So it's like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

Host 44:49

So you like wreck a regular job, then you just go get crushed on the weekends. Correct. Man, I could imagine, like, you know, about four weeks in, you're like, ah, I'd love to have my weekend. Nope, I'm gonna go get crushed this weekend. Yeah. And are you um did you get to pick your job? How does that work in camp?

Seb Lavoie 45:06

Yeah, I did, I did sign up for for a trade, which was infantry, trade, light infantry, and uh, which is really all we had because we didn't have any vehicles.

Host 45:15

So and then do you get to pick which unit you go to, or because it's the reserves, you just go to the nearest one nearest.

Seb Lavoie 45:21

No, you do you generally it's wherever you are being sent uh in relation to where you live geographically is is is is what happens.

Host 45:30

That unit that you got assigned to, the the French Canadian Van Dose, um it it's got a pretty big history. It does. What what tell us a little bit about that unit if you if you can.

Seb Lavoie 45:41

Yeah, for you know, lots of battle of honors out, you know, in Vimy and and other areas. I mean, most of those, most of those are World War II. Sure. And I think that we're doing a fine job as a society to maybe forget or sideline the plank holders, you know, to a certain extent, and and those who built our country and those who allowed us to to be where we are today as a as a as a country. And I think unfortunately that's the case. But most of their battle honors are coming by way of World War II. And uh it was just a very resilient unit with very capable men that were out there to get after it, and and they did a fantastic job of that. So there isn't uh uh uh historical pride, so to speak, in in that unit.

Host 46:29

Um walk me through Canadian infantry basic training in the late 90s. I mean, what was it like? What broke you and and what built you?

Seb Lavoie 46:36

It's a long time ago, but uh you know, I think it was the first time where I was pushed beyond perceived limits that I either self-imposed or reasonably expected. You know, and I think that's something that's a crucible for young men. Talk about rite of passage. I mean, it is an amazing rite of passage when you realize that after you think you can't, you continue pushing and you can go six mile down and still, you know, continue to ask more of yourself and still be effective in that pursuit. And I think for me as a young man with nobody to really push me physically, mentally, and emotionally, nobody to really challenge me, you know, in my teen in my teenage years, I just I'd lost track of what the potential could be. And that was a Pandora's box of opportunity opening up for me as a young man. And I'm not saying everybody shares the same experience, right? I'm I'm really everything I'm I'm talking about today is is my experience, of course. And I and I realize that there's there's always two sides to that coin. But for me, that's precisely what it did. And so whether it's a it's a it's a consequence of the totality of the circumstances I was exposed to, you know, who was there at the time of my life where I was, and all of it it happens because it's meant to happen at that specific time. For me, that was an an incredible awakening.

Host 48:07

Yeah, I I tell young men all the time, especially kids, you know, 16 to 20, you know, I I think college is a good place for people who know what they want to be. But for for young men who who don't know what they want to do and still want to test their mettle, um the military is always a great place to it's gonna give you a sense of discipline, uh belonging. It's I think it's always good and important to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Um and it seems like that really made an impression. I mean, you were very quick to to tell me in our podcast prep, hey, I didn't go to war, I didn't do this, and and I get it, but I mean you still you know had the guts, especially in a in a in a much smaller military force where it's not popular, to still do it to go get tested. Cause I think even at a young age, and now that I know you and I've gotten to know you over the months, um, you know, you really wanted to test yourself and you really wanted to to push yourself. Um and and I think the military does that. Is that what you found um during your experience there?

Seb Lavoie 49:05

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I was I was fortunate enough to have some incredible men, incredible, incredible leaders at all ranks really be quote unquote savages and show us what it's like. You know, we'd go out on a on a on a march and we'd have, I don't know, a 50 pound, six sixty, seventy pound pack, and they would put, you know, two 45-pound plates and theirs on top of that, you know, just and and lead the way. And so for me, it it was about establishing that first bit of of leadership in that sense. I was already sort of a, and I hate to use those words because it sounds so corny, but I was sort of a natural leader. There was a a certain amount of I suppose maybe charisma or something that people were attracted to, and they they tend there there was a tendency to kind of want to follow me, even if sometimes I wasn't leading in the right direction. And so, and and the teachers I've recognized that when I was young, and they they it had been shared extensively with mom and all with me as well, but at the time I couldn't see it. But in that structure, I was able to start tapping into that. So then I started looking up at the leaders and what they were and what I wanted what I wanted to be as a result of that. And so I was able to anchor myself again to some other men, quote unquote, um, aside from Bruce Lee, you know, and and and really in in that context, and I knew that I was exactly where I needed to be. In fact, it it became a little internally problematic because I joined to be a police officer, but but wait, I love this, you know?

Host 50:47

And so it became uh sort of uh Is there a bill is there the ability in Canada to go from the reserves to the active force? Um but is it is it or is it very common or uncommon?

Seb Lavoie 50:58

Yeah, 100%. Yep. It it it basically I was going to university, taking a few classes here and there at the time when I applied, and I was hoping to continue building my academic resume and and you know, while I was engaged in my military service, so to speak. And that's kind of the reason why I'd selected that. Um but there is, there is you you guys switch over all the time. You can also be assigned as a reservist to a uh Reg Force unit or join a reg force unit.

Host 51:27

Was Canada doing much back then in the 90s, like deployments and things going on?

Seb Lavoie 51:32

Again, I I don't want to take away from anybody who's been out, the Canadians, the Medak Pocket, all these guys in Bosnia and in Kosovo and all the the stuff, but we were on the tail end of Kosovo at the time uh when I when I joined. And so there was a few rotations going out after, but that was that. And I I wasn't ready for rotation when I sort of checked out and go the policing route.

Host 51:54

Were you uh were you teaching combatives at all? Because you were still doing the military.

Seb Lavoie 51:59

Yeah, I was engaging uh in combatives sort of hands-on with the with my unit, absolutely training people?

Host 52:05

What was the decision point for you to get out of the military? Um, it was do you guys sign like a four-year commitment? What what how does that work?

Seb Lavoie 52:14

It was three years, it was three years for me at the time. So I was on a renewal, essentially, I was on a bubble. Uh are you wanting to renew or what's happening here? And providentially, I got a letter from the DRCMP saying, hey, we we like you and we we would like for you to start training on that date. And so now I had a sort of uh an enrollment date and I had a start date for my training in in Regina. And so a decision was made on the spot to not renew my contract and pursue. So I I was I was struggling with that because I was, as I said, I I really discovered that hey, maybe military life is for me. Knowing what I know now, we didn't know about 9-11 then, right? So nothing's happening. You gotta think of this. This is the dead ages of the of the of the military in general.

Host 53:02

Most of those, most of those We call it the peacetime army and the same thing. Exactly.

Seb Lavoie 53:06

And it was the same for us, except, you know, on a smaller scale. And so it just compounded the issue. We did nothing, right? Yeah, and so I toyed with the idea of sticking around, but it just made sense. Like you, you, you plan to do something, see your plan through, go into the policing realm, and that's precisely what I did. So I took the opportunity and went out.

Host 53:28

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Seb Lavoie 54:27

So the provincial police is would say your state police. Okay. Right. And the and the the municipal forces will be your city police. Okay. That makes sense. But in a lot of small towns and a lot of cities, it's the RCMP on on the sort of everywhere in the country other than in Quebec and Ontario. So Quebec and Ontario, those two provinces have their provincial police. The rest of the country uses the RCMP. And so I just so happened to be, you know, born and raised in Quebec. So I was not exposed to them nearly as much. But yeah, it's it's a mixed bag, man. And this is what this is what makes it so complex. This is what makes, you know, for example, the first union in the RCMP history, 150-year, you know, happened like not even a decade ago. Wow. And and and so now you're imagine being a union leader and and trying to reconcile these all these different jobs in different, some investigative, some some operational, in various landscapes. Some of them are, you know, up north, others are in the, you know, and and and just the the variance of of the of the of the job banks and all of the things. So you're trying to sort of bring somebody on this together on the same page and have the same benefits and have the same, but they have very, very distinct needs. So it's very difficult to do with that.

Host 55:56

When you and I were were doing the podcast prep, you know, I remember opening up the map as we were talking, and man, Canada is massive. But population-wise, it's it's not really that big, right?

Seb Lavoie 56:08

No, exactly. I mean, you got two countries that are almost that are big, so Australia and Canada, both with smaller populations, right? So we're we're at, I want to say, and I could I I could don't quote me, but I think we're at around 41 million right now or something. So we're we're quite and the country is huge.

Host 56:28

Yeah, and so um how how big is the RCMP?

Seb Lavoie 56:32

Yeah, I think the last numbers were around 26,000 employees.

Host 56:36

Man, so it's still, I mean, it's still a large agency.

Seb Lavoie 56:39

It is, but it's smaller than New York City. Yeah. I mean, that is completely mind-blowing.

Host 56:44

Yeah, New York, I think NYPD has 55,000 or 54,000. They're like, I think they're the biggest police force in the world. It's uh I remember seeing those dudes when I was overseas in Iraq. I ran into an NYPD dude. I'm like, what are you doing here, man? I was like, are you reservist? He's like, no, I'm here with the NYPD. We're doing counterterrorism investigations. I'm like, good lord. Um, yeah, and I remember one of the things we talked about that, you know, as a guy, I I worked in the federal system at one time here in the States, but we got we have, man, 140 different federal investigative agencies. So in some aspects, I look at something like the RCMP, and it like makes sense. I mean, dude, we have, I think there's five investigative agencies, if you count the Bureau of Prisons, just in the Department of Justice, and that doesn't include Homeland Security. So, in some aspects, you know, we have all these different things that and they all run into each other and overlap. So it must be a little bit easier in the RCMP because it's one agency, but you guys have such a large mission. I mean, you and I are getting ready to dive into your history, but you guys have everything from street level patrol and traffic stops all the way to top-tier long-term federal investigations. So, are there multiple different career tracks and paths within the RCMP?

Seb Lavoie 57:53

Oh, 100%. I mean, we have migratory bird investigation, like war crime investigation. There's jobs I don't even know about. There's a there's a booklet about this this thick with all of the jobs that you can have. I mean, it is incredible the amount of uh the amount of variety that we have.

Host 58:13

Yeah, we were talking last night. I actually looked at joining the RCMP when I was 23. My wife and I um had gone to Whistler, Canada, and we fell in love with Canada because it's just a beautiful place. And I remember talking to an RCMP guy that we had ran into in Whistler, and I started like really quizzing him. And um, that's when I found out like you don't even have to be a Canadian citizen. Is that still true or no?

Seb Lavoie 58:35

No, to my understanding, no. You you you do there's um I believe you have to be a permanent resident. But I could be wrong, so do not quote me on this. I mean, it's it was so long ago and you know, 25 plus years ago. Um I believe you have to be a permanent resident.

Host 58:52

So um you apply to the RCMP. How long did it take you to get hired?

Seb Lavoie 58:58

From the original application, I would say probably nine months. And and and then the process, of course, which includes you know all of the things that you would expect from any any police force, which is you know, the physicals, the the interview stage, the the medical, all of the investigative stuff. So all the background checks and all of the things, make sure you're good to go. Um there's a there at the time they had removed the polygraph, but there is a polygraph as well that is, I believe, optional now. So if they have some, you know, some questions they want further clarification, they might use a polygraph. Uh there was uh a variety of other steps, administrative steps, so nothing, nothing, nothing earth shattering. But uh so it took about I want to say a year, roughly.

Host 59:49

I don't want to spend a lot of time here, but I'm I'm very curious your thoughts. As somebody who was, you know, a sergeant major in the RCMP. What's your thoughts on the polygraph? And this is just two guys talking. This is not like some expert. I'm just super curious about it.

Seb Lavoie 1:00:04

I'm certainly not an expert.

Host 1:00:05

Yeah, I've taken a bunch of polygraphs, man, but you know, there's you know, and we've I've uh you know given polygraphs, not me personally, but ordered polygraphs for people um both on my military job and my civilian job. But man, I I don't know how accurate that thing is, it's just an investigative technique. And in the US, if you declare, I think, a polygraph during a court case, it's an automatic mistrial. So it's not even admissible in a US court. So it's very interesting to me.

Seb Lavoie 1:00:31

Um Yeah, my my difficulty reconciling is between beyond reasonable doubt and the polygraph. And so, of course, there has to be supporting evidence. And again, I'm not an expert in this, but there has to be a lot of supporting evidence so that way the the the polygraph can become a reinforcing mechanism, right? But as getting a young man in front for him to tell me that you know he jerked off in his closet, it really you know isn't is isn't of that much relevance. And if we are see the the the problem with hiring and policing is that this is where you can do all the vetting unimpeded. Yeah. Because after that, once they're hired, it's very difficult. And so what agencies tend to do is to be overly conservative so that they can protect against absolutely everything. And we know by way of the numbers of internal discipline, and it doesn't work that way because you put humans broken humans from a broken world and broken humans, you know, that's with that's all of us, without a single exception, in one congregation, things are gonna get weird. Start adding pressures, such as policing realities and all of the things, and and interpersonal relationships and dynamics, and you're gonna have issues. It's just gonna happen. So it's about mitigation, not elimination. And I think that sometimes the way the processes are constructed, it's it's it's very much an attempt at negating the possibility of this.

Host 1:02:03

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Uh, and that's exactly why I asked you specifically. Um, so walk me into the RCMP depot when you show up to what we would call here in the States the police academy. And this is very interesting because one of the things I learned is because uh Canada has, you know, a French-speaking population, you actually do you guys get divided by language, or how does that work?

Seb Lavoie 1:02:26

Yes and no is the is the answer. So you, as a cadet, have a bit of a say on whether or not you want to be in a French or English troop. Now, in hindsight, I should have been in an English troop because I picked it up fast enough that I would have been successful. But at the time, I wasn't ready to hinge my entire career on my ability to learn English on short order. And so when they asked me, when they propose, hey, listen, you're gonna probably work in a western province, you probably should do it in English. I was like, ex nay. You know, I want to be successful, I wanna, I wanna optimize my chances, and so let's let's do it in French. A lot of my French friends or people that you know, acquaintances, people I've met there went the complete opposite and they said, nah, I'll I'll jump on an uh jump on an English troop. Some of them also were forced by way of timing. So, for example, my my troop was starting on a certain date. And if you were to miss that and they said, Okay, well, the next one is in three months, then you have a choice to make. Are you willing to wait or are you wanting to jump on an English troop? And so I I chose I chose to go on a French troop just to optimize my chances.

Host 1:03:39

Which is gonna be hilarious later when we talk about your first duty assignment where you get posted in an English-speaking place and don't speak English. So, but that's it's just one of the the the crazy things about well, not crazy, but it's just um yeah, it's just interesting, right? And the differences. So you end up at the RCMP depot, is that what you guys call it? Correct, and that's in Saskatchewan. And and in Canada, the RCMP, like you guys have one training location, so everybody comes there. What was that? What was that training like? Um, and how did it set that foundation for you for your career?

Seb Lavoie 1:04:08

Yeah, so bear in mind this is you know, what, 25 years ago now? So things have you know obviously changed and yeah, we're dinosaurs, bro.

Host 1:04:15

There's a lot to pay, but anyway, we're gonna talk about your time.

Seb Lavoie 1:04:18

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I was I was pleasantly surprised with that place. It it was it was a perfect place for me to be post-military, having experienced, say, the training tempo and rigors of the military life because it was striking a little bit below that from a in a physical standpoint and in a punishment standpoint. But uh academically, it was up there, you know, and and and it also was an adult learning environment where where you could be successful at whatever you wanted to be, all you had to do was to put the time in. But they really gave you the tools to do that. So I'll give you an example of this. When I first did my walkthrough, you know, day one, and we're walking through each of the sections, so firearms and combatives, and driving, and scenario-based training, and this classroom, and all of the things. I saw, you know, the guys going doing a skill course. So it's called a skills course, and it was five tracks that you use the car and you sort of went backwards and forwards, and there was all kinds of turns and things, and there were cones everywhere. If you did a close protection course, you know what I'm talking about. There's cones everywhere. There's like half an inch of space on every single one of those cones, and they're negotiating the course, you know, backwards and forward, and there's an instructor in the car, and I'm like, how how how like how do you know where to turn, you know, to not dump the cones or whatever? And so I anticipated, and it's created a bit of internal stress to see this. I was like, Well, if I'm having an issue anywhere, it's it's going to be here, you know? And so, but also the keys are on the wall over there. So Get your instruction, dial it in, grab the keys as many times as you want. Oh, wow. You know, so what do you think happened? Well, I was there every day, multiple times a day, until I became the guy to help the people that came in. You know? So for me, if you if you put somebody in an environment where the only limiting factor is their drive and determination in doing well, literally your success is at your fingertips, you know, pending an injury or something that's completely out of your control, which can happen to anybody. So it doesn't matter. But if you're looking, if you're putting me in an environment and you're giving me all the tools to be successful, like what is my excuse now? You know, if I don't want to work hard, but then I probably don't deserve it, you know? And so for me, it was both it was it was it was very good to see uh uh a high standard of proficiency that was required, but also the ability to meet it and to meet the moment by by engaging in it because they will give us the freedom to do so. You know, I I've speak to a lot of guys from other agencies sometimes where there's a limited amount of time on this, and if it doesn't happen, tough luck, right? We're moving on, kind of thing, and the train, the train's going. And so Depot, to give you a physical description of it, is beauty. It's a beautiful place. It has, you know, the the RCMP has a 150-year uh history, very steeped into um uh, you know, the march west, it's which is which was a massive event in in Canada. And there is a historical component to this uh to this place, and there is, you know, the uh was it the first expeditionary force? No, the first Provocore. The first Provocore was in World War II. So those are RCMP members that were essentially sent to Normandy, you know, to fight. So there is there is a very pseudo-military, like there historically there was a military presence, but now it's it's become this this this sort of hybrid, you know, almost. And so it has a very it has its own honor battles, all of the things. So it's it's a it's a it's an organization that's very steeped in traditions. And so for me as a military person that can appreciate plank holders and the people that paved the way before him, it was the perfect place to be because it it allowed me to look up at all of these great, you know, people that have essentially constituted this this organization and made it what the organization was. Now, the organization isn't without its flaws. I'm not I'm not blowing smoke, but fundamentally it was uh it had a great reputation.

Host 1:08:44

You had dreamed kind of about you know being in law enforcement and then later, you know, Canada's premier law enforcement. Was it surreal there at first when you got there? Kind of like, man, I'm I'm here. I I I can't believe I'm here. You know what I mean? Not because you didn't deserve or whatever, but you know, sometimes when we have these things and then we manifest them and then they happen, you're like, oh man, I've been thinking about this for forever. What was that like?

Seb Lavoie 1:09:05

Yeah, it was uh very subdued if I for me. I I was very comfortable there in that I just I just knew I had a weird sense of inner peace. I knew I was in the right spot, I knew I I was where I was supposed to be, I knew I'd worked hard for this, I didn't put a uh an unmanageable amount of pressure on myself, any of those things because I I felt like I'd done enough work to be ready to be successful. I also knew that life happens, and if it does, then I'll be back, you know? Yeah, I just I didn't have a sort of a visceral stress or anything that would indicate that I was, you know, performance anxiety or anything like that. I was actually very, very calm and ready to go.

Host 1:09:53

How how long is the academy for the RCN?

Seb Lavoie 1:09:55

Six months.

Host 1:09:56

Um, and then is it like very paramilitary? Is it very structured?

Seb Lavoie 1:10:00

It is, yeah.

Host 1:10:00

You know, marching and and PT and all that?

Seb Lavoie 1:10:03

Correct. And there's all kinds of other things. Like you're not you you you you earn the right to wear certain pieces of equipment, like your boots, your high-browns, your breeches, your pants, you know, the horse uh pants, um, and your red surge ultimately. But you're also, as a cadet, you're not allowed to be on the sidewalk that's for senior cadets, and you know, there's there's a lot of stuff like this, and there's drill, of course, and drill is fundamentally very important, especially when it comes to teaching attention to detail in a stress-induced environment. Because we remember, people are not cops, and they have not experienced the stress that's placed on police officers on the on the daily in their regular life. And so now there has to be uh uh an artificially induced stress state that is beneficial both operationally and from a mental standpoint. You know, they have they have to experience it. We have there's a there's a it's done under control and it's done in a quote unquote safe environment, but it it's necessary. You know, we've had people look at this down the line later saying, Oh, is drill necessary? But it it's really undermining the the the effect that drill has on on one's mind. And it's not about you know necessarily uh following orders, it's more about attention to detail, being on point, reacting, reacting to stress, to all those things and controlling stress. And so, you know, it's yes, you have your drills, you have your parades, you have, and then you have to show up early for parades, and you have to parade before you go to lunch, and you know, you have your kit has to be square away. Your uniform needs to look pristine the way it should when you're out in the field, unless you're full of mud because you're running after a bad guy, you know. But even after that, 10 minutes after, there's no reason why your uniform is not good to go, you know. So I think there's a lot of a lot of lessons there. Now you have an entire village, and in that village, there's all these buildings, you know, a massive pool with all of the implements you you might dream of if you're a water bug. You have these massive gyms. Now they have CrossFit gyms and regular lifting gyms, and there's all kinds of gyms there. It's really, really cool program. And then you have your combatives room, matted, padded rooms, heavy bags everywhere, uppercut bags. You know, the the the place is is is a paradise for the combative people. And then you have your classrooms, your libraries, your computer rooms, all of those things. And so always in different buildings. And so in one spot, you're doing your you might be doing your academic learnings all morning. All of a sudden you're running down, getting changed because you're hitting combatives for the next, you know, two-hour session or whatever. And then it's a parade, a quick switch into your uniform, parade, a little lunch or whatever, and then the afternoon you're on the range, for example, shooting, doing whatever, or you're doing patrol, uh, you're taking the cars for patrol driving, those types of things. And so, and the community around there in Regina is so used to this that cadets are using their patrol cars to go patrol drive on their own. So they don't have a sort uh sidearm, they're not armed, it you know, because they're not full-fledged police officers yet, but they will go out in the community and do and do some patrolling around the Regina region.

Host 1:13:25

Really? Yeah, like traffic stops in the whole nine.

Seb Lavoie 1:13:27

No, no, no, no, no, no traffic stop. It's really simply about your driving, your observations, your, you know, your capacity to report, to, to, to observe and report and do all the things, but you have to write reports on your patrols, and it's it's actually a it's actually a great tool, and it's a safe place to do it.

Host 1:13:44

So that's a process of kind of your training. Does everybody do that? Correct. Um, you guys do so much in the RCMP, and Canada has such diverse landscapes across. Do you guys train all of those things like horseback, boat, all that stuff? Or or do the are do you acquire those specialties later on depending on where you get assigned?

Seb Lavoie 1:14:02

Yeah, those are you know, the the horses is cool, but we have professionals doing that.

Host 1:14:06

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 1:14:07

That you know, I I know that's the first thing that most people around the world.

Host 1:14:11

I think that's because I think that's what we saw on the you like if you look up RCMP, you're gonna see a dude, you know, with that that cool hat on the spit uniform is uh horseback. If I remember, like when I was in Canada, I think I saw the picture, and that's that's the picture that I remember.

Seb Lavoie 1:14:24

Yeah, 100%. We have a musical ride, and so the musical ride is and and we like to ride them internally, but they ultimately make us look good. Um it you know, yes, so you have there again with all of the duties, there are so many opportunities, depending where you go, depending where you get shipped. Like I was when I was shipped into Fino, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. Um, for me, I was boat trained now all of a sudden. I find myself as a city boy from Montreal, you know, boat boat training on the ocean. And so, yes, and I friends in the Yukons taking their snowmobile courses and uh winter in dock and all kinds of things. And so depending where you are, it really opens up. But in a in a in a weird way, that is what life is about, man. That's exploring, having that that will to just engage with it and explore.

Host 1:15:18

How is the um the tactical training? And I don't mean SWOT, I just mean you know, regular patrol tactical training um in the academy that you received.

Seb Lavoie 1:15:28

I I I thought it was pretty decent. I think what ended up happening is you would get out on the road with your knowledge, and somebody would be like, eh, you don't need this or you don't need that, because of course, complacency, you know, is a thing. And and sometimes you'll you'll there's a lot of stuff in in that's taught in the academy that has a place in in your operational functions. And I think that cops are really quick, quick to dismiss that. They'd be like, oh, you know, when the reality hits, and and we make it two complete separate entities. But I think overall the RCMP had done a great job of trying to bridge that, make it you know reality-based, but also applicable and real. And I think part of the reason is most of the instructors coming in are from operational provinces where they were physically in the saddle doing policing and and and responding to high-risk calls and do all of that. And so that brings that sort of a dose of realism to the entire thing. And then you're able to get out with your peers and apply these hard-heard lessons, so to speak.

Host 1:16:37

Because you guys are a a federal um law enforcement investigative agency, do you guys cover a lot of investigative techniques and and and procedures in your academy?

Seb Lavoie 1:16:46

I I would say fundamental sort of baseline and investigative techniques, because a lot of these investigative units like major crimes or those types of units have very extensive training courses following that, you know, interview courses and and all kinds of things that are um sort of serve the purpose of elevating that baseline.

Host 1:17:11

The uh the mounty iconograph uh iconography that we were just talking about, you know, the red surge, the stetson. How seriously do active members uh you know take that symbol? And is it a museum piece or does it still mean something intentionally?

Seb Lavoie 1:17:24

Yeah, or it certainly means something to people wearing it. Yeah. It it really does. And I think that the day that we lose that is is a is a is a sad day for the country.

Host 1:17:35

Yeah, you and I were talking yesterday just about the world and what's going on in Canada and the US and places like Australia. Um, you know, I I think there are some places that are we're losing that history in a lot of different aspects. And I I think it's it's kind of sad because I think the moment we start for we start forgetting where we came from, it kind of you know can really convolute where where we're headed. Um 100%.

Seb Lavoie 1:17:58

It can all it can also make us repeat things we don't want to repeat.

Host 1:18:01

Yeah, amen, man. So uh you graduate the academy and your first posting uh is in Tofino. Did I say that right? Yeah, Tofino. Um, I know we talked a lot about this because I was looking on the map and just really trying to understand. So, you know, for those of you that don't know Canada, which I I wasn't, you know, I struggle with my US geography to be honest with you, but you know, I was really looking, and Canada's super vast. And so Quebec is more towards the eastern side, right? Um, and you know, you're French Canadian and you get sent as far west in Canada, dang near. Um, kind of explain about the geographical region of where you got assigned and like you know how different it was from where you had come from.

Seb Lavoie 1:18:40

Yeah. Yeah. Uh Tefino is on Vancouver Island. So when you go to Vancouver proper, which is in British Columbia, coming from Quebec, which is 5,500 kilometers away or 27 miles, whatever, 2700 miles or so. Uh, we did this, drove 12 hours a day for five days straight. And uh you get to Vancouver. So interesting fact.

Host 1:19:03

So that's how that's how long it took you to get there. Correct.

Seb Lavoie 1:19:07

So here's here's an interesting fact about about uh the provinces in in Canada, which would be the equivalent of your states, is crossing Ontario takes 24 hours. 24 hours of driving. That's that's literally it's it was mind-blowing to me. And then you're going through your other provinces and from big center to big centers, you're about 12 hours away, which is amazing. You know, from Saskatchewan, from uh from Regina to Winnipeg, Manitoba, you're about 12 hours. From Winnipeg, Manitoba to you're about, you know, 12 hours. From Calgary, you're to Vancouver, you're 12 hours, or roughly. It's a it's a it's a little bit longer, but it's roughly the same. So from big center to big center, from province to province, you're about 12 hours away. Now I don't know about the complete east coast, like the real east coast, PEI and Newfoundland and uh Nova Scotia, because I didn't drive those. And they're they're fairly small, pretty small. But so I drive um you know for five days all the way to the end of the country. So Tofino is on Vancouver Island. So when you get to Vancouver, you have to jump on a ferry. Now you're two hours on the ferry, and then you have another four-hour drive to Tofino, basically. And it's Tofino, if I was to describe it, it's a beautiful at the time it was a very sleepy, hollow fisherman's sort of um little town. Now it's much more, it has beautiful little coffee shops and all the fanciness you might expect from, say, an aspen, you know, in a much, much smaller uh package. But a beautiful community as far as the environment goes, like just on the ocean, absolutely gorgeous place, mountains, diving, whale watching, all kinds of things. It's just a great spot.

Host 1:20:57

How does uh how does the RCP deal with assignments? Like, do you is there a wish list or you're just like yo, bro, you're going that way? Meeny meeny mining. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Like, yeah, because there's there's just so many different places. Like, how does that work?

Seb Lavoie 1:21:11

It depends who you ask. And I think it it happens through a variety of different ways. I think part of it is the needs of the organization. So at some point, there's you know, people have to go places and they're not always happy where they they go. I think there is an attempt at collaborating. So when you're in training, you generally have a say in where you're gonna go. You don't always end up getting that. But for me, so I was the right marker, which is the leader, the troop leader. Um, I was assigned that role, I had military background, and people felt that maybe I could. So I ended up doing that, which was a lot of work, but it it was supposed to give me a greater chance at getting my pick on account of having done that, having stepped up and led the troop. And so it didn't happen that way for me. I was asking for something very specific, but the need arised where one of my facilitators, who was a former uh SWAT guy and knew where I wanted to go with my career, overruled my request and decided that he was gonna send me to Tefino because he knew the experience was going to be invaluable. And he made that call at the warnings of the other facilitators, but he said to them, I'll talk to him, you know, kind of thing. And so, best decision anybody's ever made for me in my career. But I was sent to Tefino instead of a big city. I was asking to go to Surrey, British Columbia. If you don't know where that is, just Google it.

Host 1:22:43

Was that was it a French-speaking place?

Seb Lavoie 1:22:45

No.

Host 1:22:45

Oh, no. So were you ever worried um that the language was gonna be like an issue? Yes. Yeah, I can uh and and how were you mentally prepared? I mean, were you were you starting to prepare for that like as soon as you found out where you were getting your assignment? Or like because I'm just trying to like run through my head, like, hey man, uh, you know, we're giving you this assignment and you need to speak uh Spanish by tomorrow, and then you're gonna be patrolling in two days and nobody speaks English. And so that's kind of an interesting, you know, um situation to be in.

Seb Lavoie 1:23:17

Yeah, it is. And is it safe? Probably not, right? I mean, it was probably one of the best spots to do it because from an operational standpoint, it was a lot less risk. There was the risk of fights and those types of things, but really it wasn't, you know, uh a place where uh gun gunfire would be erupting everywhere and you'd be you'd be having to negotiate super high risk things all the time. It just wasn't the case. And so I think there was a bit of mitigation there. And also during my training in depot, what became quite clear to me is I had a bit of an affinity in learning English, and I was starting to do do that when I was in training. So my big brother troop and my my my my um young or what do they call it. We so you're mentoring a true a troop below you, and you're being mentored by a troop above you. So whatever the name is, I can't remember now. Big brother troop and something else. I had realized, and most of those were Anglophone troops, because we only had one French troop at the time. And so for me, there was a a realization that I'm I'm learning English really quickly. I'm picking up almost everything they say. It's more about my ability to articulate myself. And I think a lot of it was based on just being embarrassed to try, you know. And uh, but but by then, by the time we were graduating and everything, I was like, okay, I just spent six months essentially surrendered, um surrounded by Anglophones and had all these conversations and were able to pick up the gist of all of them. And now I'm being asked to do something in a different language that I'm pretty familiar with. So I was pretty comfortable with that prospect.

Host 1:24:53

Tafino's a tourist tourist town. Um, I think you you you kind of explained when we were prepping like surfers, retirees, hippies, indigenous communities, fishing crews. Uh paint the place for somebody who's never been to the West Coast Vancouver Island.

Seb Lavoie 1:25:06

Well, the the welcome and goodbye sign is on the same sign. It's very, very small. It has one main street essentially. And so as you're coming in, you know, on your right hand side, you have like a cliff face. And if you look on your right hand side as you're coming into the town, you see boats on the fishing boats on the water, on the ocean. And then as you're sort of moving into town, you see, you know, maybe a hotel, uh a few restaurants, uh, whale watching outfits or whatever. And then on the right hand side, you have DRCMP detachment, which now is much bigger, it's much larger than it was when I was there. When I was there, it was a tiny little brown building, and um, you know, I drove right past it, and then you have your city hall, and next thing you know, you're sort of it's almost time to turn around. Yeah, you know.

Host 1:25:58

How uh how big was your initial um like office? How many, how many um police were there?

Seb Lavoie 1:26:05

At the time we had five. So there was a sergeant in charge, he was the detachment commander, we had two uh clerks, civilian clerks, and we had a corporal and three constables when I first started. And so the rotations were that during the sort of busier time, so when tourist season is at an all-time high, so we're in the summer, so we can go from I believe 3,500 people living there regularly to 50,000 a day in the summer, right? So that's a massive fluctuation for a small police department, especially if there's only one one person on, and especially if the people visiting are tourists, because you know how that goes, right? Just look at Vegas or anywhere else, that's no different. And so, you know, it was one of those where we would police by ourselves until the day was such that we needed an additional presence, then we may have two or three assets. There was another detachment nearby and you cuel it. So we would have a 30-minute, 40-minute drive, say code three, 20-minute drive with the emergency equipment on, you know, if we needed to go back each other up. But that was the extent of our we had no specialized section, no specialized unit, nobody ready to come save the day if gun plays started or if somebody got barricaded or whatever. So we had to make some some uh risk mitigating decisions that sometimes in a big city would never fly, right?

Host 1:27:31

What was the actual call mix uh that you were doing? I think you just mentioned you were working five five twelves.

Seb Lavoie 1:27:36

No, no, we weren't. It wasn't working like that because we we worked until a certain time, then we went on call for the rest of the night. And so it essentially when you were on during your block, you were kind of on. But now it's changed, they have uh proper shift scheduling and all the all the things.

Host 1:27:52

But there was only like, I mean, three con you call your that was constables, that's the initial rank at the RCP. So there's only three of you guys to cover this area, yeah.

Seb Lavoie 1:28:00

Corporal was taking call as well, and the sergeant would sometimes. But yeah, you're right.

Host 1:28:04

It's essentially what was the call volume like? Um, was it just kind of sporadic depending on the time of the year and and and time?

Seb Lavoie 1:28:10

Yeah, it I I can't give you numbers because I have no recollection whatsoever. But in the summer, we would get really busy, and we had four. Um there it deserves three indigenous reservations as well. So we had sort of microcosm of the indigenous policing side uh in there intertwined. So that was pretty busy as well, you know, uh places that we needed to access by boat and that kind of that kind of stuff. But um, you know, during the summer we'd be run off our feet. We didn't have we didn't have a chance. And I mean, just bear with me here in a small detachment that you're doing everything. Yeah, you know, so sometimes between you taking a suspect in custody, even on something minor, and having a guard that can come and and watch over them, you have to stay four hours in waiting for the guard to come to answer the call, you know. And so you can get tied up real quick, as you know, in a really small, in a small town. And and but the cross section was really good there. I worked on a homicide there, I worked on all kinds of assaults, some you know, less desirable than others. Yeah. Um lots of lots of violence, lots of domestic violence. So it was the sort of I would say the standard small town, heavy alcohol, heavy drug use.

Host 1:29:32

You kind of showed up as like the use of force subject matter expert. I don't know if expert is the term you would have used back then, but that's essentially what you were. I mean, you had the you know, the kind of the PPCT background, uh, you know, the combatives background. Uh, what's it like to like show up as the new guy and you're already kind of the the you know the SME for for com you know use of force, I guess, pretty much.

Seb Lavoie 1:29:53

I missed the whole PC uh PPCT boat. I didn't do the pressure point control like you some guys did, but uh, but I didn't. I did other types of combatatives. So I wasn't I wasn't brought in as the SME.

Host 1:30:07

It just it just No, I mean, and I didn't mean like they had like ordained you, but you kind of, you know, I I'm trying to go back to the the 90s. I mean, you know, what were you guys learning for, you know, we were learning in the States like palm heel strikes and a bunch of stuff people would laugh at now, you know. I mean, it it it got advanced, but back then, man, what was the training like compared to what you had already in your toolbox?

Seb Lavoie 1:30:30

It was actually quite good for us at the academy. I think we did a lot of essentially MMA, but we didn't really mix them up. So we did all those individual components. We did striking, ground fighting, and all of the things, you know, ocular control and and using all the tools, the the pain compliance tools and all of those things that we could. I think the only way it could have been done better is if we mixed them all up. If we mix them all up and it's like, okay, you have to arrest this person, if they start striking, what's your reaction? If you have to close that distance, you have to go into hook range or or reach range or out of reach. Like, how are you gonna achieve that? If you have what's your takedown mechanisms, how are you gonna control them? Like, you know, we could have done, but we were learning all of those things. And so it was actually, it was actually really decent. And and and, you know, again, um, there is a there is an administrative piece in that, which is how do we mitigate injury? If you start doing MMA, you're looking at an injury rate that goes higher, right? So I think for them it was a risk mitigation strategy. But when I when I got in, uh, you know, it was striking, ground fighting, doing all the things at a fundamental level. Because like I said, I didn't start jujitsu until 07. And when I started, I realized I didn't know much on the ground before that, right?

Host 1:31:43

I uh I started BJJ way later in my career, and I actually had a couple pretty significant injuries early on my career that I look back, it's like, man, if I would have known later on, I would have never been injured because BJJ is so great for not only ground combatives, but also, you know, controlling a suspect without injuring them or injuring yourself, and it looks a lot better, you know, versus 10 palm heel strikes at somebody's face, man. Then you take a picture of him in his booking photo, and he's like, that dude looked like he just got jumped by seven dudes. It doesn't pan out well, you know, especially now in America. We have this, you know, Sioux heavy culture. I don't know what it's like in Canada.

Seb Lavoie 1:32:18

Yeah. Oh yeah, we're we're under the same sort of scrutiny.

Host 1:32:23

Uh the West Coast policing context, you know, where you were at indigenous relations, you got, you know, drug movement off the boats, isolated geography. What did you learn in Tofino that that you didn't they didn't teach you at the depot?

Seb Lavoie 1:32:35

I think one of my biggest realization and and biggest perhaps disappointment was that you can invest all of yourself in policing and and and uh not necessarily get uh the outcome that you were seeking, you know. And for me, I I'm specifically referring to relationships with people, for example. At the end of the day, in a small community, you're gonna have to do things that people are not gonna like because everybody's interconnected. So if you're arresting somebody for something, then it has a trickle-down effect, right? And one of the things I was great at was building relationships with the kids in the indigenous community. I was uh always there playing hockey with them, you know, boxing with them, just doing uh things with the kids. They knew I cared and they knew that they could count on me and they could talk to me and do all the stuff, and eventually you'd arrest somebody and the parents flip them against uh you. There is no this is a human being with with a decision and difficult decision to make or anything like that, you know. So it it becomes this thing where now that all of a sudden you show up one day and they all turn their backs, you know, and now you're like, but but you know, and so for me it was really the realization that policing is a job, building relationship is a proxy, you know, to do this job and it's a proxy to being a good human and ha and and and try to build a certain amount of trust, but build it on reality, not build it on, you know, fallacy and have the tough conversations about and even have set the stage for when people are now on the other side of this and they have a family member that they have the trust or the the the faith in you to come over and have a conversation about what happened and for you to be able to sort of articulate. Whether you agree to disagree is one thing, but I felt like this would really help. And eventually I just found myself completely alienated from the kids, essentially. The parents didn't want the kids to have anything to do with you. So for the next say two years of my of my time there, there was no sort of regaining that back.

Host 1:34:52

And so Yeah, I I can't imagine what it's like to have to do your job in a small town, but you also live you know there as well, which means you gotta go to the grocery store and and gas and all and all the things. Yeah, what kind of balance is is that, especially once you're there for a year and you're having to put people in jail? I mean, you just hinted about it and and the effect on the kids, but you know, who did you hang out with and what did you do out outside of work?

Seb Lavoie 1:35:18

Nobody. I didn't hang out with anybody because unfortunately the the members that work with you are working when you're off. So small, right? Yeah, so small. And so I had a few a few friends in Ukulet, so a few members that were friends there. So sometimes our time off would align, and then we would take a drive to Nanaimos, which is, you know, a little bit South Island, and then we would we would go for a movie, for example, or something like that. But the dynamic of being in a small town is is one of uh it's it's an interesting one. You know, you you you have to first of all, you're never truly off because anything that happens that you stumble upon cannot be ignored. You know, if you're in a big city and you walk by somebody doing something that isn't catastrophic and you might be like, Yeah, I'm off. I'm not, you know.

Host 1:36:04

That's somebody else's problem.

Seb Lavoie 1:36:05

Yeah, it sounds like somebody else's problem.

Host 1:36:07

I'm a great, uh, I'm a great witness today.

Seb Lavoie 1:36:09

But in a small community, unfortunately, there is no there is none of that. And so, you know, you have to step up uh every time that something happens, if it has any serious ramifications, you know, you should be like that anyways, anywhere. But it just it just, you know, the the the microscope, so to speak, is is right on top of you at every opportunity. But that also includes the way you drive, the way you dress, the way you conduct yourself, and those things, I mean, are not are not you know mutually exclusive between uh a big city and a s in a small town. I mean, we should be presenting ourselves with a level of professionalism, and that should be across the board. There's no questioning that. But it becomes more about perception. It's not necessarily that what they're seeing or what they're reporting or what they're basing their opinion on is accurate or factual. It's more that there's increased scrutiny at all times. So it's difficult, right? Everywhere you go and everything you do has uh and then for you to not get forced back into work is almost impossible. Oh, you know, because it always happens. And so you'd you'd be you'd be sleeping at night or you'd be watching a movie and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang on the door. Next thing you know, you're in the middle of some domestic dispute with knives, and there's all kinds of, you know, uh it's happening next door, and or there's an arson or whatever it is. And and and so that was a uh sort of a constant. We would get pulled up.

Host 1:37:37

Yeah, and I asked you early about the whole investigative training because in a small area, if you run into maybe something more than a domestic, like something that needs like further investigation, who would you guys call for support?

Seb Lavoie 1:37:49

Yeah, so there was an island investigative team. Um, I think right now there's uh island major crime unit, but at the time there was something sort of similar. And they would come up from you know, the bigger, the larger center down the South or or North Island and come over and and help us out.

Host 1:38:08

Um, in those initial years, did you kind of have a mentor, somebody you either looked up to or like what was what's the field training regimen to get you from, you know, you're out the depot, and but you know, there's a learning curve. Did you guys have a field training program or how did that work?

Seb Lavoie 1:38:22

Yeah, so we have a six month in theory uh field training program. You have a field trainer, and there's certain benchmarks that have to be achieved, and there's certain learnings that have to be had before you can get signed off. And then there's a panel interview before you get signed off as well. And so for me, my very first trainer was very different than me. He was very traffic oriented, uh, not so perhaps tactically oriented. And, you know, these sort of differences fundamentally really impacted my ability to sort of really connect with with him in a way that was very beneficial for my career. So he he's he don't get me wrong, he was really well intended and he was really good at what he did, and I took a lot of attention to detail from him, especially when writing citations, those types of things. But there was a there was a bit of a a gap that needed to be to be filled there, and and and I felt that really heavily when another leader came in. So essentially he ended up retiring, leaving, and part way through my field training, and I was appointed a corporal, a new corporal that came over to the um the detachment, and he was an excellent, to this day, one of the best cops I've ever worked with. Uh Rob Dixon's his name. Shout out. And so Rob, you know, came in as a young corporal, and his forte was writing and being very, very good at policing in general. So he was really well-rounded, but his well-roundedness followed him in the administrative side, which mine didn't.

Host 1:40:01

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 1:40:02

And so I remember the first time we worked together at gotten in custody, arrested somebody for a breach. Like it was a very small write-up, clearly not small enough. When I came back, it was it was red from top to bottom, you know? And I originally reacted because I was wait, what is this? Why is this all red? And he's like, Okay, this is all wrong. Here is we're gonna fix this. So at first there was a bit of resistance because what are two things that humans don't like? Change and the way things are. Right? This is how we've always done it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and so I was, you know, I had a little bit of internal friction, which is totally fine. Eventually overcame that and realized, like, this guy is gonna make you better. Let's let's, you know, get as much out of him as I could. And so the more I wrote and and remember I was writing in English, right?

Host 1:40:55

Yeah, that that's actually where my mind was going the moment I asked you this question. So, how old were you when you started learning to write like in English? And not like from a child, I'm talking where you're writing like real things because when I got into policing. That's wild. So, um, what was that like on the report writing side, not even the tactical side? Like you're now writing reports in English in a language that you know you don't you're learning to speak um as you're learning to write. Whoa, whoa, what was that learning curve like?

Seb Lavoie 1:41:25

Yeah, template is all I can tell you. You need templates, right? And and and as long as I had templates, I was pretty good. So you have templates for your common offenses, you know, breach of be breach of peace or or common assault or those types of things. And so I had access to all these files. And so there was a lot of of learning from those files, and without copying them outright, a lot of it was plagiarized, right?

Host 1:41:53

We call them go bys in my old job, like hey man, I just did this. You got a go-by for that?

Seb Lavoie 1:41:57

Exactly. So, yeah, so that that was an extra little little challenge. But you know, after after a few months of of rubbing in a chair and me having my report to crown council bounce around like uh, you know, I I I finally had less red, and eventually there was none.

Host 1:42:18

Is is there a difference in the judicial judici uh whatever judicial system? I don't know that word's hard for me to say. Um in Canada, as far as like federal prosecution versus like city prosecution, is it like bigger? Like, for instance, in in America, the Fed um you know system, uh it's a much bigger hammer, sentences are longer. Um is it the same in Canada or not really?

Seb Lavoie 1:42:39

Yeah, I think it's pretty similar. We're dealing mostly with provincial or municipal crowns. Uh provincial crowns, I think, for us mostly where we were, so but very similar. Yeah.

Host 1:42:50

Talk to me about like, you know, the first time shit breaks bad, and you know, you're you're a constable, and and what was that like?

Seb Lavoie 1:42:59

When was the first time that things went really big? Yeah, we're gonna need some good cop stories, bro.

Host 1:43:04

I haven't had I've only had one other LE dude on the podcast, it's kind of wild with my background, but you know, like everything everything was everything in Tefino was just like almost any police calls anywhere.

Seb Lavoie 1:43:21

It was always there's a lot more than meets the eye. Yeah, you know, and I think a big part of us engaging in these policing duties on the daily was the ability to problem solve escalating issues because we had nobody to come save us. And so we ended up doing all kinds of crazy things that we definitely shouldn't have been doing, which is you know, say responding to suicidal males, and I'm I'm giving you nonspecifics, but like responding to a suicidal male with a blade on his on their on their chest and uh you know a gun by their side, uh whatever, and and waiting for the the police and having articulated their intent to everybody and told everybody if you call the cops, this is gonna happen. And then, you know, eventually we we're on containment, we're trying to get a little bit of intel on the inside and we see him sleeping. It's like now here's an opportunity, you know, as as there would be between uh hostage and a hostage taker if there was hostage separation. You know, you have to sort of capitalize on some of the opportunities, and so whereas in a big city you would never see that.

Host 1:44:23

Yeah, man, that was something I think that I was trying to wrap my head around when you and I were talking. I think you like detected some of my brain trying to process because you know, normally you get a call like that, you are you're set in containment, you're waiting for a tactical team. You know, I always tell people that SWAT stands for sit, wait, and talk. Uh because that's a lot of times what would happen on SWAT call-outs. You know, you're waiting for the negotiator to try to talk this dude down for six, eight hours. And then, you know, after you're extremely tired, then you go in. But you don't have you never had that. I mean, you we I actually alluded to that in the introduction. I mean, there is no backup, and and you kind of said it the nearest backup you could even get, not even a tactical team, is coming 20, 30 minutes by code, which can be a lifetime uh when you need an assist.

Seb Lavoie 1:45:02

Yeah, especially if they're engaged in something else, which was normally the case.

Host 1:45:05

Yeah. Um, so what kind of decision process did you have to try to do when you when you got these more high-risk calls, if you will?

Seb Lavoie 1:45:14

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's well, it's it's no different than any sort of risk assessment ongoing, right? Priorities of life. What are the priorities of life in the context here? Uh, what is the possible outcome if if if I fail to be successful or if or if we don't address the issue, if we just let it stir up. And you know, what risk can be mitigated by capitalizing on the opportunity? So I think that's this is where generally this is where the the mindset will differ from a big city to a small town. It's like if there's an escalation and there's all these people to be dealing with escalating issues, whereas if this escalates for us here, we're in a worse predicament. So that sort of becomes part of what you know and when you know it, you know? And so for us, it's it's all about man. Like we have to be proactive, we have to be dynamic, we have to be ready to move, we have to be fit, we have to be all those things so we can make it happen, you know? And and next thing you know, you got a guy on the other side of the house quietly standing there, ready, ready to create a distraction if something happens, and you have one guy sneaking out the window and basically going hands-on with buddy, yeah, you know, tossing, tossing the knife one way. And the and it's it's interesting. I had a my ex-wife was a police officer in a city. She was a police officer in Burnaby. And uh she comes over to visit me. We were dating at the time, and we she wanted to go on a ride along. So she comes in with me in a call, and she's sitting in the passenger seat. She has access to a shotgun. I have, you know, my tools, all the things. So we get this call about a young punk that broke into a house, and he essentially, it's kind of like a home invasion, but by somebody drunk that thinks he's in the right spot and wasn't. And so we we end up there. I end up in this scrap with this kid in his in his room, and sort of, you know, we got that handled. He's he's cuffed in the back and all the things, and walk him out and walk him out to the car. And then I'm putting him in the car and he's fighting, you know, uh how difficult it is.

Host 1:47:18

They even get more tougher once you put the hand in the car.

Seb Lavoie 1:47:20

They 100% do. But then the problem is, is those those cars are simply not designed to get people in by force. Like they have to go in willingly, otherwise, you have to kind of try to get them in there without hurting them and open the door, try to get him on the seat so that somebody on the other side can grab him and kind of pull him off. So my ex-wife goes on the other side, she grabs his arms, and of course, career criminal flips on her, kicks her in the face as hard as he possibly can. She's on, you know, she's on the ground now, and he jumps out. As she is getting back to sort of uh building a base or getting back, trying to get back up, he's lining up to kick her in the face as hard as he possibly can. He's got his heel almost striking his butt, you know, ready to kick her in the face. And I came in and sort of, you know, addressed him, just addressed NFL tackles without the without the NFL background. But uh, and so, you know, but again, uh in conversation with her after, completely stunned. She's like, I got five or six years of policing. This never happened to me. Because in a small town, if they go by you, who else is is arresting them? They're they're scot-free, right? We're in a big city, there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to escape. And so that really changes their mindset. My experience in a small town, you have to be capable of dealing of dealing with things because if they go past you, they have a uh sort of an opportunity to to escape and to evade.

Host 1:48:51

Yeah, that's a great point, man. Um our kind of Texas Highway Patrol is very similar to that. It's one of the toughest um academies in the in the nation, as far as you know, a state or or municipality, but that's a big thing because they cover a lot of uh rural areas in Texas where there is no backup or you know, maybe one sheriff deputy that's coming from way on. So it's that similar mindset of those dudes in that academy. They do a lot of fighting in those Texas highway patrols. I'm sure most highway patrols in the states, I'm just very familiar with Texas. Those are bad mother effers, man, because they have to be. And they come with a long lineage, much like RCMP, of you know, uh being known to handle themselves. So um, you talked about a couple interesting calls too. Um I know you guys would get bar fights and stuff, but like I'm even trying to process that right. Like you show up to a bar fight, maybe you're lucky if you've got another person on and people are going hogwile and they're drunk. Um, you know, what was, you know, what was the conversation in the parking lot with your partner before going into the, you know, the bar fight to deal with, you know, you're obviously grossly outnumbered. Was there people that just had a respect for the uniform because of who our RCMP is and you know knows what happens if you cross, or you know, people just didn't care.

Seb Lavoie 1:50:00

Yeah, I think generally speaking, I I wouldn't say it was because we were our CMP, but more who we were individually. So I think we had built up enough relationship in the community that not everybody wanted to jump you when you showed up somewhere. And that's important. Because if you're arresting somebody in a club and you have a good relationship with the bouncers, a good relationship with the staff, a good real like you always have somebody kind of watching your back at the very least to give you a warning. You know, not always the case, but but it is most of the time on our fights, we're alone, most of the time. We generally never called back up for you know extracting somebody out of a club or or calls where a single individual was was involved, very rarely. And so you know, yeah, you have to you have to take decisive actions. You also have to be able to talk and have conversations with people. It wasn't about I wasn't there throwing my weight around, proving to myself that I could fight everybody. And I think that sometimes in a big city that happens, and I think that's a detriment to to policing, but it's also a detriment to humanity to do that, you know, to sort of just wait for the fight to come because I can't wait. It's like, no, actually the fight will come, be prepared, but let's try to see how we can make this happen without. And so, you know, the de-escalating these calls and having these conversations with these guys to the point where they would walk themselves in the police car with their hands cuffed was a win to me. I wasn't looking at necessarily established dominance and you know, watch me win this fight. Because it wasn't about boosting my ego, it was about getting the job done safely. And versely, if you showed up and the fight and the fight was on or was inevitable, then you were decisive in your actions and then real real quick, real efficient, and then you would sort of stand there with an eon belly, scan around, you know?

Host 1:51:56

Speed and violence of action. How did your um I is this is a rhetorical question, probably, but how did your martial arts background really help you um, you know, with your physical prowess and your ability to control suspects safely?

Seb Lavoie 1:52:12

Yeah, you know, the the bulk of the tactics that I used in policing during my patrol time were coming from the clubs. Because I mean, in the clubs, you really get to test what it is that works for you in the in the in the context of controlling somebody without creating a massive amount of unnecessary injuries, right? Because you can. Like if your goal is Muay Thai and I want to strike everybody in the face, a good Muay Thai fighter will win all these fights. But that is not where you, you know, yes, you are paid to win, but is there a way that is not as catastrophic? Is there a way that's much more conducive to a long, healthy career? And to also realize that people have bad days, man. People have bad days. And I don't want to be unloading a whole bunch of elbows in somebody's face when they're having a bad day. Yeah, like I'm just not that guy. I you know, if it's necessary to accomplish the task, I'm all in. No problem. But was it necessary or did I want that? Or did I prepare only for that? So that's the only tool I had.

Host 1:53:19

I see what you're saying. So having you know more tools in the toolbox and just being a little throw a tie kick. Um, I think we kind of skipped over it, but you did bounce for a while. Um, and you were a bouncer, and so you I probably to your point, you got to see kind of what things work and and and what don't.

Seb Lavoie 1:53:33

Absolutely. I mean, the my bouncing years were very enlightening from my martial arts background because I'm okay, this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this doesn't work, and you end up you end up sort of reverting to some things that are working 90% of the time.

Host 1:53:49

Yeah. Um, yeah, it's it's kind of hard for me to watch some of these Instagram videos that we see where either cops are untrained and out of shape or out of shape, you know, and and even if they're trained, they can't do a job because they're out of shape. It's um, you know, it's a pandemic we see in in the United States. I don't know if it's pandemic, but there's I I do feel like the mindset is changing, but it's just frustrating because there's so many tools that exist now, as we've been discussing, that didn't exist when you and I started our careers. And so really, there's really no excuse for folks one to either be out of shape and or untrained, you know, what it even if the department's not paying you to train, like your life is on the line, right? Like at the end of the day, man, I mean, the job of policing, it's inherently dangerous. And so if if you value your life and you want to see your family and you want to keep your partner safe, it's kind of bewildering me uh every now and then when I see these incidents online of cops getting their guns taken or or you know, can't handle a fight or or something, or it's a three-on-one, and you know, that dude's kicking all three of the cops' asses, and you're just like, hey man, why do you not take your health and or your partner and and and your your life, I guess, more more seriously? Was that something that that you would get frustrated, or does RCMP not have that issue?

Seb Lavoie 1:55:06

We all have that issue, brother. Every combatives guy, or every guy that's tactically minded in any organization has that same beef, the inability to convince the masses of what we all know, of what of what has been demonstrated time and time again, that is absolutely irrefutable that we need to train and we need to do it properly. One of the things that is is always shocking to me is we give them all these tools, but you don't build them fundamentally. So if the tools fail, they end up exactly where they should have been, but without the skills. And so what we have is we've breed, we've essentially bred a culture of over-reliance on tools. Their argument, maybe at the managerial level or some of the organizations or institutionally, is that well, we don't want to we don't want to build fighters, like we want people that win. It's like those two things are not mutually exclusive. And when you get in a context of policing, I don't care how a bean counter might look at this, on the street, when fists start flying, you are in a fight. And you need to, in in order to be in a fight, you need to prepare to fight. If you're not prepared to fight and you're prepared to be a professional tool user, I got some bad news. Range is gonna affect this, wind is gonna affect this, you know, losing your baton after a foot chase is gonna affect this. Like all of those things are going to be affecting your ability to enact and safely arrest and take somebody into custody. And so when I look at this, it's the same way I would be training, say, a shooter, give him all the have him practice with the iron sights, get all the fundamentals, do all the things, and then put the fancy optics on. Because if the batteries go down or you knock it off on the side of the door threshold, or whatever the case may be, now you're what is your backup plan? So get the backup plan where it needs to be, right? And so for me, it's always been the same. I hated training as hard as I did, but I didn't do it for me. I did it so your wife, I wasn't wearing, you know, what what she would have to go through on account of me being either lazy or or um in denial about the reality that we were gonna face. And so when I was in the gym at two o'clock in the morning, when I was out doing things, combatives or or getting choked out on the on the on the you know, on the mats or getting punched in the face, I did that so that I could be the person I needed to be for you. So if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for the person and do it for the community, right? It's always a tough, it's a very tough balance in policing. And it's these over reliance on tools. Then it's Hickslock kicking in. They have so many tools that they don't know, they don't know which one to, you know, to deploy and and and and and that. So now you have this this other piece of extra complexity. And then finally, you have the fact that it's low occurrence, high consequence. And so low occurrence, high consequence calls are very difficult to motivate anybody for. And that's where your discipline as a professional Leo should kick in, right? Like if you want to be a pro, you must be capable of doing those things. And whether you want them or not, and however likely or unlikely it is that you're gonna deal with a situation, if you do, the consequences will be catastrophic or could be catastrophic, right?

Host 1:58:30

Great points, bro. Um the Tofino years, what did they teach you about who you wanted to be as a cop versus what cops are usually trained to be?

Seb Lavoie 1:58:38

I think for me, it it was a reinforcing location. It reinforced the fundamental skills of patrol. So a lot of people will argue this. I've had people say this to me before oh, you you have a life in specialized section, you don't understand. It's like you don't understand my first three years were the equivalent of seven years of policing for a normal person. When you're policing 24-7, yeah, you know, you really think about having a regular uh regular job or having regular days off or any of this. We had none of this really.

Host 1:59:11

So you're dealing with everything from drunks to homicides.

Seb Lavoie 1:59:14

Yeah, exactly. And the cross-section was such that you were exposed to a lot more than you would be in in, you know, and by yourself, having to problem solve them. And so the learnings, and I'm not taking away from anybody in the city because there's so much work, good work being done in the cities by our city cops, but I think there is a massive overstating of how much learning there is in a big department, big department, big city when you go from call to call and you're like, okay, gone on arrival, gone, gone, gone, gone. Like we didn't, we didn't we didn't conclude anything. We had to investigate everything, right? And so there is a there is a certain amount of fundamental patrol skills and investigative skills that are developing at a rate that it exp exponentially sort of um supersede what you what you would have had if you were if you were somewhere else where there was more assets to deal with this stuff.

Host 2:00:06

Yeah, and essentially, man, you've got to be good at everything. You can't focus on just traffic stops or, you know, just drug investigations. I mean, you've you've got to be Jack of all trades. Yeah. Uh I remember you told me um a story when when we were preparing um that there was like you had this guy that was going around with a samurai knife uh type thing. And you know, you knew at some point somebody was gonna have to confront this dude. And um, you weren't disparaging anybody else, but you knew that you were the best prepared person, you know, uh at the time to deal with that dude. And uh I'll let you tell the story, but I think you told me you like kind of trained your on-call schedule to make sure that if you know, if if there was a confrontation that you were the one to do that to do that because you knew you could like solve that. Will you tell that story a little bit?

Seb Lavoie 2:00:51

Yeah, so you know, again, uh this individual and he was one of those guys that just trained all the time. He's he he left this campground where he worked, and he came to the city, so that was about uh 10 kilometers one way, and he'd be running in his co in his old OD green army pants, you know, and no shirt on, and quite quite fit, ripped with like a ponytail, and you know, he he was just he was just he was just getting after it, man. He was getting after it, but his ultimate uh sort of uh goal was to resist. Like that's what he did, you know. He just did stupid stuff, and he was wanting to have the ability to prepare. And so if you think that there's no professional people preparing for us out there, you know, we we know that that's the case. We know it's the case, we know it's the case in prison, in institution everywhere, and so it's it's no different. So this guy, you know, had been a pain in the absolute butt of everybody in in the city that includes business owners and people he worked for and and layperson walking by and he, you know, random assaults and all it always borderline, nothing good enough to send him away, but always good enough to see his true character shine through and for him to be doing things to people. Yeah, like a real public nuisance that could be a danger. Precisely and so he had articulated some intent, you know, that what he was gonna do next time a cop came to get him and all this stuff. And so my partner, who she was very capable, but I was more capable physically to handle him. She was probably maybe more capable to handle him and to talk him off. But I was like, at some point, unfortunately, these having a four-hour conversation to get him in the car is has to stop. It has to stop. Like you could you're consistently walking on eggshell, you're consistently, it's almost like he's controlling the policing in your area, so to speak. And he can he can he can sort of suck you into a four-hour conversation and and and create a situation that's even worse because now something serious happens and nobody's there to respond. So essentially, I call dispatch one night when my partner was on call and I said, if this guy gets called in, uh call me. And the dispatcher was like, Yep, got it. And sure enough, you know, a few hours later, he I get I get a call for a disturbance at a party. The guy, I guess, punched four or five people in the face and broke a wall, broke a window, broke a beer bottle, and did a few other knuckleheadish things. And next thing I know, he's coming down towards me in uh, you know, in the fog, right in front of a right in front of a police car. So my lights are sort of my takedown light is right on him. He's empty-handed, he's got nothing, he's got his his uh his fist clinched, which you know sounds made up because you never it's very rare that somebody kind of just stands there and and like to call in the rescues, yeah. So, so you know, I I I got out of the car, I got out of the car, he he took a swing, I I slipped it and and basically, you know, sort of controlled him on the on the front of the police car multiple times until I was able to get you know his hands behind his back and cuff him up and put him in the in the in the back of the police car. So he's he's back there banging his head on the silent partner as they normally do. And uh my attempt to put a seatbelt, I I wasn't risking getting spat on, so I uh I essentially foregoed his safety on account of uh of mine. And so we end up we end up driving to the detachment. And so there was a power outage at the detachment, and the garage door was an opening. So the guard says, You're gonna have to walk him through the detachment. So I get I I walk him through the detachment, I have him in an escort position. He's all as far as I as far as I can tell, he's pretty controlled. I'm holding on an elbow and I'm holding on a wrist lock and I'm, you know, on the same arm, and I got pressure counterpressure, and I'm pretty good. And then eventually he kicks the guard, he tries to kick the guard as hard as possible. I I sort of pull him an inch away just in time. And now he's fighting and kicking and doing all the things. So I ended up wrapping his uh ponytail, you know, I did two, three laps and I dragged him to cells, and his ponytail stays in my hand in cells. And so I walk out, we we shut the door, and I take the ponytail and I put it in an exhibit bag with his name on it, and it's to be signed back, signed back to him the next day. And so my partner who should have charged him for a haircut. Oh yeah. I wonder if retroactively, maybe. So so I I my partner gets up in the morning and she goes to release this prisoner. She has no idea who he is, she sees who it is, she knows what I did, she knows she was on call. She should have been dealing with him, but she knows you know what I did. And so she goes to the uh to release him, and as she's taking items out of the uh of the locker, all of a sudden is ponytailed in an exhibit bag. And she called me a few hours later laughing. Did you guys ever have to deal with him again?

Host 2:06:00

Yeah, he learned he learned, man, all it takes is one. I I remember, you know, some calls um in you know, in my days where you know we had two different night shifts, and one night shift was less aggressive than the other. I was on the aggressive shift, and we remember have to tell those guys, like, hey man, you know, you're soft-handing all these people and you're making our jobs harder, you know what I mean? Because they they don't respect you. And so when we show up, they think we're you guys. And so, you know, we've kind of had to remind them. And so it got to the point like the criminals knew the different shifts on who was working, man. Like, uh-oh, these dudes are working. Uh, let's let's wait till let's wait till the next shift. So it sounds like it was similar for you guys.

Seb Lavoie 2:06:37

Oh, yeah, and they know different uniforms too. I mean, I've I've got some some other stories, you know, of me just going into into biker bars where cops were assaulted earlier during the night, and they were given strict strict guidelines not to go in there with less than six, and I'd be walking in there by myself or my partner was reading a newspaper out in the truck, you know? And I think it's important to have it's important to have that presence where they don't think they can just changing your SOPs and adding some unreasonable amount of burden is really interfering with our ability to do our job. If you say if you tell people you need six members to go in this place, what does that mean if there's an assault in progress? What does that mean if anything happens? Like, how do you now reprioritize lives and how we expect our patrol officers to do that? Ultimately, the organization itself, the institution or the department needs to have some credibility. You know, I I'm not seeing Georgia, Georgia State Patrol. Yeah, bro.

Host 2:07:37

I mean, and you and you look in, you know, again, I don't want to dive into politics, but you look at certain states in the US and you know what what that political makeup is, man, and it it has to do with there is a respect for a certain amount of respect. And, you know, look, man, I mean, I'm sure Canada's no different. Some people just don't respect the cops, and there's some people you're gonna show up to call and you're gonna fight regardless. But if you're good at your job, you know, 80% of those can probably be avoided, and the 20% they were always gonna fight. And that's why, to your point that we're talking about, you have to be ready for those because you don't know when those are gonna happen, right? Like you and I were talking yesterday about the prevalence of complacency in law enforcement, which has always been an issue, man. You can do 500 traffic stops and nothing might happen, but you know, the moment you drop your guard, that 501 is when they pull the gun out and they shoot you. And we've all seen the videos, you know, of those, you know, looking like what a routine traffic stop would be, and then they go violent in the uh in the blink of an eye. It's why, man, I mean, I don't wear the uniform anymore, and I know you don't, but you and I both have a vast amount of respect for those that are still doing it because it's it hasn't gotten easier, it's gotten much harder. Um, I was talking recently um to a pr another podcast guest who spent 30 years in law enforcement, and um, you know, we had the the Ferguson incident and the George Floyd incident, and that, you know, that fundamentally changed law enforcement. I don't know if that did that had an effect in Canada as well.

Seb Lavoie 2:09:00

Oh, absolutely. I mean two two massive, massive influential events, that and Uvaldi.

Host 2:09:08

Yeah, oh right.

Seb Lavoie 2:09:09

We we yes, there's there's really nothing that happens here that we don't somehow become a you know by proxy affected. Sure. That includes foreign policies and all kinds of things, right? I guess so it's so it is it is one of those things. We the the George Floyd incident, you know, of course, very, very sensitive topic. Sure.

Host 2:09:31

But and it's even sensitive among law enforcement. Oh, yeah. You know, there's varying degrees of opinion that I'm definitely not going to cover during this podcast. But but you know, yeah, it's it's um it just became harder. So it is very interesting to me that Canada um, you know, has has fallout from from US incidences, policies, foreign national policy, whatever. Uh, but even at the local law enforcement, it's very um it's very interesting. What else happened during those three extremely formative years early on in your RCMP career?

Seb Lavoie 2:10:00

Yeah, lots, lots happened. Lots of good, lots of good stuff happened there. Um I would say if I had to if I had to sort of rank them, I would say probably the best thing that happened to me there is the amount of training I was able to do. I was able to do so much training. There wasn't there was an ammo room with bullets from floor to top that nobody had used, and for years it had been stacked there. You know, so I was able to, as I slowly developed in my use of force realm, so I became a firearms instructor at six months of service, and then I did the the combatives and the police defensive tactics and all of the things. So as as my service was moving and as I was demonstrating certain certain abilities and propensity for certain things, they use me as a West Coast sort of subject matter expert in the use of force realm. I was reviewing files, I was doing all kinds of things, but that location gave me the opportunity to be able to conduct training, not only for myself, but also for the members of the area, but also it allowed me to train and prepare for what would come down the pipe later, where I was wanting to go. You know, that's not given to everybody. You go to a location somewhere, there is no support for training, you can't get ammo, you have to pay for your own ammo, you don't have range access. There's a variety of different things that can happen. And so for somebody to be placed in a strategic location where they have the ability to engage in all this training and getting you know better at things and really challenging themselves and others is that's a godsend. There's no question that that's the case. And so that was probably the one of the best things that I've really, really appreciated about that posting. Now, secondary to this was all the proxy stuff that we got to do. I got the you know, the boat operator course, and with a boat comes a crab trap, and a crab trap. Dumps in the ocean and your dinner comes from the crab trap. Delicious, bro. You know? So it's interesting because I had some friends that were all over all over the country. Some of them, one of them in particular, was in Richmond, British Columbia, which is a big city. And I remember him calling me in the morning, telling me about his traffic incidents and the traffic stop that he spent four hours on. And I'm like, cool. I got called out to go retrieve a suicidal mail from a boat in the middle of the ocean. And the Coast Guard came and got us at two o'clock in the morning. We jumped on this Coast Guard ship. Now, Coast Guard in Canada aren't military, but they they still have really cool equipment. And uh we get in there and and and out we go on the open ocean, searching for a ship that we have to clear, do all the things, and then we come back, you know? And so having the ability to get such a wide cross section of work in in it's such a varied environment, and just having the exposure to the beauty of life, not just policing itself and do it between concrete blocks and and and you know going from block to block, but really having an opportunity to engage with nature when I was there, because it's an absolutely beautiful, stunning spot, one of the most beautiful spots in the world. And so having the ability to engage with that, having the ability to grab my coffee at six o'clock in the morning and go to Long Beach, which is if you have never looked this up, look it up. It's one of the most beautiful beaches, there's surfing there, all of the things. Essentially Hawaii without the warm water, you know. But I remember starting my shift, and I would be up at five o'clock, whatever, doing my workout, and then I'd take my police car, I'd do my checks, do all the things, and then I'd roll right to Long Beach with my coffee and sit there in the front and just take this, take the scenery in, take it in, you know, really sort of feed that gratitude bug on the daily. So then started my day right for whatever was coming down the pipe later, you know.

Host 2:14:07

Yeah, that's uh that sounds freaking amazing, man. Um, you know, it's funny. Did you keep in contact with your academy classmates those first couple years as you guys are like comparing stories?

Seb Lavoie 2:14:17

Yeah, especially the the boys that had a propensity to go towards the SWAT or towards the emergency response team, those guys, especially, but some other friends as well. Not very long. I mean, maybe I would say a decade. After a decade, we we really didn't know.

Host 2:14:32

Was your ex at what point in those conversations did you realize like you had really gone somewhere completely different than your classmates?

Seb Lavoie 2:14:39

10 minutes in my first conversation.

Host 2:14:43

You're like, cool, cool story, bro. You did what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Uh I've been doing that the entire time I've been here. Yeah, that's uh it's kind of cool. And you're a really humble guy, so you know, I'm sure like you're you were always, you know, a certain way about it. But it's uh, you know, as a guy who's serving law enforcement, you know, I remember when we were, you know, prepping your podcast, even my brain was just like, you did what? Wow, how does you know it was really kind of cool? Um, it sounds like you were always like drawn, um, probably because your military background and just who you are as a human to the more tactical side of operations of law enforcement, that kind of paramilitary culture. Um how hard is it to get into those units in Canada and how hard did you have to chase that?

Seb Lavoie 2:15:27

Yeah, it's it's you know, it's it's hard. It's hard. I mean, there is there's a lot less variety either on the military side or on the police side. And so, you know, if you're not super good at swimming, maybe you stay away from certain units. If you're really good at this, maybe you go to certain units. So you in the US, you guys have such a wide range, and I'm I'm absolutely not taken away from all these units, can do all the things, but there is there is work that a person is by character or by experience more conducive to do. And for us, it's a very, very small percentage of people that can make it in these units because there's only so many of them, yeah. Right. And so you have to have the there are certain things that are unshakable that that need to be in order for you to be successful. And so is it realistic for people willing to work hard and do things? Absolutely. It's within reach.

Host 2:16:18

There's a lot of hate in US law enforcement between SWAT and the patrol division, man, because those are the prima donnas, and you know, is it like that in Canada as well?

Seb Lavoie 2:16:26

At times it can be, but I'll I'll tell you, my experience has been vastly different. And I think that the way the culture of the team is a is a critical part of that. The interoperability and and and oftentimes for management to realize that, yeah, the the SWAT kit is important, but also we got to strike that balance. And and we as operators also have opportunities to bridge those gaps. You know, I remember being on calls on say I was working with the the secret cat out, the counter-attack team out in um an event in Quebec, in Montebello, Quebec. It was um George Bush was there and it was a G3 summit or some some summit.

Host 2:17:10

Oh, it was our US Secret Service cat?

Seb Lavoie 2:17:12

Correct, yeah. So Mike, I was the Canadian cat, they were the U.S. cat, we worked together. And really, what did we do? Well, we were in full gear, sitting in a car, sitting in a in suburbans watching movies. Meanwhile, patrol is on the fence all the way to the rank of inspector in the commission ranks, and they're freezing because it's cold at night and it has all the things, they can't go anywhere, they they barely can get relief, all of those things. So, my job as, say, the element lead on that operation was hey guys, like we're gonna go around, we're gonna take the quads, we're gonna go around, we're gonna we're gonna dish out some warm clothes, we're gonna relieve some people that need to go to the washroom, we're gonna bring in food, we're gonna take care of them because nobody else will. Right? So I think that oftentimes these little opportunities to bridge those gaps are critical. Inversely, if you're in the gym for four hours while calls are burning out and patrol is getting slaughtered out there, like resentment and bitterness will grow. There is no question that that's the case. And so I think we we really had a patrol function for the first 10 years on the team. So we were out on patrol in all these various areas. And our job was to essentially target select the calls that we would go to. And so if something came down on the air that required our attention, and if we didn't catch it on the air, maybe dispatch would call us and say, hey, switch to Burnaby channel we have, or switch to Richmond channel, we have X, Y, and Z going on, then we would go and attend these patrol calls. And so that was real life. I'm dealing with a call right now, and 10 minutes later, the first SWAT guys arrived. They, you know, they were here already, and then we could offer some level of of expertise and setting up containment and getting our assets ready or getting investigational details, the stuff that we needed to get our get the job done. But oftentimes what we ended up doing is we were senior officers on scene, essentially.

Host 2:19:04

Yeah. So we, you know, because you're still RCMP guys, dude. You know, it's still that that's cool, man. I mean, there are dudes out there in the tactical community that don't forget where they come from and don't forget, you know, uh it's it's a patrol division that really runs a city or a or a state or whatever, man. I mean, that's that is the backbone, and that sometimes gets gets lost. So it's cool to hear that, you know, you never lost that. And I mean, I I I you know, we've all been around those super tactical military and law enforcement guys that, you know, are super arrogant. And so it kind of gets to the point you don't want to learn, but but I you always remember those dudes who did those cool things, but still treat you like, you know, like you're something, and and it just makes you want to learn from them more. Um, and so it's it's cool to hear you use those opportunities to improve relationships with with street guys, and I'm sure that earned you a certain amount of respect and credibility.

Seb Lavoie 2:19:50

Yeah, I mean I'm I'm not sure you know what it earned me, but it earned me having good relationships with people. And and I think that it's a it's a very uh hard-earned items or things that are that are operationally relevant generally do not generate arrogance. What you've often find is you you'll take somebody that hasn't done much as an operator, which hasn't been tested, the metal tested, you know, through the crucible of operations day in and day out and really getting humble. It's no different with jujitsu. You know, you've never been, if you've never been on the mats, you can walk around thinking you're this tough guy. But once a 16-year-old girl chokes you out, you understand that, okay, I can do better here and I can work harder or do the things. So without, you know, and that metaphor can apply and extrapolate on a variety of other fronts. But the reality is when you see guys that have done legitimate work where on the daily they would make mistakes and get and get taken down and have to reassess and have to do better. Generally, those are not really conducive to developing an overwhelming amount of arrogance. I'm not saying that at individual traits you might not get that, but culturally it's very difficult. And so I think that's something for me as a team leader and even as an element leader, even as a senior constable, I saw every opportunity of linking up with any of the members in any circumstances as an opportunity to bridge those gaps. If they came in and I was unloading my truck and they were like, oh, what do you got in there? And I was tired after a 19-hour call-out or whatever, I would still take the time to give them the tour, to explain everything, do all the things because that little thing matters. And ultimately I cared about them. It's not like I didn't, and I wasn't doing it for the purpose of getting that sort of that reward. But it was it was about like, hey man, like you have an opportunity to be a flag bearer here. Just just, you know, I'm sorry for Canadian for being a flag bearer today, but GSP and Dallas Alexanders weren't uh available. But but um you you know what I'm you know what I'm getting at. It's we have opportunities at every little thing that we do to do it in a way that's conducive to building those relationships.

Host 2:22:01

You know what's crazy now. You and I are a lot older, uh, and you ended up in a in a leadership position. I've I've been in leadership as well, not to to to your level. But you know, I I think we don't think about it when we're younger, but part of our job as we get older and longer in the tooth is to raise the next generation. And that that guy, you're a dick, might to might have been a great operator later on in life, but you just turned him off. Like, man, I don't want to be one of those arrogant dudes. So it's definitely an opportunity to, you know, to to to to get the next generation of the people that are gonna take your job interested and and to set that tone and standard, because I guarantee those people that you spent time with showing your truck when you were too tired or whatever, man. Like it doesn't really take that much time, but it could have less a left a lasting impact. Now, look, man, does showing somebody your SWAT truck who's already a cop, I mean, you're not a hero or anything, but you know, man, it we we focus a lot, I think in society, on the large things, but it's really the little things in life. I mean, I learned that, you know, in a marriage class one time, right? Like we focus on, you know, holidays and birthdays, but it's really the little things, you know, the small note, or you know, you taking over for dinner because your wife's tired, you know, like, and it's it's no different. So it's really cool to hear you um speak on that. Uh, one thing before we kind of dive into the next phase of your career, um, one of the things I noticed too is you got stationed out in Tefino in 2001. Where I I haven't had a chance to ask a Canadian this, but where were you uh on 9-11? And do you remember that day much?

Seb Lavoie 2:23:24

I do. So on 9-11, I was uh releasing a prisoner from our bay, from our from just a uh intoxicated individual that we ended up ended up spending a night to sober up in in cells. And I've just finished releasing him and I was turning the TV on, which also I've never done really since. I mean, I've just don't watch TV, but you know, there's nothing good there, bro. Yeah, exactly. There is nothing. No, there isn't. Um well the van the Vanguard Wall podcast, obviously. But uh aside from that, good plug, bro. I like what you did there. Uh so yeah, so I turned the TV on and I saw the first plane hit, and then I it just call me cynical or call me whatever. I knew exactly what this was immediately. I just didn't didn't think that it was some sort of you know operational mistake that led to an entire airliner hitting the tower. I just and especially not in in regular visibility. So I just I didn't I immediately my mind went to terrorist event, which which from an international security standpoint is still debatable in a sense that you know the Taliban have had a government in place at the time, and if they associate with, then is that uh anyways, but uh that's for another another conversation. That's a separate podcast, bro. But um, but yeah, it you know, and so I remember watching and and knew knowing exactly. I also knew that some of the units from the Canadian units are were gonna go somewhere, something's gonna happen, you know. And then sure enough, the second tower hit and the whole thing came down. And yeah, it was uh it was a horrible day, man.

Host 2:25:07

Yeah, uh politics aside, Canadian or Canada, Canadians have always been a great partner uh with the US, man. I mean, whether it's you know law enforcement, you know, I I joked with you. I've never met a Canadian I didn't like, I'm sure there's plenty of assholes in Canada, but you know, um I've traveled to Canada a couple times. I've you know been around Canadian um military dudes, and it's just there's this affinity that's like we're so different, but we're we're so the same. We speak the same language. Um my French isn't good, but um, you know, neither is mine for the most part. So yeah, I I just always wonder kind of not maybe what the effect on Canada was, but um, you know, did did the RCMP over the next couple years start uh like recent, I mean, counterterrorism became a focus. I mean, not you and Tofino, but I mean, was that something that was being talked about in RCMP?

Seb Lavoie 2:25:52

And um Yeah, there, you know, there was a lot of stones being turned during 9-11, of course, all the interoperability slash comms issues and all the things that New York experienced with Port Authority and all these other organizations and the lack of information sharing and the empire building. Listen, those things are not a US concept. No, we all experience those things, right? And so when when something happens that exposes these things, you have two choices. You wait until it's your turn and repeat the same mistakes, or you make some adjustment, and there better be some substantial adjustment. And there were some substantial adjustments, and we were able to go back to the Canadian government and have some buy-in in some of the items that we were trying to purchase in some of the programs, and of course, the the Canadian Air Carrier Program, which was the equivalent of the U.S. Air Marshal Program, was one of the one of the ramifications of 9-11. It was as a direct result of the attacks. But there was plenty of other things. CBRN policies, all kinds of money being opened up for training. As as as tragic as it was, at the very least, some lessons were were taken, you know.

Host 2:27:06

Yeah, I remember law enforcement pre-9-11 in America, it was, you know, the cops program, community-oriented policing, you know, it's it's you know, hugs and thugs. And then after 9-11, like everything became, you know, more homeland security focused. And that's to your point, you know, you would actually like start changing the way you worded grants to get equipment, you know, instead of focusing on a community thing. It was like, well, we need this because of, you know, a counter-terrorism, uh, at least in the big cities for sure, man.

Seb Lavoie 2:27:31

Um, so that's that's interesting to to to hear your and there were some legal frameworks, you know, nothing interesting, but there were some legal frameworks that was changed as well in in the Canadian uh criminal code, you know, terrorist act introduction, a variety of other things that were, you know, either establishing different or wider police powers in certain instances, um, investigative, investigative tools, uh, all of all of the things. So it it was a multi-realm sort of transformation on very short order.

Host 2:28:04

You know, it's gonna sound ignorant. I'm I'm sure you guys have it, but does Canada have an intelligence service similar to what we have as the CIA?

Seb Lavoie 2:28:11

Yes and no.

Host 2:28:13

Is it is it a function of the RCM key?

Seb Lavoie 2:28:15

No, it's C Sys. Um, I I wouldn't go as far as to compare it to the CIA. I mean, the CIA's reach is you know, is the CIA's reach.

Host 2:28:25

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 2:28:26

Good and bad. You're probably listening. Good and bad, bro.

Host 2:28:30

I love the CIA. Um, I'm sorry if this comes across as anything.

Seb Lavoie 2:28:34

I actually have a CIA t-shirt on today. Yeah, dude.

Host 2:28:37

Yeah. Um all jokes aside, let's switch topics, bro. Just kidding. Um, so you know, at what point do you, you know, you decide, hey man, Tofino's been cool, um, but I'm I'm ready for something else. Uh, what was your next move and how did that come about?

Seb Lavoie 2:28:57

Well, 9-11 was a catalyst immediately. Uh so I I I kind of toyed with two prospects. I am returning to military service because I know that now the Canadian forces are going to be busy. And I'm and I'm already much more of a military mindset than a police mindset at that time. So it just would have made sense. Uh I was semi-single, I didn't have kids. You know, I was, I was, I would have been good to go.

Host 2:29:25

Well, that thought process is like, man, I should have stayed in the Canadian military.

Seb Lavoie 2:29:28

Oh, yeah. It entered my mind. And so, but you know, I had some conversations with some some people I trusted. Uh, one of those with my mom, she was still alive at the time. And one of the things she had said was, What happens if everybody that has a function to protect to protect people here is gone overseas doing something? Like what, you know, and so that ship is sailed. You're here now, you have a you know, a critical function. Why don't you stick around and and and police? You know, since that's and she was right. I mean, it would it was the call. It was it was it was the right call at the time, considering what my care my career went afterwards. But that I think for myself felt powerless or useless, you know, in that sense. And so attaching myself to a certain purpose which was directly related to 9-11 to a certain extent made me feel like I was doing something in response to what was going on, which which helped me deal with the fact that I wasn't going overseas or going back with my unit or doing anything, you know, uh dynamic or kinetic, so to speak. And so yeah, that's that's that's where the decision, that's when the decision entered my mind. And I did a bit of research on the program. They said it's it's tough physically, mentally, emotionally, it's the shooting parameters are difficult, all of those things. I was like, sign me up.

Host 2:30:59

This is when you joined the Canadian Air Marshals?

Seb Lavoie 2:31:01

Yeah, correct.

Host 2:31:02

Um, and was that uh did you have to do like X amount of time as a new guy before you can put in for another assignment?

Seb Lavoie 2:31:08

Yeah, I think at the time it was supposed to be three years, but because it was a national priority, and when when they stamped those two words on anything, yeah, everything goes. Oh, and and enter divisional transfers, like whatever. It just doesn't matter. And so that's precisely what happened there. They had it as a national priority, which made sense in light of 9-11. That's sped up a lot of the bureaucratic sludge that we tend to deal with. And so they gave me an offer. They it originally they denied me, and then they waited, I waited another couple months, and then they needed me. And so they sent me uh an offer. The offer was you go on the air carrier course, on the Canadian Air Carrier Protective course, and you are successful, you go to the unit in Vancouver. If you are not successful, we're sending you on the streets in a big city. And at the time that street was a street of Surrey. Surrey now has its own police force, but for multiple decades, the RCMP was responsible for that city, and that city is a war zone.

Host 2:32:15

Surrey's a suburb of Vancouver, right? Correct.

Seb Lavoie 2:32:18

Yeah. And it has it's it's it's a, you know, at the time it was a it was a less desirable place to be. It was fun, action-wise, but it was it was a tough, it was a tough spot. And so they gave me really no choice. I'm either successful and I go to that program, or I just left the I just left the limited duration posting in Tefino, which is generally associated with picking where you want to go next. And I'd sort of foregoed that. If I fail, I'm gonna be on the street, you know.

Host 2:32:49

So if you would have like spent your full full time in Tofino, then you kind of get next station of assignment because most people don't want to go to that smaller correct. Uh so it really was kind of like I I take this risk and there's a lot to gain but a lot to lose.

Seb Lavoie 2:33:00

Yes.

Host 2:33:01

Yeah, but that's kind of where the magic happens sometimes.

Seb Lavoie 2:33:03

I couldn't agree more. Burn the boats. Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

Host 2:33:07

Um what was uh, you know, you've been on a lot of podcasts because I did a lot of research, but you you haven't really talked about this um a lot. Or I actually I I think just not a lot of hosts have asked you about it. Uh, but I'm curious. I've known a lot of people that worked in an arm air marshal program. I know like our air marshals, their training. I can't speak to what it now. I knew a lot of guys early, and it was to your point, man, it was really tough. The shooting, I think at the time for America, it was like one of the hardest shooting courses, you know, short of a tier one unit. But for law enforcement, I think it was the toughest shooting standard. Was it the same in Canada?

Seb Lavoie 2:33:38

Yeah, yeah, it was exactly the same. The very and all of this is open source, by the way. I'm not gonna launch into any diatribe on protected material, but uh, but yeah, the combatives, very combatives heavy, very shooting heavy, very scenario based heavy, or CQB as it were in tubes, all of all of all of the things. So we Yeah. It it's a it was probably one of the one of the RCMP's best kept secret because it was such a secretive unit that really people didn't know much about it, which allowed us all kinds of freedom, you know, to do all kinds of things and and preparation for what it is that we were asked to do. And so use of force as I knew it, or use of force as we as say patrol officers are are are used to was kinda pretty much, you know, not turfed. It was still it was still an underpinning, but the risk is uh assessed very differently in a tube at 30,000 feet with targets on the ground and 300 people in and those types of things.

Host 2:34:40

You start shooting rounds and causing pressure changes, dude, and that's uh that can affect a lot of people. Um how long was the training um that you went through?

Seb Lavoie 2:34:49

I it's that was in 2003, I I can't remember now. It was eight, nine weeks maybe, or something. Or I know that the first the first three weeks were primarily shooting, just dialing us in in the shooting. And we were shooting a ton.

Host 2:35:08

Our guys, I think, were carrying at the time 357 SIGs. What what were you guys carrying um on the airplane?

Seb Lavoie 2:35:14

No, we had the same 5946 Smith and Wesson that the patrol had, but black in the beginning. It it eventually transitions. They have Glocks now, I think. But uh yeah, I was of the old, you know.

Host 2:35:26

I always laugh at that that whole gun topic, um, you know, as a guy who spent his whole life shooting. I and even friends now that know my background all come ask me about, you know, what handgun, I'm gonna buy this gun or that. And I'm like, bro, I it's a hammer, man. Like, buy a decent gun, but spend twice as much money on train as you do, you know, because I'm not a big like this gun versus that. I have my own preferences, but I mean a nine mil will kill you, and it doesn't really care what kind of you know tube it comes through. I think most of it's just you know, what do you like, what fits your hand better. Um, but I I was curious of what you guys were carrying. I didn't know if they gave you a different frame because you are shooting so much, man.

Seb Lavoie 2:36:03

Um, yeah, it would have been it would have been great to have a different platform if I'm being honest. No at the time.

Host 2:36:09

Yeah, because that's Myth and Wessons. That's it becomes a pain in the ass to conceal, dude, which is like that's half the job, right? Like not look like a cop. Um, it's funny because I still play the game uh in the airport every now and then to pick out the air marshals. And uh they're our our guys are pretty good at blending in. Was that something like you guys learned in the training too? Like how to blend in.

Seb Lavoie 2:36:27

Yeah, of course, all those things are tradecrafts, right? Like all those things, all those things are part of the training curriculum. And and of course, they do a really decent job and they bring SMEs and that. It's not it's not internal processes or you know, tactical guys trying to be covert because we know how how good we are at that generally.

Host 2:36:44

Bro, yeah, knucklehead sticking on my when I started doing covert surveillance work, man. I literally had to like change the way I walked and you know, you gotta dress different, which is hard for me, man. I'm an I'm a knuckle dragger, dude. Um, what were um, you know, again, we of course we don't want to go into any operational stuff, but what was that job like doing that for for four years?

Seb Lavoie 2:37:07

That was the holy grail of policing, as far as I was concerned, in the sense that I was able to train all over the world. Jiu Jitsu, running on the beach, hitting gyms left, right, and center, experiencing different training styles, going to powerlifting gyms, going to strongman gyms, going to gymnastics gym.

Host 2:37:32

And that's because you're traveling internationally on spikes.

Seb Lavoie 2:37:35

And then you have downtime. Yeah. So you don't have a ton of downtime, but you have enough downtime that you can do one of two things. You can go out and get, you know, drink your face off and wake up and be utterly useless, which I have a time done back in the days when I could drink one. But really, on short order, you start realizing how can I optimize what's coming next? How can I optimize my chances of success? And and that feeds into that whole, you know, how you do anything is how you do everything. So for me, it became a realization very early in that stint. Yeah, in the beginning it was fun, it was all those things. Oh, I'm in Miami, cool. But eventually it became okay, I'm in Miami, now it's four o'clock in the morning and I'm on the beach running, you know, because that opportunity is there. And you start treating these things that we it's almost like we invert the the paradigm. You know, I'm gonna treat myself to crappy food, or I'm gonna treat myself to a night of drinking. Like, really?

Host 2:38:31

Yeah, I'm gonna treat myself to a night of poison. Like that's not how we think about it, but I feel like sometimes that's how we should think about it.

Seb Lavoie 2:38:37

100%. And for me, it became it became apparent quite quite quickly. And so, you know, that that four and a half years I spent on the unit was instrumental in how comfortable I felt, say, on the earth course later, and we'll talk about this later, but it it just it was perfect. As the Fino had been as a stepping stone for me to go to the air carrier program, the air carrier program became that from a self-development perspective.

Host 2:39:04

To to get into SWAT or to to the you guys call it ERT, is that right?

Seb Lavoie 2:39:08

Yeah, emergency response team, yeah.

Host 2:39:09

Um, was that always still the goal for you?

Seb Lavoie 2:39:12

Like it from the very, very beginning from day one.

Host 2:39:15

Super cool, man. It's it's cool to hear how you know you you you have this thing and you know you're gonna stop at nothing to to get the thing, and everything, you know, can either help or hurt you on the way. And it's really like it's your choice. I it's like I tell my kids, man, life is a choose your own adventure book, man. Um, what are some of the nuances of doing the air carrier thing that a lot of people don't don't think about?

Seb Lavoie 2:39:36

You don't realize how difficult it is to reach in the overhead bin without exposing anything.

Host 2:39:40

Oh, yeah, especially when you're carrying a fucking hand cannon.

Seb Lavoie 2:39:44

Just put just put a flashlight on your hip or anywhere in your appendix, whatever you want to carry, and and and play with that. Go go remove your luggage out of the overhead bin doing all kinds of things and or go to the washroom and without indexing, without not only without indexing, but index indexing discreetly where you can you know do things that are not patternized or not easily patternized or recognized, but maintain the same level of covertness. We all know, you know, what do we see when we see when we want to see when we're looking at somebody at uh sort of characteristic of somebody with a gun or somebody packing? There's telltale signs, and we'll pick them up all the time, right? This is what we do as patrol officers, as SWAT guys, at whatever. So we so we're used to that. And so try now to think about how would you pick that person up if they didn't display any of those, but they still have to do it. Like, when does this happen? Yeah, you know, so it's a very so so if I want to go to the washroom in 20 minutes, maybe I mean now, you know, like and then maintain continuity over that shirt is for the rest of the time, you know. I don't know. It's just it's just a very interesting realization.

Host 2:40:49

Yeah, and a lot of people don't realize when you fly armed, um, you gotta stay awake and a lot of sleep on a plane. Oh no. Um and it sounds a lot easier um than than it is, dude, but you know, you can't drink and and you're under all these auspices, and it's I'm sure, did you experience like mental gymnastics of always trying to like keep yourself awake and alert, not get complacent when you're just sitting on a plane for hours every day?

Seb Lavoie 2:41:13

You know, no. Um, and I think purpose-driven purpose-driven flight is a completely different proposition. When you're when you're going somewhere and you're kicking back, letting the the hair down, and you're heading to Hawaii or you're heading to Vegas or whatever, you're in a completely different mindset. Not that you're not prepared, but something's gonna have to drag you out of that vacation mode, unless you're one of those guys that's always on. And I'm I'm I'm not. I'm not always on.

Host 2:41:43

Those people are exhausting you, bro. Hey, bro, let's make a plan. Like, we're going to the bathroom, dude. Calm down.

Seb Lavoie 2:41:49

And I'm okay with with like having some general essay, but I don't you know, I don't want to make my situation or an S all of a sudden a tactical operation. But um, but when you are purpose-driven, your scenario-based training is so intense that you just can't unsee the things you've seen and you and you know how quickly things can go per shape, you tend to stay awake. Not only that, but also you have you have a collective responsibility. And for me, that's massive. What have I stepped up to do? You know, I stepped up to to do something to interfere with with evil, for lack of better term, um, in the context of public safety. And so all these lives by default are kind of mine, you know. And I know that's a that's an appropriation, you know, and it's a lot of it's a burden, it's a self-imposed burden, but that's what worked for me. I'm not saying that works for everybody. Somebody might trigger themselves like an anxiety level that's unmanageable by thinking that way. But for me, it worked. I I I had a set purpose, I worked hard for it, I continued training hard for it, and I didn't want to fail ever. So not with a moment of inattention, not with a not with a stupid mistake, any of those things. And so I think it's a very different proposition when you're flying to work.

Host 2:43:06

Yeah, that's uh that's an interesting point too. And um early on in our air marshal program, it was more of uh kind of a reactive thing. And then I know later on they started doing proactive work. I know the Viper teams would chase people on the watch list and and and all that kind of stuff. Were did you guys were you guys similar? Did did did you guys switch at some point from being reactive, waiting for something to happen, and then you know, do pro some proactive work?

Seb Lavoie 2:43:31

I think there was proactive work through the entire process through Intel and variety of different things. Yeah. But we didn't have uh designated, you know. A lot of the proactive work came and my at my time because we were so new in the program, was about developing international relationships and protocols.

Host 2:43:49

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 2:43:50

Because that was still, you know, jump out of a plane and build a parachute on the way down, kind of thing.

Host 2:43:56

Um were you doing international flights? How does that work flying internationally armed? Um, is that something you have to like clear country, like do country clearances? And how does that work? I know how it works on the US side. I'm just curious how it works in Canada.

Seb Lavoie 2:44:06

Yeah, that's something I can't get into, unfortunately.

Host 2:44:10

No, no, I got it. Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 2:44:11

Um, and then did you guys ever have any close calls or anytime you had to activate? We had some uh we had some dry runs. So I didn't personally, but we as a unit had some dry runs, certainly. Yeah, where people essentially the idea is testing the boundaries. What what and how far can we go to draw them out? How far can we go to get them to activate? How far can we go without getting necessarily uh killed in the process, you know?

Host 2:44:36

And our guys in the states that do red cell work, bro. Yeah, uh yeah, they're they're scary good. Yeah. Um well, cool. Uh so you do that for, you know, you were there for four years, I think, right? Four and a half, yeah. Um and then do you ever did you get to the point where you're just like, all right, man, I'm I'm ready for the next thing. I can't sit on airplanes anymore. Because I would imagine at some point it gets monotonous.

Seb Lavoie 2:44:59

I actually considering that it was a stepping stone for me to go to the teams, I was waiting for the opportune time to go to selection. Cool. And at the time, the the team that I was looking to go to was transitioning from a part-time role to a full-time role. And so that extra time on the unit allowed me the luxury of of waiting for the team to go full-time, which is ultimately what I wanted. Because otherwise I would have had to move halfway across the country to go to a full-time team. And so the lower mainland team became full-time at the perfect time, you know, in my in my career, in my life journey.

Host 2:45:36

And so God's providence, dude.

Seb Lavoie 2:45:39

I mean, the the the signs and the synchronicities are everywhere. It just was meant to be, and there's no other way, there's no other way about it. And so I waited, and eventually an opportunity came to go to selection for the full-time team. I asked my boss if I could go to selection, and my boss was like, Man, you know, I'm really short on guys and all the things. So I said, What if I give you an extra six months? He's like, Yep, if you if you go to selection, you're successful, I'll send you on the course, you can do the assaulters course, but I would love to get you back for six months before you transfer to the team. So I asked the team, the team was like, Yep, good to go. So I checked that box.

Host 2:46:20

Um, can you kind of just I mean, look, a lot of our officers are probably or a lot of our listeners are tactile-oriented. Um, but for those that aren't, can you kind of just break down um kind of how Canada's ERT program is, like geographics, just generally. Yeah, absolutely. Generalities.

Seb Lavoie 2:46:38

Absolutely. So I just be you know, keep in mind I've been retired since 21 now, so things have are evolving and they consistently are. In fact, I left the team in 19. I'm essentially tactically irrelevant, right? So that's the reality, and the guys that are in there now are much better than I ever was. But um, all that being said, it's still roughly the same. So you have some part-time teams and some full-time teams, depending on the location, and that's not no different than the US. Yeah. I think one of the main differences that there is a centralized training course. So the assaulters course is the same for part-time operators and full-time operators. Is that all held at one place? Correct. Cannot range in Ottawa. And there's a obviously there's a variety of other proxy locations and all kinds of things and travels that are included as well, depending on what portion of the course you're in. But uh so the teams, whether they're full-time or part-time, if they're part-time, they will have ancillary duties, so they'll be patrol dude or whatever. Investigators, patrol officers, whatever, whatever. And then they can be, I don't know if it's still the case, but in my time, they could be of all ranks. It really didn't matter. When the team came together, maybe the TL was a constable, and maybe uh a sergeant was, you know, um, just a breacher or something, you know. Like at the time it was like this because it was not rank base. It was just the team came together, hit hit it off, went, went out on the calls, did their training. It took away from these investigative units a lot. It also was doubling the burden on them because imagine leading a robbery unit and being a TL on a team. Uh good luck, right? On a part-time team. And so, and the end guys handled it as best they could, and they did a fantastic job at that. But it's just realistically, it's not the best way to do it, and we know that. And so a lot of the teams went full-time. And the Lower Mainland team was one of those teams that was very, very operationally engaged that should have been full-time a long time ago. But there was arguments for and against all the things, and it needed the right person to write the right business case, and we ended up having a team that's that's a full-time team. When I started on the team, there was 18 guys on the team. There's now 68.

Host 2:48:45

Oh, wow.

Seb Lavoie 2:48:45

Yeah. So there's that's just one area. Yeah, correct. And so, but it covers like a massive, massive geographical area. And so some of those teams are having it having it a lot harder than we do, in the sense that you know, we talk about the lower mainland team, and that's my experience. But really, guys that are in smaller teams often have to do a lot more double duties and all the things. So the the work still has to happen, but they have a lot less bodies, a lot less option, a lot less everything. So, in a lot of ways, being on a smaller team in other locations, the guys are run off their feet, and even some part-time teams can find themselves run off their feet at times. And so, in terms of operational capacity and operational, we were in a favorable location, yeah, and that the numbers, the location, assets, everything was supporting of the work, which made it a lot easier for the guys. And so, everybody uh around the country deserves an attaboy for doing things that we probably would have needed five more guys to do, you know? Do more with less, bro. Yeah.

Host 2:49:56

Um is how many different full-time teams does the RCMP have?

Seb Lavoie 2:50:02

I'm not sure how many we have now. I'm I'm gonna guess probably four or five. I and but again, this is I I get it. You know, you have your your your your Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver. Uh, another one just went full-time, maybe uh the couple teams in BC, I believe, are now full-time. And and some of them have also full-time positions and part-time positions. So they'll they'll have like the the bulk of their maybe leadership and a couple specialties being full-time. And so within the within each of those teams, there are specialties, whatever the specialty will be. So that could be being a breacher, it could be being a sniper, it could be being a medic. Uh, there's now dog handlers that are ERT trained. That's a new addition. I think it might be a pilot pro project. We used to have handlers that were earth trained, and they would have dogs specific for tactical work that need to be very quiet, do all the things, but now they're actually training operators.

Host 2:50:59

Man, I would have thought you guys would have had those a long time ago.

Seb Lavoie 2:51:01

I know.

Host 2:51:03

But dogs are very expensive.

Seb Lavoie 2:51:04

You would think you would think so. Oh, yeah.

Host 2:51:06

And even finding handlers and dogs are just as hard as well.

Seb Lavoie 2:51:09

Yeah, and there was a centralized, there was a centralized point, and there was, you know, uh a grip on that, you know, and sometimes it's it's tough to to go through the red tape.

Host 2:51:19

Because you guys covered such a large area, um, did you guys drive everywhere? Or did you guys have do you guys have your own air unit that would fly you? Or what how does that work?

Seb Lavoie 2:51:27

Yeah, so we, you know, at a time where we didn't have say air asset or or or the the RCMP helicopter was insufficient, say on account of how many guys needed to be dropped off. Now, if you needed to drop off an IA, you could always almost always do it, provided the conditions were right and they could fly. They had uh you know a ceiling. But um, but now they have a Blackhawk helicopter. They have funny story, the Blackhawk helicopter landed in my in my yard in my current residence. So they the boys uh flew over and anyways, yeah. Yeah, Seb lives in paradise. Well, because I'm right on the border and it's a border check. So it's it's not they they literally would have been 400 meters away from the border. Do you guys have your own border guard or is that RCMP as well? We have our the RCMP is responsible for border border uh aside from our border agents.

Host 2:52:17

You literally are like you guys like do it all, huh? Um and then training wise, how long is like an ERT training course, just like the initial training? Is this like a month or no?

Seb Lavoie 2:52:27

It's uh it's uh something like I I'm not sure what it is now, but it's between eight and eleven or twelve weeks or something.

Host 2:52:35

Uh is it pretty like argumentary and tough?

Seb Lavoie 2:52:37

Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's it's it's all of the things that you might expect from a from an operator operator training course. Now, one of the things is you might find like the OPP, for example, their true, their tactical rescue unit, have uh a much longer workup, but they do things segmented, right? And so and I'm it's a great program, but sometimes longer doesn't necessarily mean what's that program? Uh OPP True Tactical Rescue Unit. Oh, it's like an air, like a that's the uh uh Ontario Provincial Police. You know, when I was when I was saying that Ontario has their own police, well, that's the equivalent of us.

Host 2:53:13

Oh, so it's their tactical unit. Correct. Oh, okay.

Seb Lavoie 2:53:15

Yeah, yeah. So great guys, I've worked with them extensively. Great guys, a bunch of solid.

Host 2:53:20

I love how Canada like makes your tactical units, like the names seem less tactical than they really are. Yeah, yeah.

Seb Lavoie 2:53:27

Controlling optics.

Host 2:53:28

Yeah. Um, I asked you this on the podcast. I'm not gonna dance all or on the podcast prep, you're gonna dance all around this, but I'm gonna force you to an answer anyway. So, like in the US, man, um, you know, we have the FBI, that's they think they're well, it's our their premier hostage rescue unit in the States. Um is that what the RCMP is uh in Canada, or do you guys have like I know JTF2, but I I know they're a military unit, but do they work in Canada or is that completely separate like we are?

Seb Lavoie 2:53:58

Yeah, so the there's a theoretical answer, and there's the real answer. There's the real answer. The real answer is anything short of an absolutely established uh terrorist threat is the is the RCMP's responsibility, period. Anything. And even if it has a terrorist component to it, until it's ascertained fully, the RCMP is responsible for taking the initial steps that are required not only to assign ascertain that, but also to secure whatever it is in an IA capacity. The time of sort of rollover to to a unit like JTF2, for example, is pretty extensive. These guys geographically there's limitations. Sure. Right? And so and so anything that happens that happens right now is gonna be dealt with by police.

Host 2:54:54

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 2:54:54

And that's that's that's our reality.

Host 2:54:56

So the reality is too, is just like you know, you being in Tofino and having to be all these things, so like your your teams really have to be trained for dang near everything, man. Whether it's HRT, boats. So do you guys do a ton of specialty training? And I guess the real question on there is how do you balance specialty training with with call-outs being a full-time team, especially when you only got 18 dudes?

Seb Lavoie 2:55:16

Yeah, we didn't. We did a very poor job at that in the very beginning. So our train what falls off the table first? Training. Yeah, because you can't make operation fall off the table, right? So it has to be training. And so we weren't on the of the mindset of, oh, if you're doing a lot of operation, you're training, as I've heard some guys, you know, do in the past uh in certain in certain jobs, not necessarily on ERT. But the reality is we eventually got to a point where we could justify the work, justified what we were asking for, which was unfeathered training time and two operational teams covering shifts daytime and nighttime with uh uh capacity for surge, should all Hell break loose and we need an extra team. That training team could be pulled off training on account of you know justifiable costs, so to speak, you know. But um, but that took a long time to achieve. And it took us to reach, I can't remember how many guys we had when we reached that, but probably in the mid-30 for sure, you know, around 35 or 38 is when we kind of started to have these unfeathered training times. And the team uh runs an operational tempo that far exceeds what it was when I was on at the current times. Like these guys are swamped all the time right now. And I spoke to guys as early as last week, and the guys were like, Yeah, man, we're we're smoking.

Host 2:56:44

And so what do you attribute that to?

Seb Lavoie 2:56:46

Like a societal shift or um just everybody moving more towards that area, or well, certainly there has been some shifts um societally, but also geographically, and we've had a bunch of incidents, I will call them that, where like right now there is a big crisis with um extortion files and shooters. So these shooters are going around essentially extorting businesses. And if you refuse to pay them taxes or do, you know, levy or whatever the whatever it is that they're asking for, they'll be coming back at night and emptying a full mag in your in your business or in your family home or what have you. And so that has been a massive, a massive shift. There's also a massive shift towards gang bangings, and there's been so much gang activity in the lower mainland. I mean, not like unlike any other big US cities, right? Big city, big problems. Exactly. And so I I think, but then there's other things, other contributors, such as accessibility, how easily we have made it that people know how to get a hold of us, when to get a hold of us, by way of process, by way of tools that we bring that are now making investigators' lives easier, you know, in in securing target and doing certain things, the amount of the amount of of tradecraft that we can assist with, breaching or otherwise. So it becomes a you're gonna get everything you want. Let's see if you want everything you're gonna get, right? And and and I'm not suggesting at all that the guys don't want that, but uh again, it it has a it has a a timeline.

Host 2:58:33

Well, once you become the universal tool, everybody wants the universal tool, man. Correct. Um yeah, so walk me through um, you know, you you you go through, you know, selection, I'm sure it's really hard, um, but you finally get it. But yeah, you you know, like everybody else, the real training starts when you hit the team. What was it like showing up as the new guy, man? I mean, you're not new to to law enforcement, but you're new to the team. Is it kind of one of those things where nobody cares where you're from? It's what can you do?

Seb Lavoie 2:59:05

Yeah, essentially, we for me, my experience has been very, very positive. And and the experience that I've that we as a team have provided other guys have been extremely positive in the time that I was on the team. So the 12 years I spent on the team, there is no like we stayed away from all forms of hazing and writing to new guys, like somehow they don't they don't know anything. And essentially what we act on the premises is that people are coming in with varied skill sets and and they can be an asset in problem solving things that our singularly minded collective isn't gonna fix, you know? And so as long as the work ethic is there, that we can establish that through selection, that the capacity is there, which again we establish through selection and course passing. Once the course is finished and these guys are are full-fledged training, you know, trained operators, so to speak, even though there's a lot more stuff coming down the pipe, they have a voice immediately on the team. Immediately. Yeah, if somebody comes in and starts piping in the first operational briefing, they'll get ridden. Like, don't get me wrong, right? Because, okay, dude. But um, even even in the way that we're problem solving things, uh, I remember I remember having a tactical dilemma with a certain time constraint on, and it's like, boys, I need five course of action to deal with this problem. I'm gonna, you know, give you guys the floor, don't talk to each other, problem solve it, articulate the the decision of making whatever decision you're making, or the the pro the proposition of the tactics that you're suggesting, and and we'll talk about what we're gonna embrace as a team, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, and so when that included the new guys, go ahead, put your thoughts on paper. It may or may not you know get accepted, or it may or may not be implemented, but we wanted we wanted them involved in those in those very early stages of their of their tour on the team to be very engaged in in understanding not only what it is that we are doing, but why we're doing it. And that, of course, will come relevant once court happens.

Host 3:01:18

And you know, you were an operator those first five years. What was the operational tempo like? Um, you know, how many call-outs a year? And obviously, you're gonna go back. I don't remember. I mean, uh, so I don't just random, you know what I mean? Just just generalized.

Seb Lavoie 3:01:32

I don't know. They're running probably five to seven hundred now a year. And at the time, we may have had 200, but there was 18 of us. So it seems like 700.

Host 3:01:40

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 3:01:41

Yeah, we we were very busy, but I'm not sure that we were busy doing the right things all the time. You know, we were we were we were really busy on on calls that really we should have had the capacity to handle easy. Yeah, you know, and I think that equipment issues, uh, the program was at uh a real paradigm sort of shift was happening there in the program. And I think that we, you know, just like any other large organizations, we turnaround about as fast as a aircraft carrier does. Oh, and I think that that's you know, you have a smaller, smaller unit, smaller department, you're more like a speedboat and you can go out and do things and change guns, change vests, change flashbangs, do all the things. We were we were facing some challenging organizations.

Host 3:02:33

And that kind of makes sense though, man. Because if you you like, let's say guns, like if you decide to get new guns, well, everybody's got to get new guns, and now it's not now you're buying you know 500 guns instead of 20. So precisely. I mean, yeah, I I I can I can see that. Um, what was I don't know if it was your first call, but you had an interesting call very early on in your career. Wal walk us through that.

Seb Lavoie 3:02:54

The drive to the call was interesting because I had spent four and a half years in an airplane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's probably so so I get I get picked up at about 11 o'clock at night, maybe 10, 11 o'clock at night on my very, very first call. And um, I was just out of the airplane. I'd been on the plane two weeks prior, and now I'm an operator on the team. I haven't been on patrol now for four and a half years. So as we were driving the car to the call, I'm putting my gear on in the truck. I'm doing, you know, searching through the 17 bags of kit that were issued that you eventually dwindled to one because you understand what you need and what you don't need. And I um I remember thinking, the cars were moving out of the way, and I remember thinking, why is everybody jumping out of the way, not realizing the lights are on? You know, that's how far removed from patrol I was. I just I lost touch with the fact that we even can use our emergency equipment. And so we get to the location, and they have a essentially an armed embarricaded with two hostages uh wife and mother-in-law. He has a machete. That's the weapon system he has. He's got four or five handles of hair on the wife, and he has the machete. He's already laid a beating on mom. She's somewhere in a room, in a in a bedroom somewhere. And um, so we show up there and the guys are doing what the guys are doing. Everybody's getting geared up. The critical instant commander is already on scene. At the time he was our commander, uh, good man. But um we the the the guys are doing what they're doing, and then and then all of a sudden I we hear over the air like keep all the newbies away from this from this specific scene. Now, I I alluded earlier to the treatment of newbies. This was a little bit different in the sense that this is a hostage taken now, and the guys are just showing up day one, so let's keep them on perimeter and let's get them to a certain level of inoculation before we toss him in the, you know.

Host 3:04:56

Well, plus hostage rescue is probably one of the hardest things to do.

Seb Lavoie 3:04:58

Yes, exactly. Uh even logistically, not just operationally. But so you know, my my my team leader said, yep, no problem, we'll keep him all on on, but I couldn't keep my mouth shut. So I did at the time we didn't have an established breacher program. We had people like a swim a ram. Unfortunately, that's not good enough for HRT, as we know, right? And so the issue now was what kind of entry point can we get fast enough so that we can compress that then. We didn't call it that at the time, but that's precisely what needed to happen. We needed to compress the problem and make it not go mobile and not go move around and have the ability to intervene from various uh angles at once. And so I'm looking upstairs and I sort of had a weird skill set which is climbing. I could climb naturally everywhere and just and just sort of use my sort of physicality to do that and to to perhaps achieve a positive outcome or a positive entry somewhere. So I I suggested that to one of the team leaders. I said, hey, why don't I gear that gear down a bit, go light, which is stuff that I did if you guessed it, in Tofino. And um and I'll climb on the side, I'll go to the third floor or second floor, third floor, because the third floor is a basement.

Host 3:06:18

This is an apartment complex?

Seb Lavoie 3:06:19

No, in a in a house, in a dwelling, in a single home. And so I go, I go, so I said, I'm I'll get us an entry point in one of the windows, and that will give us uh an option. He's like, let me run this by the commander. The commander's is he certain about this? I'm like, yeah. He's like, okay, launch him. So I I soft body armor, pistol, knife. That's it. Everything else stripped completely off. None of that dangly, moly stuff and anything. So I just I end up scaling the wall and scaling the the railing and go all the way to the top. I get to the top, there's a large window now. It's a it's a double or triple plane, brand new, not an easy window to get into. This is a true story, by the way. So, because it goes somewhere. So I take my knife out, and I first thing I do is a visual inspection, make sure that he hasn't set up any, you know, items, anything that would give it away if the window moved. Because if that's the case, then we have to find another window because that's not gonna work. And the idea was to do it without compromise because anything could have launched him and he could have been stabbing her, and now we're dealing with a much elevated issue. And so I go around, clear the window, do all the things, good to go. I'm gonna try to get an entry point in this. I put my my knife under the the window frame and it's not going anywhere. It's brand new and very solid. And so I remember I closed my eyes for a second and I said, Lord, if there was ever a time to help me, we have an opportunity to save this lady and this these people and to to apprehend this guy, but we need to be able to get in there. And I jimmied my knife a little bit, moved the window a little bit, and the window cracked open, the lock unlocked essentially, and it cracked open, and I slid the widow all the way back. And uh so I'm looking inside, visually clearing the top floor, making sure there's nobody up top that will see me and start yelling, and just wanting to make sure that we have no additional bodies inside that we everybody accounted for, so we know where everybody is. Anyways, one of the guys now I advise them that I have this entry point. And one of the guys comes on. Uh great, great dude, great experienced guy, um, good friend. And um, he comes over and he says, Hey, we're not risking bringing somebody else here that might be an elephant or something, and we end up being compromised. So I'm very good with the stealth entry, secure that top floor. We're gonna stage on the on the staircase that goes down. The boys are gonna stage on the entry point, and once they launch, we're all launch at once. But here's the kicker: you need to be lethal force, overwatch, and CW. Because if there's any way that we can go non-lethal, and based on what we have, that's what that's what we'll do. So you're gonna have to make that decision and that assessment, you know. And that's something that of course you wouldn't generally double task your guys with being lethal and non-lethal. That's just you know, that's just bad news. But there are ways to do it. You just have to be, you know, you just have to be really, really alive to how you're gonna do that and how is it done safely. But again, being in Tefino, being an instructor, and all those things, I was I was pretty confident, no problem, we'll get this done. So we end up entering and we end up stealth doing a stealth search of the top floor, no problem. We stage on the on the corner of the staircase as was the plan, and eventually launch on a standby, standby, go, go, go. So we launch, we all get there at the exact same time. There is hostage separation between the hostage and him, so therefore, there's no there's no lethality immediately required. So I deploy the CW, the blade falls on the ground, I front kick this guy, he flies in the wall, the the door gets breached, and all the guys jump on, and the essentially it's resolved. So that was my introduction to the team, basically. A a two-man hostage rescue of two people in uh in a stronghold.

Host 3:10:44

Do you feel like that bought you a little bit of credibility early on?

Seb Lavoie 3:10:47

I mean, oh no, no questions, especially with especially with the commander. Like the commander came to me after and he was like, Man, that was that was something. So I think, and the boys as well. I mean, the the the guy that was the guy that asked me to go with him was on a selection. I know he already respected me. Um he wasn't in awe of me, but he respected my capacity. He wasn't he he was asked, like, do you trust that he can do this? And he said yes. So there's a reason why that happened, right?

Host 3:11:18

Oh, so he had been your part of your selection cadre at like the nine-week training course. Oh, that's cool.

Seb Lavoie 3:11:23

Yeah, so he so he knew, and I was also already an instructor in use of force, so I was teaching sometimes, and he was one as well, so he would be teaching in other crews, and we would kind of uh cross swords, so to speak, at times. And so, yeah, he you know, yes, and I and I think that goes that goes to any call or anything that you do with any level of application. You know, you your credibility is is very quickly shut, but it's also it's long and tedious to to build it, but I think do all the little things right as much as we can, learn from our mistakes. Like those are all things that I adhered by, right? So there is no there's no reason why it would have interfered and not helped.

Host 3:12:06

Um you later became a manical uh mechanical and explosive uh breaching expert.

Seb Lavoie 3:12:10

Um I wouldn't say I was an expert. I I I was a breacher for a long time, and I was uh but certainly the for the longest time of my breaching journey, the explosive forced entry was was essentially out of play for us for a long time until it became the norm. And now the guys on the team, especially the team leaders that are breaching expert, are legitimate expert. I was an experienced breacher that had some expertise, but I wasn't I wasn't a breaching expert, yeah.

Host 3:12:47

Whatever, bro. Um was the was there already a mechanical breaching program in play like that was like standardized, or is that something that they were building as you were coming on there?

Seb Lavoie 3:12:57

Yeah, so when I essentially that call was the catalyst to realizing we need we need some massive improvement in the breaching capability side, and so in I want to say around the 2008-ish nine, we started really putting the emphasis on that, and eventually that culminated in 2012 having a full-time breacher program where we were and that's crazy that you guys didn't have that in place when you already got there. I know, I know, but that's that's kind of the way that's kind of the way things.

Host 3:13:30

Singing the old black hawk ram, dude hated that thing.

Seb Lavoie 3:13:32

I know with the flex handles. Oh my god, man. And so, but by the time we took breaching very, very seriously, at that time we had really sleigh dogs working these projects and working this breacher program, and it became top tier in the country. And we we cross-trained with some very capable units, you know, on the mill and the Leo side, and and developed a very, very solid sort of standardized package for breachers, and then there was continuous training. And now, as I said, the guys are going all over doing these EFE course here and there, explosive forced entry course everywhere. And but we were using everything in the mechanical realm, you know, rams, saws. We had second, we had secondaries entry points everywhere, we had frame spreaders, all kinds of hydraulics, all kinds of like we had a vast toolkit that we could draw upon. But we also are the way our tactics evolved and how we were using our breachers and and where the breacher covers were and what kind of angles we're covering and what their role was, and what you know, all of those things really developed in a very, very short and compressed time period.

Host 3:14:47

Um, explosive breaching, were you guys doing a lot of that once it became um available? Because it is, it's a good tool, especially when you consider, you know, the the blast itself can can be a you know a good distraction to throw somebody out of the oodloop. Um what was it like going to that like explosive courts and how did that evolve in uh Canada's tactical Leo environment, I guess?

Seb Lavoie 3:15:10

So I think that I would do a disservice if I didn't tell a certain story that that will be was the impetus to us. We like stories on this podcast that that that losing of us losing the breach and pro the breacher program. So and I'm the goal here is not to be pointing fingers or anything like that. And I think that's important because we don't actually know whose fault it was, it just went majorly pear shape. And um, and I think that maybe technically speaking, there may be somebody responsible, but we're not looking to pin it on anybody, right? Like this is something that we learned from. But many, many years before I got on the team, there was a call out, a certain call-out, as I understand it, somewhere in a major city around the area. And it was a suicidal male, I believe, with a shotgun or something like that. So I may get a few of the details wrong. But what ended up happening is there was a necessity to get in there on account of whatever was going on in there, which I don't remember. So, but just let's take this as the base premise. They needed to get in there, they needed to do so quickly. So a variety of different things at play. So they get the explosive forced entry breach approved to the to the critical command structure. And so the the bomb experts come over at the time. The guys weren't carrying their charges, any of that. Those charges were built by bomb techs. The bomb techs would come, assess the scene, think about what the pressure is going to be like, all of the things that bomb nerds do and do very well. So they came over and did that. And they suggested okay, open this window, open this door, vent here and there, so we can have you know a place for the blast to essentially go out. But um, it didn't quite work as expected, essentially. And on the second standby, when that charge ended ended up going, everybody got their bell rung to a catastrophic level, and the elevator dropped off the elevator shaft. So windows blew out, doors blew out, the elevator fell all the way down the elevator shaft. It was some $250,000 endeavor.

Host 3:17:25

When you're telling me they're open up doors and windows for blast pressure, dude, that's somebody's already putting a lot of explosives.

Seb Lavoie 3:17:32

Well, yeah, exactly. And so, but they wanted to, you know, vent the place, do all the things. And at the time, the guys weren't trained, they like they were trained to place the charge, but it was a very bare minimum. And so there was nobody questioning that at the time because they're they're these guys are the explosive experts, right? And so that incident ended up costing us, not not the team I was on, but the previous team, it ended up costing the program nationally their. The EFE program. Like we were the the first team to do operational EFE breaches after that. And that was almost 15 years later. Wow. As a result of how badly that one was messed up and how much it had cost, and how much more costly it could have been should somebody had died.

Host 3:18:18

How did that uh call out end up? Did they get that dude in custody or did the house fall on him?

Seb Lavoie 3:18:22

No, I I think he was uh he was good to go, and he was probably released on the 24-hour assessment, you know.

Host 3:18:28

Yeah, after they cleared all the blood out of his ears from his eardrums blown up.

Seb Lavoie 3:18:32

Exactly. So so so anyway, so framing that that's where we started. And so there was a ton of education on our part, and there was a ton of education on the part of management or no that was necessary for us to overcome the hurdles with the critical instant commanders. There was a ton of demos, a ton of, you know, for decades, essentially.

Host 3:18:56

And so who did you guys have to start training with? Did you guys use tier one units? Um, did you guys go to the states at all?

Seb Lavoie 3:19:02

Yeah, yeah. The guys go to um, I'll I'll remember, I'll forget the name now, but um there's a few locations in the states. I'm forgetting the name now. I've I follow one of them on uh Darcy? No. Oh there's a there's a location that they go to to deal with all their their EFE now. But the bottom line is yes, we we started really using it as a team, uh, as the barricades, as the gang scene in Vancouver really evolved uh during the Surrey 6 murder. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but that was a pretty crazy story. And we were all over that investigation everywhere. We hit targets everywhere, and that was at a time where they were starting to build cages, have dead man bars, and the whole thing uh wedges, and the list goes on and on. So eventually we got to a point where by necessity alone EFE became the primary tool. It it had to be.

Host 3:19:55

Walk us through uh walk us through that 3-6 because I remember you talking about this in the uh in the podcast, prep.

Seb Lavoie 3:19:59

Yeah. Yeah. So in 2006, uh sorry, in 2007, there was uh an incident involving a few of the key players in the Lower Mainland gang scene. And the reason why I'm gonna stay away from using name and stuff just because my my my sort of remembrance of the sequence and the names and is a little bit skewed. So I just don't want to make stuff up. But uh essentially we had rival rival gang advises, you know, two petty drug dealers to stop slinging or to pay them a tax, or else they were gonna pay the consequences of that. Well, when they didn't, um they send a crew to kill them in their apartment. And so there was two people that were supposed to be the target of that, two or three people that were supposed to be the target of that. So they sent a bunch of shooters out and uh you know silence pistols and all the things, and they they entered this apartment building in Surrey, British Columbia, which is where I was talking about earlier. It's a war zone, it still is, and um and they ended up dragging the two guys that were the intended targets, plus a couple more that just so happened to be there, a gas guy that was gas fitting, and um Mohan, a young a young dude that came out that was going to a basketball game, and he just so happened to see the shooters, so they took him and they brought him in. And so the gas guy, great man by all accounts, Christian, and this young boy go heading out to a basketball game, this home this South Asian boy, and the the intended targets, they put him all down on the ground, told them they were gonna rob him, do all the things, they were all either secured or tide wrapped or whatever, and then they off them one at a time. Yeah. So that was six bodies located in that in that incident. And originally this came through as a uh a gas a gas leak or something, because somebody I guess looked in and saw these bodies on the ground thinking there must be and the gas guy was there, so it just made sense to to sort of by deduction. Um and so that sparked uh a massive investigation. There was some controversy with the RCMP in there as well. I uh but this is just stuff that happens when you put humans do human things, things sometimes don't go the way they should. But uh we ended up we ended up working that file all the way until 2019 when I left.

Host 3:22:44

And it started in what year?

Seb Lavoie 3:22:45

Oh seven. Oh wow, yeah.

Host 3:22:47

Was that out of the norm? I mean, look, man, anytime six people get executed, it's not normal. But um, was that a like a new grotesque uh elevation and crime that hadn't been seen in that area?

Seb Lavoie 3:22:58

Yeah, this this is uh this is a mass murder of epic proportion for a Canadian, for our Canadian populace to to to be sort of subjected to and to you know to be around. It's not something that's very common. I mean, you saw that in on the East Coast during the biker wars. Yeah they would they would invite 15 guys for a party, and the only thing they didn't know is that the party was about them. And so, you know, Walter Stadnik, Mumboucher, a bunch of these savages in the Hells Angels at the time were were known for these strategic eliminations of of competition and sometimes even purging their own ranks. But aside from that, so this essentially became a national priority, I'm assuming.

Host 3:23:41

What uh what did that investigation kind of entail? And what was um the ERT's role in that investigation?

Seb Lavoie 3:23:47

We had a multifaceted role, and as far as what the investigation entails, I I'm very limited to what we were engaged in, understanding the strategic priorities and understanding the broad scope of the investigation, which was of course to bring the shooters and the and whoever ordered the hits, which ended up being Jamie Bacon, who did some time in um did some time and he's he's out now because you know why not? But um, you know, our involvement was any anywhere from taking down gang members on on the daily on warrants, on arrest warrants, to witness protection of guys turning on their uh former partners, one of the shooters, one of them. Um we did court regular escort protection, whatever, you know, to court and and and outside the court. We did all kinds of hits on weapons recovery, on all kinds of proxy targets.

Host 3:24:51

So you guys didn't just go after the target, you guys went after the gangs.

Seb Lavoie 3:24:53

Oh, we went after everybody. Yeah, yeah. We were we would in 2007, from 2007 to 2010, 11, it wasn't rare for us to be working sometimes 20 hour days, 21 hour days. The longest shift I've ever done was 36 hours. 36 hours we were we were on, you know, hitting this target and that target and this target. Uh so there was all kinds of things. We did a lot of shadowing surveillance, but surveillance asset used to follow these guys. But of course, retaliation was in the midst. So it was it was important that they had the proper uh tactical cover in case things escalated. And um, and so we were everywhere. We were involved in essentially most parts of this investigation as as soon as it came down to arresting somebody at some point.

Host 3:25:44

So you got a lot of you got a lot of breacher work in.

Seb Lavoie 3:25:47

We did.

Host 3:25:48

Were you uh did you guys start using explosive breaching during that?

Seb Lavoie 3:25:51

Yeah, so this is exactly when the whole thing sort of culminated with the barricades and the sophistication on the on the on the barricading mechanisms, all of those things, there was a necessity. So necessity met articulation and understanding and education, you know, because even if there was a necessity, if we if we didn't have the proper education in doing so, we would have faced the same hurdle. They would have stopped us from doing it. And so some of our key players, and I was not one of them, I was a breacher at the time and I was benefiting from that, but our key players were really working really hard to make that happen, to articulate these. And some of them were sergeants and worked for years to overcome that that barrier, that perceived barrier of the first operation I was telling you about earlier.

Host 3:26:41

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 3:26:41

And that wasn't even our operations, it was somebody else, but it doesn't matter as a national asset. It it literally impacted everybody nationally.

Host 3:26:49

Was your a leadership at the time in RCMP uh allowing you guys to work aggressively, or was there just constant like red tape on um kind of what you guys could do? And the only reason I asked that is I remember I ran into some RCMP folks again a long time ago, but I remember um it was a female and she was saying every time she, you know, pulled her gun out of her holster, she'd have to write a report about it. So I I I didn't know did you guys have to deal with a lot of red tape or were you guys allowed to act aggressively?

Seb Lavoie 3:27:18

Oh no, well, I I've never I mean reporting anything that has to do I mean if you if you took your gun out, there's probably something worth reporting. Like I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be reporting things, you know.

Host 3:27:29

No, no, no. But I mean that's not a thing here in the US, at least it wasn't when I when I did the job.

Seb Lavoie 3:27:34

Yeah, I mean if you're if you're pointing it pointing it as a human be at a human being, yeah, you should probably be articulating that for us, you know, at at in in but really as far as like just drawing it for for safety to peek a corner, do something, or clear a an unsafe area or whatever, it's not a problem. It doesn't, it doesn't uh and so for us on the team, we we had a lot less of the red tape that some patrol will have sometimes. And sometimes that red tape comes by way of individuals, it doesn't always come by way of organization. I think and and this is where this is where semantics matter, you know? No, because when when somebody says, uh, I was in an organization and we couldn't do X, Y, and Z, could you? Or the leader you had at the time was the representation of the organization. And that's what I tell leaders all the time. Remember that. You are the you are the representation of the organization. And as far as the person is concerned, you are the organization. So if you wrong them, the organization's wrong them. You know, and I think that sometimes we we don't realize what kind of burden that that is. But there is a lot of incredibly dynamic and go-getters, leaders in in the organization that will absolutely support you no matter what. And and there are those that will interfere with whatever you're trying to do.

Host 3:28:55

Were you guys getting a lot of shootings uh as a team, or was that a thing in Canada? Like how violent was it?

Seb Lavoie 3:29:01

I wouldn't say a lot, but I wouldn't say I wouldn't say that's for reasons other than the tactics were ever were incredibly proactive and very ahead of their time. We tactically we did things that was unheard of in the in the in the SWAT world sometimes. And we worked with other teams that were getting in a lot more shootings that we would get into, but also, and no offense to them, they would do things we would never do. There was no need for you to run in there at all. You know, and unfortunately, and this is something that we've had some very meaningful conversation with some organizations, is where does sort of vendetta or let's get a bit of payback here becomes one of your guys dead now. You know, and so it's not about explain that. Well, okay, so so I'll give you an example of this. Let's let's let's make it a very a very simple one. So you just had you just had a guy kill nine cops. He goes into a single trailer dwelling. Or he goes into a residence by himself, confirmed from the owner, nobody else in there, no education or knowledge that nobody else is that anybody else is in there. When is the entry team making a dynamic entry on that? No need to. No, precisely, right? But but we've spoken to teams where no no, easy, you know, ease kill however how many cops, and we can't just sit there all week and whatever. So no offense. If you're willing to go stand in front of the family of the people and and and tell them, tell your your guy's wife that he got killed because we couldn't gas this guy out, or we couldn't X, Y, and Z. And I'm not talking about guys that were limited because that's also a problem. At the critical incident level, some guys are are not were not allowed the freedom of using gas, for example. So now you're just limited your options. So now you're you're you're pushing your guys into making some tactical decisions by necessity that are not the safest option in light of the totality. Now, don't get me wrong, the priorities of life apply. So if all of a sudden you get information that there's a potential, somebody else is in there. I'm all in. That's a completely different scenario. So I don't want to make it sound like we didn't want to do things. No, no, no.

Host 3:31:25

I mean, but I mean, let's be honest, man. I mean, I spent plenty of time in a tactical environment on the LE side. And early on, like I remember the dope search warrants. I mean, we called them the anti-SWAT, right? You're you're throwing out all the tactical safety things that should be in place to go run in there and grab some pot or coke or whatever that at the end of the day is is really not worth somebody's life. But you have a narcotics investigator, like they spent however much time getting the search warrant, and that is their thing. Um, and so I remember, you know, again, dude, but that's what everybody was doing, right? And then smart guys, sounds like you guys, and and that changed. Like, I think in the US, a lot of our tactics were coming from war, right? You know, like what was working, and then as the, you know, as the war shifted, IEDs, right? Then that's when call-outs happened. And I think in America, once the tier one units or the SF units started doing call outs overseas, that trickled into law enforcement because of a lot of our training on the LE side, you know, every tier one dude from the Navy SEALs or whoever gets out and they start a training company, and who do they start training? They start training, you know, SWAT guys. And so I think, you know, it took longer than it should have for us to change our tactics in the US. But it sounds like you guys were were early movers. And to your point, Mike, like, yeah, there is nobody's life that's worth that if you don't have to do it. I remember as a police supervisor, I was always constantly, you know, trying to slow guys down. And I was super aggressive, but it's like, hey man, let's slow down. We have time, you know, and sometimes we we would speed ourselves up for no reason. So yeah, I mean, now surrounding callouts are the norm for probably 90% of the tactical teams across the US, but it took a long time to get there. And I remember that transition. I I I I swapped my law enforcement career from a municipal to a federal and ultimately ended up as a medic on a tactical team. But you know, I remember when I first started seeing the whole surrounding call, I'm like, man, why are we doing this? And then, you know, I finally be like, why would we not do this, right? Breach, breach an eliminated pen, breach the door, let them breathe out, see who's in there.

Seb Lavoie 3:33:20

So yeah, I mean, when you once you attack the castle, right, things start falling down. This is the feeling of security starts falling down. That's not to say that if decisive action has to be taken on account of hostages or whatever, you need to have the stones to do that, i.e., Uvaldi, right? Yeah. Um, but in looking at what are some of the other strategic options that we have? And I think that's where we fall short, as as Leo sometimes. It's like that anecdotal stifling. We're going through things and we're doing things because that's the way they were done. It's like, what solution can we come up with? Man, they're flying drones in there now. They're flying drones indoors, they're they're taking limited entries with robots, they're doing X, you know, all of those things. Ultimately, there's still going to be the incidents where the suspect comes out and the bad guy has a vote and and he and he gets killed, right?

Host 3:34:08

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, man. Um, you were also the combative's lead and you know, one of the combatives, I don't know, man, you don't like the word expert, so I don't know what to call you, but you were the combative's main dude um on the team. Um, how did you kind of push that program and and and um how does defensive tactics change when let's say you're hitting a house, you've got a weapon in your hand, and you know, were you constantly trying to train new ideas and practice those?

Seb Lavoie 3:34:38

So I I've always been a big fan of reality testing my systems, right? And my systems are nothing that's not familiar to anybody with sort of the SOCP, for example, or the Special Operation Combatives program from uh Thompson and some of those guys. I mean, very very similar. I didn't draw upon those, but those are just commonsensical to me. Those are the types of things that I knew we needed to be doing. And so the question isn't what should we do, is what will we do to see what works and what doesn't, and as dynamic as we can recreate this environment. And we were going hard in the paint. When I was on the air carrier section, on the uh as a I became the sort of de facto acting training in CEO for the better part of almost two years. I did everything, removed trigger guard from pistols for pistol disarms, use shock knives in full out, full speed attack to see how that was gonna play out as the offender and a defender, you know, and really did some testing. Like, let's put these quote unquote combative techniques to the test and see what really in the end, because I knew from having gone through the filter of the club life, I knew how many techniques I had that I would relied upon before starting bouncing and how many after. And I knew that that filter had to be relevant in policing and in in our tactical settings. And so I knew how to do that. Let's let's recreate this full speed. I mean, I'm on a full ride with VAC, you know, with Veterans Affair on account of the injuries I got resulting from some of these pursuits. But I think that's precisely that's precisely what happened with the combatists program. So, first and foremost, we knew what our tactical priorities were, what kind of gear we were gonna be wearing, how the gear could be assisting us in in completing, you know, in achieving an outcome. So if that meant a helmet strike, because we were coming straight to a P1 target that somebody's standing right in the door threshold, then so be it. But how were we gonna do that with Seminar guns and do all the things? So, what we used to do is we used to take something, uh, I'll take something very simple because some nothing comes to mind right now, but we'll take something like um, like a somebody's on full mount on you, for example, and you're so we would we would set up not only would we set up full team scenarios where combatives were a regular portion of the events, and this was in the development phase, so we can see what the natural propensity and and and of the operators were. Would they go forward, would they kick and punch and do this or that? Like what was the the bulk of the people at an average baseline? What would they react like when faced with a combative scenario? And then we would do flash scenarios, so we would do have them do their entry, pause the flow, set a guy up in the bathroom with a guy in a shock knife, and have the other guy with his gun on the ground now as if somehow he lost his gun, all the things, and then we would start him and see what would happen, you know, and how they would control the blade.

Host 3:37:55

And what did you learn in those scenarios exposing these dudes to these psychological problem solving?

Seb Lavoie 3:38:02

That things that work in a combative scenario are pretty slim picking, you know, and you and you really have to realize that fundamentally we need to be able to keep the tactics repeatable. And we also have to acknowledge that with our training time and our training needs, we're gonna have a limited amount of time to tack on a whole bunch of additional skills on top of that. So it's less it's more about achievement of a certain baseline. This is still my opinion. You want to have a decent baseline and maintenance. I'm not worried about consistently for the instructors, 100% consistently evolve and consistently find new ways because then they can come back and say, okay, now there's a real change here where we can make a meaningful difference if we change this little thing to this little thing.

Host 3:38:54

So are you basically saying like it was important to get everybody to at least one baseline before you start challenging, you know?

Seb Lavoie 3:38:59

What I am saying is you need something that's sustainable when it comes to combative.

Host 3:39:04

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 3:39:04

And having a curriculum that endlessly adds to the skill set without the proper time to train, to work, to fight, to do all the things is is that's just more stuff that you're putting in their minds. And when the stuff happens, you're gonna you're gonna either run into a critical stall or you're gonna run into I I have eight million options and nothing happens, right? So so I think that for us, what we did right with the program was we basically set the guys up for realistic scenarios. It wasn't ninjas coming off everywhere. It was you got a P1 target, that guy's the janitor. Now what? Do you helmet strike him in the face? Or do you go hands on and and and and you know grab a grab a uh a waistline or something and dump him on the ground there while the team flows over? What are you what are you doing? If you have a uh somebody running down the hallway towards you and you don't know if they're hostile or not, then What happens? How do you pin them against the wall, protect your your weapon so the team can flow by and continue doing their work? Like all those things. So we, you know, the the the program itself, as far as the nuts and bolts of it, of the hands and feet skills of the sweeps from the various positions. I didn't try to turn everybody into a brown belt. The idea was can we teach them basic sweeps, basic three-quarter mount control, base basic Kimura grip, basic things that they can use to effect an arrest? And then we repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you know.

Host 3:40:33

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 3:40:33

And what's interesting and the unintended sort of consequence of that is that the the boys ended up wanting to do more combatives. And we ended up having more combat. So now they don't need me. They have a black belt there, they have a bunch of purples, they have some blue belts, they have a bunch of guys training. Most, I would say most of the team is training. You have your resistors still, but the thing is, is even the resistors, by way of process, will end up training anyways. Yeah, dude. And so the time of them not training at all is completely done. The guys are training, the guys are striking. There's guys from other teams around the country that are competing in high-level jujitsu tournament. They're better than I ever was. They're compete, some guys are MMA and into MMA and they're fighting. Like, man, it's a it's a good place to be for the combatives world right now.

Host 3:41:27

Yeah, and I it goes back to the conversation we had earlier. It's at this day and age, man, it's such a great tool. Why would we not be investing in that? Because one, look, man, there's no cardio like jujitsu cardio. I mean, you can try to replicate it on the assault bike, which I'm not a fan of. I don't like that thing, but it's still not the same. There's there's just no I remember when I first started doing BJJ, I fancied myself to be in somewhat good cardio shape. And then that that first uh that first day of training, man. Um I couldn't breathe, dude. I remember going home and falling face first in the pool because I was just smoked. And it's about once you start training that it builds up, you know, cardio. Plus, it's shared suffering too, man. A team that's doing BJJ together is just gonna be a closer team because they're all, you know, for those people that don't know Brazilian jujitsu, they don't hand out belts. You don't learn a dance move uh after a year and do a dance move and get a belt, you know, it's different for every gym, but normally there's like you gotta be able to be there a certain amount of time and you have to be able to be proficient at a certain amount of time, and there's just no you can't fake it in jujitsu.

Seb Lavoie 3:42:25

You can't. And and here's to your point about the assault bike, for example, you can't have him ride the assault bike as hard as possible and all of a sudden fight for their life.

Host 3:42:33

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 3:42:33

Because we're talking about a physical stimulus that creates a reaction that tests your physical fitness, but that is not a hundred and eighty heart rate with an with a with a with an adrenaline dump because people think that adrenaline will carry them through a fight. You're gonna burn five times faster. So, yes, it may be very instrumental to do an initial burst of whatever, but 180 or 160 to 180 heart rate in the gym during your crossfist workout is not 160, 180 hormone dump, I'm fearing for my life type reaction. And this is where this is where things get a little bit uh sort of convoluted. So, you know, I think for us, it's important to understand that we need to be pushing ourselves way further outside the comfort zone when it comes to combatives than then than we think we should.

Host 3:43:29

Yeah, man, that whole like I'm gonna rise to the occasion, it's bullshit. You're gonna rise to the level of training.

Seb Lavoie 3:43:33

You're gonna fall to your level of training.

Host 3:43:35

Yeah. Most supplements are built for guys who work out three times a week and want to look good at the beach. That's cool, but that's not who I build hoplight for. Hoplite is built for people who run towards operators, performers, people who choose the hard thing when everyone else opts out. Four products creatine, hydration, pre-workout, and a cognitive mushroom supplement that'll make you question why you ever settle for caffeine alone. Stack them or run them solo. We've got bundled options built around how you actually perform, not how a marketing team thinks you should. If that's you, go to hoplightnutrition.com and join the tribe. Get 15% off your first order. Hoplite. For those who run towards. Yeah, I remember early on um kind of in in my LE career, dude, you know, we I remember the stats, and look, man, I'm I'm like you, I don't remember a whole lot, but I remember in the early 2000s, right? I mean, dudes were missing officer-involved shootings at target, dumping mags at seven, you know, seven yards, five yards, three yards, and missing the whole magazine. But you go back to how are we training on the range? Well, we're standstill shooting at a paper target, we're not moving, we're not, you know, pushing ourselves, you know, and then we can't want, you know, then we wonder why cops are missing at close distance, right? It's it's it's a training thing. And then I think, you know, as training's evolved and and things have come around, um, you know, law enforcement um it has progressed in in some areas, right? And then you had, you know, George Floyd and the Fergusons and the whole defund the police movement. And it's like, I always laughed when I heard let's defund the police. I'm like, if anything, dude, they need they need double the funding so they can get better training so we don't have these types of incidents. You know, uh people, you know, people hate law enforcement, but it really is the last line of defense before anarchy, right? Um, and it it's it's the toughest profession, in my opinion, because nobody likes the police, man. If you want to find a public safety profession, go be a firefighter. Everybody loves the fire department. Nobody likes cops, man. I mean, you didn't get there in time. You had to arrest somebody that, you know, that the family member didn't like, you had to give them a ticket, you know what I mean? There's no, you know, and and police nowadays have to work in, you know, the most miserable environments. You're constantly being, you know, not represented properly in the news media. And, you know, guys now have to really think, you know, if I pull this trigger, this could be the a good shoot, but you still are gonna get stuck in civil litigation for two to years. You might even go to jail, you know, depending on what town you live in, you know, because half the time the district attorney in some of these counties, they're coming after the cops. So it's man, it's it's tough. Sorry, I just don't want to rant. So it's not on a rant there. Oh, yeah, no, yeah.

Seb Lavoie 3:46:12

And I love it. You know, that had me thinking, man, you know, one of the things that we can do for ourselves is exactly that is that training, engaging in it willfully, because voluntary exposure will will stop us from being involuntarily exposed. And I think one of the reasons, and one of those if you look at the caseloads of the use of force issues that we've had, say in our country, most of those are gray areas. I didn't operate in gray when I was a cop. I was either, it was either I could handle this or I couldn't. And if you know, because the issue becomes it becomes a problem now. It's like, well, this could be an activation of a certain tool, but I don't know if it meets it. Uh maybe, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It's like if your skill set is at a point where you you're not worried about the gray areas, it's like it's either black or white. Like we're this is a CW deployment all out, or it isn't. Does am I making sense? Yeah, no. And so what happens is guys that cannot rely upon their capacity to handle certain things will be faster reasonably to get to a tool, for example, and do something. And I'm not saying that going to a tool is not the right option, just to be clear. If the tool is the right option, then we want to be not going hands-on.

Host 3:47:33

But sometimes people don't want to go hands-on to their pepper spraying and tasing. And I saw, I mean, I remember when the taser came out, you know, when we had pepper spray, man, I never used my pepper spray. I I I I always used to say that pepper spray worked on dogs and police officers, dude. You know, because I and I remember when I got salty, you know, in on the street and I got in a lot of tussles, man. You see a new guy pulling his pepper spray and you're like, put that thing away, you know, because you knew you were gonna get hit with it. Because on a guy that's willfully resisting, pepper spray doesn't work.

Seb Lavoie 3:47:58

100%. But I mean the same lack of training applies to the tools they're carrying.

Host 3:48:02

Yeah, 100%.

Seb Lavoie 3:48:03

Right. And the lack, the lack of stress and oculation. So I'd rather take somebody that's taking a basic course in in OC or pepper spray carrying in deployment that is also a uh a Muay Thai fighter, a jiu-jitsu competitor. Because he knows when to use which tool. The stress, the stress, the there's a stress piece there, the stress management piece there that you know that person has now the wits to take look at the angle, look at the wind, look at where the position, look where the partner is, do all of those things. But if you can't think under duress, i.e. while you're scrapping and problem solve things, it's it's a detriment. Jiu-jitsu competition, and this is an argument that I get from guys all the time, you know, our jiu-jitsu tournaments are not the streets, bro. It's like, well, you're not fighting on the streets or in jujitsu tournaments, so let's, you know. But but the issue is it's a way to safely induce a level of stress that you that will be very hard to replicate in training, and that will help you. It's just simple, right? Like, so so yes, there are rules, and yes, there's different things, and and and and but it's a limited application of a training technique in in a sanitized environment that does two things, creates a pathway that's gonna help you fight, but also keeps you somewhat safe in doing so. So, really, you're complaining about the best case scenario. Yeah, you know, just go out and do it. That's it's the same with the old argument about you know, ipsic shooting or not shooting, it's not real tactical shooting, where you're not real tactically shooting and you're not ipsy shooting.

Host 3:49:33

So let's start doing something. So your your your point is moot because you're doing neither. Um, yeah, and there's plenty of, you know, again, bro, people hear this on YouTube and they'll tear this apart. And it's like, nah, whatever, man. Um, I I but I do think it's it's important to talk about, and then the you know, the people that are listening that are switched on, man, they understand the difference of of you know what's bullshit and what's realistic. And and things are we've talked about a lot just in our our time together so far. Things are constantly changing, right? Like some of the things that I know are completely outdated. Uh technologies move. Um, you know, and I used to the department I worked at at the time was very old school, man. You know, this is the way we do it. They were very slow to change, very slow to get tools and techniques that that would help. Um, and that's changed now, obviously, but that was frustrating um as well. Because I and and I I remember when the taser came out. Again, dude, you see it now. People pull the taser out, and I've seen cops, they shoot the taser, and well, the guy doesn't fall down. You can see in their eyes, like, oh, now we do. Yeah, and that's like, well, you drop your taser and you put your hands on them, but you can tell people have over-relied on the on the taser as a capacitating device that when it doesn't work, you know, they didn't shoot it right, dude had heavy clothes on. Um, you know, not both probes don't hit. You can see they're like dumbfounded, like, uh, it didn't work. Like, yeah, dummy, that's only one tool, bro. It's time to go to the next, real quick. You kind of got exposed to all these different training things. You became a breacher, explosive, a mechanical. Um, you guys started doing maritime operations. You got certified as a like a like a marine operations specialist. Like, what does that entail? That's a whole separate like level of you know, tasks and problem solving at sea.

Seb Lavoie 3:51:11

Yeah, it's uh probably one of the best course of my entire career. There's a bit of a story around mine too, because normally the guys are running it off the coast of Victoria, so Vancouver Island, off the coast of Victoria and Pacific, very cold. Generally in January, February, you know, time frame, freezing, like dry suits and guys going in the float, doing all the things, doing all their swims, their ocean swims, doing all their infills, you know, in the winter, which makes it, of course, very challenging. Was it a dive course too? No, it's just it's just a marine, everything marine. So that that includes infill, you know, island, hopping, doing all the things. And one year they had a genius idea. We're gonna run this course in Quebec City in June. 200 plus uh guys from all around the countries and other organizations, so QPP, the Quebec Provincial Police, a bunch of the Quebec police members, a bunch of other municipal agencies that have access to water. So imagine for the sake of uh argument uh 250, 300 operators dropping on anywhere in June for a three-week course. There goes the bar tap. It was just anyways. Um, it it it was an incredible time. It it really was. Of course, some guys were making fun of us, but we we also like we had to be careful not to overheat, whereas normally they're freezing. But as a person with certain genes, I much prefer being being warm or too warm than being too cold, you know. So so yeah, it just a great course altogether, the marine operation course. Um everything, everything goes in there from approaches to see interior vessel, CQB to boarding, you know, various ways. Either now the guys have the black hawk, so they can even fast rope out of there, they can do as a first wave, then they can do their climbs, they can do you know, ladder climbs, or they can do a variety of different things. CQB in there, doing all the things, take the bridge, do all the the mission planning and all the things that we need to do to dominate a structure, like a sea structure. And so, and we are in Vancouver. Well, the the team is in Vancouver, so you know where I live now, there would be no need for that. Uh because our our bodies of water are simply lake and much smaller uh inland water, but the the ocean and open ocean is a completely different ballgame. Did you ever get to put any of that to to use operationally? We had the Sun Tzu, was it Sunzu? No, not Sun Tzu. There's some sort of vessel that came in in 07, early 07 or something. Yeah. Where Tamil Tigers and a bunch of uh undesirables and regular people. So they were, of course, mixed in the crowd. Uh that was I think the last real operational marine.

Host 3:54:25

You guys have to take down the whole boat?

Seb Lavoie 3:54:27

Yep. Yeah, they basically, yeah, they did what they did on the uh on the boat.

Host 3:54:32

I wasn't there for that, so I wasn't um you guys are also kind of specialists in rural operations because three quarters of Canada is like out in the rurals when once you get outside the major cities. How does that how do the tactics and how does the game change once you start getting into a rural operation?

Seb Lavoie 3:54:49

Yeah, I don't know what the specifically what the guys are doing right now, but we're a very urban team. And so we do have rural tactics, but those rural tactics generally serve the purpose of either man tracking or or tracking with dogs, and so a lot of the tactics revolve around tracking with dogs. And and and you know, yes, we do have your regular contact drills and contact, you know, sort of uh SOPs and and your your brake contacts and all the regular sort of quote unquote infantry stuff that you might use because of course a shooter, an isolated shooter in a cupboard tree is no different than a than a line of shooters, you know. Like you just you just you need to be able to address the threat in a very similar way and have tactics to problem solve that, but really small team tactics led by dogs, essentially, going around and and really tracking and ambushes and doing setting up things so that we can affect an arrest.

Host 3:55:52

Did RCMP have like specialists within you know the SRT community? Like if there was a rural thing that they would call, hey, this is let's call these specialists for manjaring.

Seb Lavoie 3:56:00

Generally it it it kind of rolls into the sniper roles. So rural surveillance uh and a variety of other things. And if they need additional assets, it takes some of the guys, but also just keep in mind again, this is aged information, right? They they may have a they may have a specific program.

Host 3:56:16

I feel like we should do a disclaimer just so you don't have to say that again during the podcast, dude. We'll do a podcast that Seb's been gone for a while.

Seb Lavoie 3:56:22

Yeah, Seb is uh irrelevant.

Host 3:56:26

Um during your five years as an operator, like what would you say one of your most like kinetic incidents was, or you know, uh what what's something that really stuck with you during those first five years you were on the team?

Seb Lavoie 3:56:39

Yeah, I mean, we've I think one of the ones that stuck with me the most. I mean, there's a lot of calls that have stuck with me. A lot of calls, uh calls that were hot, but uh but I think one of the calls that encompassed the most amount of variability in my mood was uh, you know, it was it was I wasn't gonna be a part of it, then I became the part of it, then then there was ups and downs. And so we had a carjacking at gunpoint uh that happened, I believe, in Richmond, British Columbia. It was uh an E63 Mercedes run flat tires, just a beautiful car. And uh the guy was pistol whipped and the car was taken. And so I was the TL on call, but I had an appointment for the first two hours of the call, as luck would have it. So the call comes in, I had some really good guys I could relied upon, and they took uh care of the of of this until I could show up there. And so the call ends up being in Chil the so the the driver ends up being in Chilliwack, British Columbia, which is an hour away. Actually, actually, probably more like an hour and a half away, uh if not more, than from Richmond. I forget already because I moved, I live in Alberta now, and I just, you know, drawers, man. You just put stuff in and shut it off and it's over. But anyway, it's a couple hours away. And um and so my appointment wraps up, all the things. I go to my office, they're still they're still running, and I know this is gonna come to an end before they before I can get there. But I'll I'll keep running and keep going to the guys. So I go to the office, get changed, get in my car. Like I'm I'm not acting with any sort of urgency because I'm so far away. They have it, it's either resolving itself or or I'll make it in time. So I end up driving there. Um, I don't know if I was driving code even. I was just driving, I think, a routine drive. And anyways, I I didn't think anything of it. And eventually the information comes out that he's now in a backcountry in a place where I'm pretty close to, and so we end up I end up essentially just parking there as he is returning towards a roadblock that they've at they they got established to stop him. So they have spike strips on the whole thing that at the time we had done a little bit of research online trying to find what the car was equipped with and all of stuff, and we knew it had run flats, but we're like, okay, if we take all four tires, what is the likelihood that the run flats are gonna you know uh work the way they should? And sure enough, and so we get all set up, we get all staged up, the car's coming back, and it's coming as a super high rate of speed, so the guys are moving out of the way. This thing has to go where it has to go, it's being funneled through through uh an exit route that has all the spike strips on. Boop, poop, poop, poop, poop, you know, tires are popping. So he goes, and and as he turns a corner, he doesn't lose control. Quite to the contrary, this thing is sticking to the pavement. We're like, oh no. So now we're we're in a chase, essentially. So we we run, I jump on the on the suburban on the outside. I have my shotgun in one hand, holding on to the you know the rails. The boys are on the other side, and we have one of our guys, good guy, he's he's driving, and um he's going 80 or something right now, and we're on the rails. I'm like, bro, don't kill us. And he's like, I got this. I'm like, we're dead. You know, when a guy says, I got this. You know, lights and sirens. He was wrecked out, or no, you no, no, he just essentially took that corner, like nothing happened with his E63, right? You guys are chasing him on the side of a suburban, yeah. But so he so he turns and turns into a cul-de-sac, thankfully. And we all step off to kind of stage ourselves. The dog, the dog guy is in hot pursuit with him because it took us a while to load up the truck. So the dog guy is is doing what he's doing. And then as he is coming back towards us at a high rate of speed, there's a this older indigenous man, just like sort of in the movies, you know, my partner jumps and pushes him, pushes him on the grass so he doesn't he doesn't get hit by this lunatic that's coming down high rate of speed on the on the street. Now by that time, I think I was yeah, I was so I was transition ammo. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take these, I'm gonna take the one tire that he's got left. So he had we were able to ascertain that three of the tires were pretty much done. He had one left, but the thing was this wide, so it just was gripping and keeping the car where the car needed to be. And so, but I didn't think of that before taking him. So I was gonna take the driver, of course, to stop him from killing a bunch of people. There was there was it was about 2.30 in the afternoon. There was kids coming out of school, there was all kinds of stuff going on in uh in uh around the area. And so I, you know, put my my my front sight on that guy and I'm I'm ready to go. And then right behind him is the backdrop of like a dwelling, like a a regular dwelling. And none of this has been evacuated because we're it's dynamic, it's just happening now. So I'm not taking that shot with a slug. And so I just kind of tracked him a bit, and he had one tire left. Put two in his in his tire. And he turns a corner and hit a pole. You know? So then we then we we go and get him out of there. Nothing, not nothing else. That's it. That's the end of the story.

Host 4:02:12

Well, that's that's uh, but that's you know, that's one of those things where it happens more often than it gets talked about. And I think people, you know, that don't understand law enforcement or don't like law enforcement, don't don't, you know, don't know what it's like to to be in those shoes. And you know, had you guys not dealt with that dude, who knows what would have become, right? There's no statistics, especially it's a conversation that I talk about when you consider proactive policing. There's no statistics out there where you can figure out what crimes were prevented by proactive policing. We know what crimes get committed, but you know, that's what we really saw. And I think that's why the crime spike was so hard, so high after the George Floyd um riots, is because cops stopped proactive policing. They were either responding to riots or didn't want to be on the news. And so, you know, there was a time I had a lot of friends, especially in Los Angeles and some of the bigger cities, you know, they're clearing briefing and they're sitting in a parking lot, they're not doing traffic stops, they're not going after anybody, and then at night time, you know, you stop doing proactive policing at night. Well, anybody up past 11 o'clock for the most part, it's probably up to no good. Um, you know, in my experience.

Seb Lavoie 4:03:14

Yeah, it's start it becomes a question of targeting or street checks, and we had a lot of politics around that. But ultimately, I had a reporter once in my in when I was on the team, they asked me to do it right along with this reporter. And I said to him, because we were talking about profiling, we were talking about a variety of different things, topic, hot topics of the of the time. And I said to him, I tell you what, let's query the plates of the next four people that I feel we need to you know query the plates on to see if there's anything coming back. And I was four out of four. Like every cop that's out there knows that. And so I know that's hard to hear for people, but that's reality. There, there is all kinds of telltale signs, so that that profiling piece is real. Yes, we are profiling based on you know exposure, experience, observation, demeanor, all of those things. So it's a multi-realm experience.

Host 4:04:18

Yeah, and I think racial profiling has gotten confused with criminal profiling. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, criminals do certain things, dude. Doesn't matter what race they are, criminals all have inherent qualities. Same thing with cars, man. Like, you know what a car looks like of people that are up to no good, man. You know, it's but again, man, um lawyers, bro. Let's, you know. And look, man, there are let's let's be honest, there has been some bad cops and some bad actors, and you know, it's just like your explosive breaching story, you know, one bad breach killed a program for almost 15 years, you know. A couple bad cops have made some really crappy things, you know, and it it makes us it made it harder for other people who are doing the right thing and trying to protect the community um to do their job, man.

Seb Lavoie 4:05:01

Yeah, broken people, broken world, bro.

Host 4:05:03

Yeah, you spent the next five year, you know, five years as an element leader. I mean, I don't want to overcomplicate those stories, you know, it's a lot of the same things. What changed when you took a more of a, you know, um, well, I guess what what what does an element leader entail in in the ERT?

Seb Lavoie 4:05:19

Yeah, so the element lead is the person, you know, so we those are things that you would do with your senior guys. There's is there's a rank assigned to it, but I that started prior to that. I mean, as a senior breacher, you'd be on a on a on a black side on a on a foreside of a of a res or whatever you want to call it, yeah. And and and you'd be in charge of, say, an IA on that side, or and you'd have your medic, your IA capacity, your your arrest procedures, all of your little plans. So that was yours. That was yours to craft, that was yours to flow within the confines of the plan, and it was yours to be able to communicate with command anything that changed or affected your ability to you know run operation. And if they had something that needed to be done, you needed to be able to articulate what you're asking for and all of those things. So there was just an exposure to leading a small element of three, four, or five people. Right. And sometimes you'd get you'd get a bone in there and you'd end up leading something bigger. But it was just a good, we started that as senior constables, and then eventually you get into a ranked position after sort of demonstrated capacity over time. Now you get into a ranked position, and now you have this as a as a job, essentially. And then over time, this evolved into me being assigned as the overall team leader at a time where a team had 24 guys in it. And so that was a very cool transition. It was also a very different transition because now I moved more into a role of TLO or tactical liaison officer, the person that's in the command post. And I had started that earlier, but now it was my primary function to be in the command post during critical incidents to really convey the reasons why certain things were asked for by the ground team leader and the boys on the ground. And so my job became the enabler or the person that had the ability to articulate what they were asking so that we can get certain options approved. And so, but I also had the other piece, which is the considerations coming from the command triangle. So, what's going on from an investigator standpoint, what's what's going on from a negotiator standpoint, what's going on, you know, all of those things, psychologists and all of those things. So I had to take whatever it is that tactically made the most sense, marry it up with the intel that we had at the time, and then back and support and push the most tactical and decision for the accomplishment of the mission, right? So it was a very different, it was a very different time in my career.

Host 4:07:55

How many element leads do you guys have on a call out?

Seb Lavoie 4:07:58

Uh it depends. It depends, it depends on the magnitude of the call. I mean, if it's a multi-hit or or a massive property, so it really depends. But generally, and I don't know now whether the guys are running, but generally you'll have one or two, you'd have probably I would say a team leader and or a ground team leader, you'll have your IA team leader, you'll have your when you say IA, what does that mean? Immediate action.

Host 4:08:26

Oh, I'm thinking internal affairs. Yeah, no, immediate action. Yeah. Okay.

Seb Lavoie 4:08:30

So you know your quick response guys. So you you you'll have lots of leadership on the ground.

Host 4:08:35

Who uh who's responsible for the final like call on the ground? Critical instant commander, in theory. They're in, but they're in the they're in the talk, right? Or they're on the scene with you guys.

Seb Lavoie 4:08:44

They're in the talk, yeah.

Host 4:08:44

Okay. Who's like your you call them the ground force commander? Is that your guy on the ground that makes the the final guy? Because you've got a bunch of different element leaders. I mean, still somebody has to make the final call.

Seb Lavoie 4:08:53

Yep. Yeah, generally it it works pretty seamlessly. The guys are so experienced. If you ask, you know, the if you ask the IA team leader or if you ask somebody, somebody to provide input on a situation, like generally the the ground team leader doesn't necessarily have to pipe up. The guys will just do their own chatting.

Host 4:09:12

But so what was it like when you transitioned to, you know, the the the team leader and you're more of a I mean, from what you're describing, you're more of an administrator. Oh yeah. What was uh what was that transition like? And and um did you miss being with the guys or I did.

Seb Lavoie 4:09:30

I I think that it to a certain extent affected my operational capacity to a certain extent. You know, I we were called for meetings all the time instead of being on the range or instead of being in a CQB, and we did do those things, but we didn't do them nearly as much. Now you have a completely different function, and the guys understand that, and it's not like you know, it wasn't anything catastrophic. But when you have our own, your own sort of self-imposed standard, which is pretty elevated, it's tough to see some of these things fall down a little bit below what you normally would accept on account of administrating. But that was my new reality, and yes, so we're trying our our team leaders, especially the ground team leaders, are leading from the front with the boys that are out there on the range, killing it, doing the CQB, doing the things and doing it correctly and doing it well, demonstrating what they want to see, those types of things. So this is kind of a cultural expectation. So I found myself really struggling eventually with being exhausted from the operational tempo, from upkeeping my own skills, from upkeeping my own fitness. I also was running three gyms at the time, or at least two. One of them was kind of running itself. I was running two, two, two CrossFit gyms at the same time as I was a team leader. So when that happened and that all culminated, it it something needed to change. But it doesn't take you long to start expanding your bandwidth, where you realize, and it's tough to find yourself and have the introspective ability to look at yourself in the mirror and say, hey man, like this is gonna be costly at some point here. So you have to decide what your biggest priority is, which eventually ended up being leaving the gyms. But bandwidth has a certain capacity, and if it's stacks too much, eventually you start you start seeing the fray. Then that's exactly what happened to me. I was starting to, I was starting at the end of my time, at the end of my term on the team, I think that I wanted and loved the idea of maintaining my position or being on the team, then I then realistically I should have. You know, I just but I didn't stay there and stew. I especially didn't stay there and endanger the guys. No, as soon as I started toying with the fact that, hey man, maybe I need to change something, I changed something. And as soon as an opportunity came in for me to do something else and I knew that the time was right, I just moved.

Host 4:12:08

And you had a family uh as well, which you know we haven't talked tons about, but what uh what kind of toll was it taking on your family just being constantly on call and on deployments and all that kind of stuff?

Seb Lavoie 4:12:20

There's various ways to do it, is the answer. I did it the absolutely wrong way. Do not or learn from me. Do not repeat what I did. You know, I think people can still learn from a bad example. Oh, 100% they can. Yeah. Uh they should. You know, family life was an interesting one because there is a temporary state of obsession that's needed to get to a place that you really want to be. And that applies to almost anything. But the keyword is temporary. When the bar keeps on moving, it's no longer temporary. You get to a place you want to be, and then you move the bar to another place. Now you now you because otherwise there is a sacrifice in policing. That sacrifice, the very understated sacrifice of policing is spouses. And I think the divorce rates are there, the the adultery rates are there, like all of the relational problems, you know, highly associated with making some decision based upon moving the bar all the time. And so I was I was one of those guys. I was completely obsessed with policing when I first started my career. And I was obsessed because I was obsessed to go to the team. But when I got to the team, then I was obsessed to be this on the team. And when I was obsessed, I was I was obsessed with this other thing, and I kept on moving the bar on myself. And then the very little amount of free time I had, I'd be like starting side projects. I'm gonna have a gym and I'm gonna create and I'm gonna, you know. So there's no, there's no there's no way to be like this and not create an unreasonable amount of strain on your on your relationship. I wasn't the man I should have been, not even close. And people oftentimes, when people come to me and they say, hey man, you know, you've had a great career. I I want to emulate your career, and and they ask me about certain things, I will stop them dead in their track generally and say, You look like you're a good father. You already have me beat. Like I didn't, you know, do that. I didn't do what I should have been doing. I obsessed over things that you now think are cool and glamorous and all this stuff. But the reality is there is a way to do it. Some guys were successful in doing it, where they were present on the team and they they put in the work, but they also didn't consistently move the bar and elevate and had to be part of every call and add to, you know, and so those guys maintain a family unity, they maintain relationship with their kids, they maintain all of those things. And so for me, it was very much not the case, you know. And so when I look back at my career and however great my career was, it it's not a reflection of how great I was, it was a reflection of how much effort and energy I prioritized in it.

Host 4:15:28

If you could do it all over again, which that's just not how life is though, what what would you have changed? So many things.

Seb Lavoie 4:15:35

So many things. That I told myself, what happens if I say no to this and something happens to one of the guys, or and I'm not talking as a leader, but just as an operator. And the guys were running short, and you know, you you know everybody's tired, and so I was I was no matter what, I was always in. You could put my name on the board without ever asking me, right? But unfortunately, sometimes that interfered with and that includes courses, courses overseas, courses away, you know. So there was a better way for me to be the man I needed to be in my family unit and benefit from some of those courses, offer myself in a measured, reasonable way, as should be expected from everybody, without going the extra mile and racking up an extra hundred calls that most guys weren't on. And so, and then there was when you start, and those things are all interconnected, because when you start chipping at the the real fabric of that relationship, and you disappear all the time and you're always gone, then it becomes this never-ending cycle of you escape of escapism, essentially. You know, you're you're you're jumping on the you're jumping on the couch, you're on your you're on your phone, you're monitoring the chats, you're monitoring the guys' chats, you're and eventually there's such a disconnection in your relationship, and there is such a disconnection in your family unity that anything that interferes with that can create proxy issues, relationships, lack of being present for the kids, whatever the case may be. You know, it's one of those things where you open up, you open yourself up to all those different things that will take your family unity and take you off the path of being the dad that you should be doing, or being the husband that you should be, that you should be. And so when looking at the prospect of temporary obsession over something, I'm all in. Some of those jobs you just don't have a choice. If you want to be a special operator in the military right now, there isn't a single way you can get there without obsessing over it. We know that. But if you look around, some guys manage to do it right. Others not so much. I was the absolute example of what not to do in a family context.

Host 4:18:19

Yeah, I also think it takes a very unique wife. Um, you know, because I I know plenty of divorces that um where you know the wives weren't supportive of the profession that they signed up for to begin with. And so there's, you know, it it takes two people, right? Um and you know, we always I think it there's a there's a lot to talk about, right? And and when you especially when you start taking leadership roles um in an organization, there's a different level of expectation. Um and again, man, I I didn't do right either. Um my wife just is stubborn and stayed with me even when she probably should have left me. Um but you know, that's something we've talked a lot about on this podcast too. How do you be really good at your job and be really present at home? Because in law enforcement and especially in the military, when you're deploying and going overseas, I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's really hard. Um and it and it takes a huge commitment. I mean, my wife raised our kids on her own, essentially. Um and you know, we we paid for it with with one of them very dearly. Uh and so, you know, like it's it's real easy to sit here and beat yourself up, but you know, um again, I don't know what the right answer is. I think that's you know, everybody has their idea. And even when I hear you say things like there's guys that really figured out how to do it, well, we don't know what was going on at home. Maybe they were just good at hiding their problems better than others, or they learned how to suppress things, or maybe their wife was 10 times more supportive than other wives of guys doing the same thing. So, you know, that's uh but I only bring that up because there's a lot of guys that listen to this that are in the military. We've got a huge first responder population, and you know, it's something that I always like to throw out there for guys. I don't want to sit here and pretend like either one of us, like, you know, have it all figured out, but it's something that guys should consider because as those of us, I mean, you and I are both long in the tooth and have kids that are older. And um, you know, they say that I think it's 80% of the time you're gonna spend with your kids is before they're 13, and 90% of the time that you will ever spend with your children is by the time they're 18. And so there is this trade-off, right? There is time that you cannot get back. I learned the hard way. Um, I know you and I have alluded to it as well off the camera, but that is what it is. And so I only bring that up now to tell guys, you know, like SWAT, military, whatever you're doing, like the world needs you to do that, but don't forget that your family is gonna need you more. And this job that you obsess over, the moment you leave, you will be replaced immediately. You know, you you you're hard to replace at home. Um so um thanks for being willing to share that part of the conversation. Towards the end of your your time um in ERT, you know, you kind of alluded to your decision point, but you know, what was the ultimate thing? What was going on that really made you decide, like, hey man, um it's time for the next thing. Um, what what what was that conversation in your head and with your, you know, with the boys and with your leadership?

Seb Lavoie 4:21:21

Yeah, I I think I was feeling the strain of the on call, of the constant on-call, the constant call-outs of being being everywhere, and just the the whole maintenance of skills and the whole being on top of everything command-related. And it's just it was it was starting to take its toll on me, and it was it may not have been super apparent to anybody else, but it really was to me. And that's all that really truly matters. I uh once I know that I can't turn a blind eye to it. And so um there was an opportunity that presented itself. I was approached by the then commanding officer of the of the division, Brenda Butterworth Carr, an amazing lady. Um her and I had interactions through my higher profile calls. We've had an interaction, this is a bit of a funny story, and a lot of people nobody knows that as far as I know, but there was um there was an incident where we had uh a bunch of calls and so some interactions there, some debriefs and and whatnot, and she was already respecting me. This is coming from from her specifically. And eventually she would send me an attaboy for a presentation that one of my guys has done, and I was with him at the II, the uh independent investigate investigative office. And the presentation served the purpose of explaining the ramifications of quote-unquote outside industry criminal investigation on on the lives of the members of the organization and how it impacts them and how some of these things have to be taken into consideration, excuse me, to maintain their wellness. So we had a we had a guy, he wasn't on the team at the time, he was on another team at the time. Um Jordan McWilliams, he's a guest speaker, great, great dude, but he was charged with murder after taking uh a guy, a guy's life protecting the team. And in a in a starlight, a very common, a very um well-known Starlight Casino shooting, you can look that up. But basically he was charged with murder, and the prosecutor tried their very best to make an example of him, and he was acting absolutely lawfully, and eventually it went nowhere. But he spent four or five years in the tank being charged with this murder for protecting his team. And Jordan is an incredible speaker and a and an even better human being, and he presented to a panel of experts at the independent investigative office, and he had everybody in tears. And so his presentation was key in opening a whole bunch of doors. For them to see our tactics, to see what the guys were about, so that they wouldn't have that nefarious lens every time they think of us or they're bloodthirsty or they're this or that, just so we could establish some sort of reasonableness of action, so we could establish character on some of our players, so that they would treat them with proper, you know, with a with an objective lens, so to speak. And so we presented, we came back to we came back to the office, and there was a pretty compelling email sent to me from the division commander, and she was giving me at a boy for, you know, our presentation that had apparently floored the the panel and all this thing. And I'm like, I didn't do anything. That was Jordan. It was all Jordan. So I sent all of the credit to him, and she later told me, you know, when you did that, I realized I had something different with you. You you you didn't you didn't try to take any account any any sort of credit for what had happened. You've immediately gave me the name of your guy. You immediately made it known to him. You did all those things, and she's like, I need somebody to come in here that has the capacity to call me out on things, to keep to hold me accountable, and I feel like I'm surrounded with yes men. That's what she felt like.

Host 4:25:22

That's poison for an administration.

Seb Lavoie 4:25:23

Sure, it is. So she said, I brought you in to have a conversation about working out. So she started wanting to do CrossFit. So she spoke to the executive officer at the time, was a former teammate of mine. And so the executive officer said to her, You should talk to Seb. Like he's got a couple gyms, all the things he could, he could, he could really help you out. She's like, Well, cool. So she sends me an email. She's like, Hey, are you uh are you around anytime next week? I've no rush. I just would like to chat with you about something. So I'm I'm like, sure. So I go in her office and I sit there and she starts telling me about her workout journey and I I get all and explain kind of where she is in the chain of command. So she is the highest ranked commissioned officer of British Columbia. She is the commanding officer of the division, and she has 8,300 employees. You know, so she's she is she's a a deputy, she she's a deputy commissioner. Okay. Deputy commissioner. I'm forgetting now. I don't know any difference. Yeah, yeah. She's a big wig. She's a big wig. Um yeah, I'm running a blank because we've been running for a while. But um, but anyways, so what ends up happening is she calls me in and she's asking about training, and we start launching into what this might look like and what she might expect, and all those things. And as I was about to leave, she looked at me and she said, Um you're you're not you seem so relaxed here. I said, ma'am. She goes, You you seem so relaxed. I'm normally when people come in my office, like they're not sitting there very relaxed the way you are, and just you being you and telling me the things. And she's like, it's very unusual for me. I I appreciate that. Thank you so much. So I'm like, absolutely, ma'am. Anytime. And I laugh and we laugh.

Host 4:27:15

Yeah, you'd be like, how do I take that?

Seb Lavoie 4:27:18

So I walked away. Yeah, yeah. But the way she said it, it was pretty clear that she appreciated it. So I was I was totally good. So I walked away. A couple a couple months later, the job came came about for the sergeant major that was that was going to retire, and he was her right-hand person. Well, between her, the executive officer, and this other guy, they kind of came up with a plan to ask me if I'd be interested in applying for that position. I needed a passing score, I needed a variety of different things, but I was still gonna skip a few ranks because there's only one person holding that rank in the entire province. And so at the time, I was a corporal acting sergeant for two years as a team leader. And so, in theory, I was a corporal in rank, but I spent two years on the rank of sergeant, which you needed for the for the promotion to go through. I also needed a staff sergeant's passing score on an exam, on a written exam. I don't I already had that. So I had a passing score, I had two years in the rank, even though it was an acting position, and I needed to do an interview. There was something else. Anyway, all those things lined up precisely as she was about to ask me. I just finished my exam. I got my staff passing mark. I was two years in the rank, I was all of those things.

Host 4:28:52

So you were a corporal acting as a sergeant. Is a staff sergeant another rank above sergeant? So how were you able to take the staff sergeant test as a weekend? Because you've been an acting sergeant.

Seb Lavoie 4:29:01

Uh no. Because sergeant and corporals can take the sergeant and qualify for sergeant and staff sergeant. Oh, okay. And the test is valid for I think it's five years. Now it could be less, but I think it's five years. Again, things change rather quickly in the organization. But yeah, so so I had a passing score, everything was good to go. So I did my interview. And eventually they would they would give me the job. But it took me eight months to make up my mind. Just I was not convinced that I wanted to make the switch. It was very difficult for me to remove the greens, which is the color we wore as ERT, and go back to being in plain clothes or in even having ceremonial duties in some instances. And but what really brought everything together for me is when I was sharing with her, I don't know if I'm prepared for the type of leadership that you're asking me to do in the sense that it was very administrative, it was very bureaucratic, it was very politically driven. Not in my not from my perspective, but from the perspective of dealing with Ottawa, which is like dealing with your Washington, all those things. I didn't know if I want to navigate, if I wanted to navigate all of those variables. And so she said, Well, the way I look at it, you get two choices. You either take your ball and go play in the park with the boys, or you come here and lead an entire division. And as a as a person that understands the value of a challenge, but more importantly understands the value of doing it when you're terrified of doing it. I absolutely could not back out of it now. No, I had to do it. And then there was this little voice in the back of my mind that said, hey man, the timing is right because you also were feeling the strain. You know, so I I intersected all of those things and made the decision.

Host 4:31:00

And the headquarters was in Vancouver?

Seb Lavoie 4:31:02

It's in Surrey.

Host 4:31:04

But but so you didn't really have were you gonna have to move?

Seb Lavoie 4:31:06

No. Oh, yeah. Just move office, basically.

Host 4:31:08

What uh what was the feeling like uh from the team guys?

Seb Lavoie 4:31:12

I think I've had lots of guys confined over the years, and lots of lots of good guys say to me, You're the last person I expected to leave. Like if you said to me who here is going to leave this team, I would have named you last. They were very shocked. They were very shocked. I think a lot of guys saw it as a great opportunity for me. I think a lot of the guys, some guys might have been relieved. I don't know.

Host 4:31:41

Based on the op tempo, though, was there was there a high turnover in the teams, or people would go there and stay there till they died?

Seb Lavoie 4:31:45

We had a decent turnover, I would say a reasonable turnover, so sort of turnover that allows for opportunity. But it wasn't a some of the guys uh uh are running up to 20 years now on the team. So there's no like being pushed being pushed out, or there's no repurposing somewhere unless you want to, or there is some sort of catastrophic performance issues, right?

Host 4:32:09

Was there um just things driving you like at home as well? Was it gonna be a better opportunity for home life or no?

Seb Lavoie 4:32:17

So by that time I was already through a divorce like almost by six years. Okay. Because it this my divorce and the whole thing fell apart at the seam in 2013. And so by that time I was there was nothing to tear apart, and there was nothing to mend.

Host 4:32:42

So you sit on it for eight months um and you take it. What was that like initial experience? I'm sure there's a learning curve to be in charge of that many people. What is the uh what is the actual job of the you know, sergeant major of an entire RCMP division?

Seb Lavoie 4:33:00

That is an interesting question because for the longest time we didn't actually know. Everybody seemed to have done whatever they thought was the right there, you know, as is often the case in non-tactical settings, not everybody has roles clearly defined. And that job was an advisory NCO to the commanding officer, so somebody that can bounce stuff by, but somebody that has a measure of credibility with the rank and files. So the files can also the rank and files can also bounce stuff off of them. But if the upper management is completely out to lunch, they can get called out. If the members are being unreasonable, then they can be provided with some bridging information that helps them sort of settle down a bit.

Host 4:33:48

And I'm sure that makes sense for most of our American audience because that's what a command sergeant imager does in a military unit. You know, they're the commander's advisor, they hold the NCOs accountable, so it sounds somewhat similar.

Seb Lavoie 4:33:58

Yeah, it's similar. And so historically there was a sort of a dress and department component to this, but because British Columbia is the most operational province, provinces of all the country, it's it's a much more operational role. And so I had a sergeant who was in charge of anything dress and department related or or um yeah, or uh ceremonial related.

Host 4:34:24

So he was I didn't understand what he called.

Seb Lavoie 4:34:26

I could I couldn't find the the words, but yeah, so he he was in charge of ceremonial was that a big component of Yeah, it is a it is a component of it. I mean funerals of members, all kinds of all kinds of duties related to, you know, changing of commands, and there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of parading and a lot of in the RCMP that there's a lot of there's a big ceremonial aspect to it. There's a variety of different instances where we might be asked to do certain things at hockey games, at whatever the case may be. And so and generally the sergeant major or staff sergeant major of that province is responsible to administer that. But in British Columbia and I believe K in Alberta potentially as well, there is such a demand for operational presence from the from the sergeant major that there is somebody, and I don't know about Alberta actually, but definitely in British Columbia, I had that. I had the luxury of that, and that person was way better at ceremonial duties than I ever was. So I may be a figurehead, I might be running a parade and do something, but he kept me in line, you know, if you know what I'm saying. So it's not like I brought any uh I was decent at drill. That was a virtue of just loving drill. Yeah. So that's that's a bit of a weird quirk. But but really, he was so knowledgeable, one of the most knowledgeable ceremonial person and his historical person that we had in the organization all around the country. And in fact, every single division used to tap into him for you know precision in their in their whatever they're doing they were doing. And so that was a part of it. And then I needed to clearly define what my role was going to be. So yes, the advisory and COP says great, but what else? Is there anything? So I ended up conducting research projects on wellness, on how our members were treated post-critical incidents, how, where are some of the failures, where are some of the, you know, the recurring failures. I wasn't looking for outliers, I was looking more for where are the consistent spots where we fail our membership. I was also responsible for change sort of changing, at least at the provincial level, uh, legislation to allow members to have beards because there was a massive resistance to it. And it was the first time in 150 years that RCMP members were allowed to have facial hair. And this came from Ottawa, but they left it to the province to establish whether or not they were gonna do it. So you know what happened to some of those provinces. They just weren't gonna have it because the commanding officers were like, I don't like beards. I'm like, well, I don't like beards in uniform either, but are we being reasonable here based on you know all these criteria? So they had this big CBRN thing that they were articulating not doing it, and I pretty much deconstructed that because it just wasn't there. Like they were very inconsistent in their application of this CBRN priority, and it just there was no real, there was no real need for what it is that we were doing, and there were mitigating strategies we could employ. So I ended up changing that, which at the provincial level is huge if you think of that. Think about having had grooming grooming, you you you were forced to groom for 148 years, and all of a sudden that's that's changed. That's a big piece.

Host 4:37:52

Yeah. What was your decision point on that? I mean, personally, I'm not a fan, but that doesn't really matter.

Seb Lavoie 4:37:58

Of what? Of unit of members in uniform with beards?

Host 4:38:00

Yeah, and uh, it's probably just because that's how I was raised, right? I'm not saying that's the right answer, and uh, but you know, I spent my entire career that we weren't allowed to have in the military, and it wasn't a thing in law enforcement. And you know, I think it had to do with you know how people looked, and you know, some people grow good beards, some dudes don't, some dudes don't take care of it. Um so my opinion really is irrelevant, but what was your decision point when you're making a decision on behalf of you know 8,200 people that could potentially could affect?

Seb Lavoie 4:38:27

Hey man, for me it came, it came about, yeah, we we can we can speak, you know, the game of the person that isn't gonna grow a good beard or is going to be neglectful in their growing of beards, but what about their uniforms? What about their physical fitness? What about all these other things that people are neglecting? And so for me, it became more uh sort of a an articulable piece. Can we still articulate forcing people to do this for 20, 25 years of their careers based upon what you were giving me as a reason, which is the CBRN threat. And so it wasn't so much that I was going down all these rabbit holes. They gave me they gave me parameters and they said the CBRN threat is the issue.

Host 4:39:10

So I said And just for my civilians out there that don't know what C BRN, it's chemical, biological, radiology, nuclear. It's basically they're saying you can't put a gas mask on during an attack because the beard will all affect the gas mask.

Seb Lavoie 4:39:22

That's right. But also, we have no training as responders, so uh responders in the CBRN environment. So it's it's self-protection, essentially, and then we have asthmat and we have a variety of other things. So it, you know, and there's a lot of countermeasures that are not present, so no physical countermeasures, so you can put your gas mask on, but good luck with the rest of your exposed skin and all the things that you and so we we got to a point where people were wearing their gas mask on fire, just not understanding that you know, wearing your gas mask, your your PC4 gas mask on a fire is actually creating the opposite issue. And so clearly there were there were some there were some major issues now. Part of that funding for the CBRN program came from 9-11. And so there was a lot of tie-in to a lot of money being brought in to do these programs. And then when you start, when you started looking at these programs, you there was no continuity on some of those things. And so the the the things didn't really align here. So we're saying something, but we don't have that capacity. We're also giving them a duty they're not trained to do. We're also doing this, they're you know, so it was just a breaking down of a logical argument based upon what we knew and a risk assessment.

Host 4:40:38

Was there that many people that wanted to wear beards? Was like, this is something that was really important to the rank and file?

Seb Lavoie 4:40:43

Dude, you don't know what that new generation is like. Like the the that is a big deal for new for people in their early 30s right now.

Host 4:40:54

Yeah, well, and the other part is, I mean, after you know, Ferguson and Floyd, I mean, recruiting took a hit. So like we saw it in the states, departments I would have never thought would, you know, they started relaxing certain standards just to attract people. I mean, there's still, I mean, recruiting is still an issue for law enforcement in America. Is it the same in Canada?

Seb Lavoie 4:41:12

Oh, yeah, it's uh it's the same everywhere. And so for me, it became a it became a case of what was articulable, what was defensible, what was reasonable, and why are we we're asking people to make decisions of life and death, but we are not trusting them with cle keeping their beard clean. And if somebody didn't keep their bead c their beard clean, they have supervisors for this. Yeah. To say, hey, bro, like I need you to tighten up that beard game. Well, you know?

Host 4:41:40

There's a company called Johnny Slicks out there. If you guys need some uh beer accoutrements in Canada, dude, they're freaking awesome. Johnny was just on the podcast. Yeah, that's just interesting. Um, I mean, you know, it sounds like the role of you know being the sergeant major was kind of you know problem solve leadership dilemmas at the highest level of command. What are some other kind of leadership dilemmas that you faced?

Seb Lavoie 4:42:03

Yeah, so I was I was right in there during COVID. Yeah, could be lowered. Yeah, yeah. So COVID was a really, really interesting one. COVID was really interesting. I was, I was, and I I have no shame or no problem saying this. I was the biggest proponent and pusher of getting our members in the gym the entire time. And I was relentless. I was at the highest levels of leadership, the organization, straight at the commissioner, in meetings, on virtual meetings, on phone meetings, like daily, basically telling them, here's the stats, here what here's what's happening here in our in our province, and here's the cost to our members to not be able to train while continuing to perform their duty. So you expect them to do exactly what they are supposed to do, and they they do that. They're not locked in somewhere, they're going from call to calls, doing exactly what they did six months ago, except other people around the country are working from home and responding to emails every three weeks. Our members on patrol, they're doing patrol stuff. And therefore, they need to be fit to do patrol stuff, they need to be capable to do patrol stuff, and they need their mental wellness to be a part of the equation and and and be a part of that risk assessment. So I spent an entire year having these writing these papers, these white papers essentially, articulation of and using some of the built-in exception that we had to some of the codes that we had provincially, and and then they they they were really resistant wanting to wanting to make this a national thing, but it's like our realities aren't all the same. And that's one of the one of the reasons why it makes this organization so difficult to manage, is that the operational realities are different everywhere. But in a province where people haven't changed at all and they're just out doing the work and they're doing all that they're expected to do, they need support when it comes to fundamental things, such as let's get them in the gym. So we essentially did the gyms were closed in all the detachments. They were they had tape on the doors and you couldn't go in. But they were still asked to go out and arrest the fighting suspect and do all the things and see the the dead bodies, and you know, so for me, this became sort of a hill that I was willing to to kind of die on. And I spent I spent an entire year being a massive pain in the behind of the.

Host 4:44:50

Did you ever get a breakthrough?

Seb Lavoie 4:44:52

Yeah, but it took a year. It took a year, it took a year for me to to finally get through. And I think at that time, there was less and less, there was a lot more data, and it was there was less and less argument against it. I mean, now they were completely run out of arguments, you know.

Host 4:45:09

How did uh how did the mandates go for the shots? Was that an issue that you had to contend with?

Seb Lavoie 4:45:18

Not really. I think I think we had there was quite a reasonably low amount of people that didn't take the shot that were in the force.

Host 4:45:27

Really?

Seb Lavoie 4:45:28

Yeah. And honestly, I took the shot. And I I'm not happy that I took the shot, but I took the shot. We didn't know what we didn't know, man. No, exactly. And for me, as a 70s kid, where polio was eradicated eradicated with with shots, there was a lot of other things. We were getting shots all the time. I just I just assumed this is another shot. And I I wasn't gonna you couldn't do anything. You couldn't go to the restaurant, you couldn't do anything if you didn't have him. And I I I man. I am so proud of the people that stuck to their guns and prioritized their health and did all of the things.

Host 4:46:08

But here's here's the well, Canada made it hard, dude. You guys couldn't travel, you couldn't go to a restaurant. We had some of that here, depending on where you live. But there was large swaths of middle America that just didn't care. But it was a polarizing conversation. Oh, 100%. It probably still is in certain circles. Yeah. I mean, most of the people that are awake, they were awake then. And now there's a lot of people that are waking up now and realize that we got lied to about everything under the sun. That's a whole nother YouTube may even, you know, fucking ban this video because I'm not cutting this portion out. But you know, a fear is a powerful tool. And when you scare people that you're gonna die and you're gonna kill your grandma, and you know, you're gonna kill whatever if you don't do X, you know. I mean, God, there was things on the people, you know, you got famous people on the news saying, you know, do your part and whatever, man. But for those of us that were watching, it's like, well, wait a minute, you know, you can't go anywhere and everything's closed, but you can go to Home Depot and you can go to Walmart, and you know, like we're shutting down every mom and pop store, but all the big stores with a lot of money can stay open. And remember at some point it's like, you know, you you can go to a restaurant, you gotta wear your masks, except when you're eating, or you just like it got to the point you're like, yo, this is ludicrous. This makes zero sense. And then you know, the studies start coming out, and now shit, now things have really come out. How much Fauci lied, and but again, man, the only reason I asked that is not to put you in some precarious situation. I'm just curious to see if you were dealing with it because again, I'm sure you were dealing with the facts that you had at the time, which they've all they changed, but you know, um, I I to I totally agree with you.

Seb Lavoie 4:47:44

This uh this was uh it was beyond ludicrous, and I think just from a risk assessment standpoint, the survival rate on the on the virus was you know not conducive to the actions that were taken. But more importantly, we didn't see it operationally because these guys were doing exactly what they were doing the entire time. So it's not like any of our members were doing something that they weren't doing to mitigate the risk. Yeah, they were mandated to have masks in their in their cars. It's like how okay, so how about we get the the maximum amount of intel as we possibly can so we can make reasonable decisions on who we're gonna send where. And then I had I I ended up dealing with a bunch of issues of sidelining of guys that wouldn't shave their beards, like Sikh, for example, you know, that have certain religious requirements, certain faith-based requirements, and then some of the actions that were taken by some of the leaders leading those guys, like man, there was some there was some crazy stuff there as well. You know, guys, guys running a robbery section or running another investigative section at the sergeant's rank, having a religious exemption to not not shaved on account of their faith, be told that they were going to be put on administrative duties, then get sent to administrative duties, and then some of the younger leaders give them the cars to wash, to wash, or you know. So now you have a sergeant who's in charge of a robbery team, a trusted member washing cars for patrol officers. And so those are those are critical issues that you have to be able to navigate, and that was kind of part of my time there.

Host 4:49:45

Um, I mean, you were kind of the bridge between the executives and the rank and file. When those two groups disagreed, I mean, how did you navigate that? And you know, did you ever have to deliver bad news up?

Seb Lavoie 4:49:59

Loosely, my job was to do it behind the curtain. Members won't necessarily know what led to them obtaining something or not obtaining something, but the reality is that somebody fought for that. And that somebody at the time was me. And I always had their best interest at heart, no matter what. And if I didn't give them something, it's because we couldn't, on account of the totality of the circumstances, which they may not have been privy to. And so I try to share as much as much as I can because the reality of the organization as a whole is a lot more complex than people give it credit for, especially if their immediate reality is impacted. But it's important to have that person that has a lucid view of what is occurring at that level, that's capable of deconflicting and explaining and articulating. And sometimes it's not sufficient for them, right? It may not be. But most reasonable people will, if they're provided a decent explanation, sort of ease off on whatever it is that they're adamantly attached to or or building cynicism over, because that's an important piece. It's all about maintaining morale. At the end of the day, you have a massive organization like this, man, your morale starts failing here, there, and everywhere, and you're having compounding issues everywhere. Now your your internal affairs are going up, your excessive force are going up, you're like the list goes on and on.

Host 4:51:24

Who provides leadership training in RCMP? Do you guys have leadership schools at every promotion? How does that work?

Seb Lavoie 4:51:31

Not really. I mean, there there is, and there are courses, and there's internal courses, and there's external courses that are that are being used to develop. We have uh managerial courses and a variety of, you know, there's there's some courses, but the core of the of the people promoting the organization are promoted through quote unquote field promotion, essentially, right? Where where they've demonstrated capacity, they they especially have demonstrated they can write to those competencies, because unfortunately that's that's a part of the process. And it's not wrong to be a part of the process. It it has a lot of weight though, which you know that is somewhat questionable. But I mean, a lot of organizations do it like this because it's defensible. It's very hard to say, well, I uh we establish emotional intelligence as being X, Y, and Z. But the reality is we know that emotional intelligence is incredibly important in the leadership, in the leadership, um, in leadership character traits. And so, so yeah, so you you do have courses that are internal. You have people coming in, offering courses, you have people going out to it or other.

Host 4:52:40

But is there any mandatory courses when you get promoted? It depends which promotion is the answer. Yeah, it's always been fascinating to me, civilian law enforcement, because you know, the United States isn't isn't much different. Um, you know, in the army, you make sergeant, staff sergeant, sergeant first class, master sergeant, sergeant major. You go to a course, some of them are pretty long that teaches you. I mean, obviously the managerial side, but how to lead. I mean, leading this question we've asked on the podcast, and I'll ask it to you in a minute, because I'll just be curious to see what your thought. But, you know, leading, not everybody, not everybody knows how to do that. Some people can be taught how to do that, some people just have it naturally. Um, but there's an art to it, man. And there's a difference between, you know, a leader and a boss, right? You've seen the memes. Um, and so I'm always fascinated why law civilian law enforcement has escaped leadership training. I'm sure some of it has to do with finances, money, because that that type of stuff costs. But man, you know, we all know that guy who took the test, did well on the test, and became the leader, dude, and destroyed the organization. Um, you know, the the person that you know kissed the most ass is now in charge and they suck, everybody hates them. And, you know, and a small department morale can can kill a department and have cost you a high turnover. Um, and so, you know, I'm I I was always just I'm still a little baffled of why we don't invest more. And a lot of civilian law enforcement leadership is really based on managerial, you know what I mean? How to protect yourself from a lawsuit and how do you write up an employee for breaking a policy, but it doesn't really teach them how to lead those things that you've kind of articulated as Easter eggs all throughout the podcast of those things that you did. I mean, those are all leadership traits and character characteristics, and it's why you got asked to be the sergeant major of you know the division because of those things, but no course taught you that. Um, those are just things that you were born with. So I'm always you know, I had a podcast guest, Alex Pellbath asked me one time, are leaders born or are they made? And I said both, you know, and I don't know. I think some people are naturally more gifted than others, but I also think that has to do with how you were raised and what your environment was and what you were exposed to. And you know, dude, if your dad was a general in the army and that's who you grew up with, well, you got exposed to leadership a lot different than if your you know, dad was a a mechanic. Not that any one job is more better than another, but again, man, you know, how you were raised and what you were exposed to, I definitely definitely played. You didn't have a father figure, and you know, you obviously were born with something that maybe some people don't have. So I'll ask you that question. Do you think leaders are born or are they made?

Seb Lavoie 4:55:17

Yeah. Well, just clarifying before I I respond to this, uh, on the teams it was completely different. We had team leader courses and all this stuff, so that's kind of separate from So you guys do have some of that. There are on the teams. Yeah, yeah. But that's not the norm. Yeah. That's that's sort of the exception. And to answer your question, you know, the realm of the experience of of the human experience, man, is there's a lot of factors involved in whether leaders are born or or trained. I think that I agree, it's both. A lot of those skills are trainable. Emotional intelligence to a certain extent can be. You know, all the pieces, like the communication piece, the empathy piece, like if you're not empathetic, you have a problem, like right now, because that's something that's really hard to come by, but you could be not empathetic to a certain situation because you do not have a visceral understanding of that situation. So we could talk about, say, somebody going through a divorce. You may have never been through a divorce. Maybe you're a you're a good man, a good relationship, and you have a good partner, and and you be, you know, having divorce issues or threat of divorce or separation is something that's so far from your from your peripheral vision or from your from your purview that you you just simply cannot relate with it. And so now what you have is you have somebody that has a performance issue under your tutelage or under your leadership, and they start acting out of character, which you've noticed. So good for you. You you understand your member's baseline, so you were able to pick that something is off, but now you're making it potentially a performance issue before there's a fact-finding that's occurring. And once you fact-find, now the the question is is how much work are you willing to do to understand what kind of stress divorce poses on a person so that you can address and help the person the best to your abilities. So I would say that even when you when you spoke earlier about a person being a mechanics, for example, and a person being a general, sometimes the general gets home and wants nothing to do with his family. So the last the last thing that kid wants to be is like his dad. And maybe the mechanic is the guy that has four guys working for him and they love him to death and they've been working there for 35 years. He's displaying better leadership from a family perspective. He may not be in a ranked position in an organization that highly hierarchized, you know, their their or rank their leaders. But and so I I do believe that all of those things have a massive impact. It's this is a multi-realm experience. And one of the traps that we fall into as humans is we silo things. We silo things because it makes us it makes it easy to process in a very highly complex world. We take one sliver, we silo it, and and but really all of those things are completely interconnected. So it's anybody's guess. So I would say that, you know, yes, some are born, but eventually, if they want to get better, develop the technical skill, the know-how, if they want to re-evaluate some of the things that they think they know, all of those things, they're gonna need some training, they're gonna need some, they're gonna need some help.

Host 4:58:19

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 4:58:20

The person that has all of the training in the world, but has is very low on emotional intelligence, doesn't really care about communication skills or any of those things, is gonna have is gonna have a real hard time to be where they need to be. You know, so it's just leadership is a privilege. It's not just a responsibility, it's a privilege. But one of the one of the interesting things is when cops are looking generally at um at leadership, they often think about ranked position. I I watched members cut down somebody that wasn't present in the room for being off again, you know, today on account of ailment, mental or otherwise, do so with a sergeant on the watch and have this conversation in the open while everybody else is watching. Like you're a constable in this or in this organization, but as a police officer or as a military person, you are expected to lead, even if you're alone. You're expected to lead yourself. You're expected to lead yourself in a disciplined lifestyle and doing the things you need to do and understanding your work and being able to ask the questions. So you're a leader. There is no way to skirt leadership when it comes to these organizations. Like we all affect leadership. When you're a police officer as a constable and you show up on a call, you are leading a problem-solving operation. Right? So you are a leader. So whether you want to be a leader or not is inconsequential. You you are a leader. And so I think that I'll wrap this idea up real quick, but I think there is there is issues with downloading of leadership on certain critical issues that we think we have nothing to do with. So, okay, so you're downloading wellness issues to leadership, what they do or not doing, or whatever. But five minutes ago, I just heard you talk to the sergeant about the person that's not here. That is a massive failure of leading because other people were listening to you, and the next guy that has a problem isn't gonna want to come forward because he knows the treatment that's reserved to those that are absent.

Host 5:00:35

Yeah.

Seb Lavoie 5:00:36

You know? Yeah. So I think that we we silo things and we assign blame and we do all kinds of things, but generally doesn't really lead into our own introspection. And what is it that I am doing for that's a great point.

Host 5:00:48

It's like the cops who, you know, drive like assholes but give speeding tickets when on the job, or the guys that love putting drunk drivers in jail and they're drinking and driving on the weekends, man. It's that dichotomy of, you know, I didn't write a lot of speeding tickets, bro, because I don't always drive the speed limit. I always had like struggled with that mentally. I never liked writing tickets anyway. It was not the thing I got into law enforcement for, but I was probably the least dude to write that because I knew how I drove in my personal life. Um, and so yeah, that's uh I don't know that there's a right answer. I don't think there is a right answer. I and I think it's I'm always curious to see, especially with somebody like you, with your experiences and what you're exposed to um throughout your career and your leadership experience, um, just to to hear that, to hear that idea. And that's a I think that's a a question that I'll continue to ask because I every time I get an answer, a different answer, I I learn from it. Like I think the moment that we stop learning uh in life, but from each other, um, I tell my kids all the time, man, if you're if you're in a room and you're the smartest person in the room, you're the wrong room. Um what was, and I think I I mean it might be obvious because I think you just kind of stated it, but what was your decision point to retire and to to move on to the next chapter um in your life?

Seb Lavoie 5:02:01

So I think we kind of have to go back to my my career, the intent when I joined to begin with. So that was to be a part of the team. And I knew that from the very beginning. There was no other appeal to me other than being on the team. So after I left and I spent two years in the chair at the CEO's office, I had a decision to make. Where am I going next? So I was offered, you know, to go the commission, the commissioning route. So getting essentially knighted as an as an officer, or to go back to an operational role. So I figured I'll go back to an operational role. I was gonna go back as the ops or operations NCO on the team, go back to the team because I thought, you know, that's what I wanted to go. Is that still an administrative type role? It a little bit more. You still hit the calls and whatever, but you're the sort of the team leaders of the team leaders instead of being the team leader of the guys. And so, and I had a uh a team commander at the time that sometimes you know struggled with sort of he was an incredible per uh process person, very smart, very intellectual, very capable. But his thing, his challenge was interpersonal relationships. I was the complete opposite of that. So he knew and was able to define his role within a world where I was his right-hand person, where I could deal with the PR side or the relationship side with the guys, and he would do the process-oriented things to push the needle or to move the needle. And so that sounded really good to me. He knows he clearly understands his role, it gives me permission to call him out on things, to make them the way they should, and I get to take care of the boys. So it sounds like a match made in heaven. Except when they added me to the groups on the phones, and the phones started pinging, and I started seeing some of the issues they were encountering operational or otherwise. And eventually my stress level rose in a in a very serious way. How so? It just did. My heart rate, my baseline heart rate rose, and I I felt I essentially I had a physiological reaction to not having been a slave to my phone for the last two years and being having a regular schedule, eating, sleeping, working out regularly, doing all the things that I needed to do, versus the whole You just can't escape work. Yes, yes, that's a thing. Yes, and so one day I was waking up and I pr I must have had a 72 heart rate, like resting heart rate, and I I'm rocking a 48 on a good day generally. And so I get to the mirror in in the bathroom at my house, and I'm like, what's the problem here? Talking to myself like a crazy person. You don't want to go back, do you? And as soon as I say this out loud, my heart rate glow goes down. I'm like, done. You are leaving. So I called the commander and I said, Hey man, I'm sorry for giving you the runaround, but I'm not coming over. I'm done. And I went to the I spent a few days thinking about it, and then I I thought, you know, I think I'm gonna venture outside the organization. And that's a really interesting thing. It's it's not often done, but I have never heard anybody who's done it who was dedicated and doing it regretted it. Generally, you don't, and especially after given 20 years of your life uh to the organization, which gave me a lot, by the way. I'm not I'm not playing victim here. I had a great career. But ultimately, where was I gonna go? What kind of stress was that gonna put on me? And I think part of the ability that I had to make the decision that was best for me was the fact that when the decision to go to the commanding officer's office was taking so much out of me and it terrified me, and I did it anyways, you are building pathways. You are building pathways. I truly believe that if you came to me when I was on the team and asked me what the prospect of me retiring is, I would have had that nowhere near my radar. But because I'd pushed myself outside that comfort zone and the CEO's office, and for the first six months in that chair, I was having heart palpitation because I was completely outside of my environment, completely outside. And I had to do some really, really quick learning and really quick elevation of speaking, writing, all of those things. And even having leading high-level meetings, understanding political, you know, sort of uh navigation and doing all of those things to make things happen and to do things for the benefit of our members. But that discomfort created pathways in me that now supported me leaving the organization from a developmental standpoint. Had I not done that, I wouldn't have proved to myself that I could do something that was completely foreign to what I did and probably wouldn't have had the guts to leave a job where a regular paycheck is coming in all the time, only to take on the world without knowing what that was going to look like. And so that really created the opportunity for me to have enough self-belief and enough faith to move out and and go do the thing. Did you retire? Is that did you I mean, yeah, did you guys do your pension at 20 years? Yeah, so no, in theory, I was one day short. So in order to get a lump sum, I took uh 19 to 364 day payout. So in theory, it's a resignation. Really? One day later would have been a retirement. So theoretically, it's a resignation. In reality, it was my retirement. They even gave me my twenty year. On my veteran's card, you know. Wow. For one day. That's crazy. I know.

Host 5:08:05

Um, so is that do you guys get like a month of retirement or is it just a one-time payout?

Seb Lavoie 5:08:09

In in this speci you can, but in this specific case, it was a it was a lump sum. Oh wow. I wanted a lump sum so that I could go out and create a business, do all the things that I needed to do, and uh also live for as long as I needed to find where I was gonna go and do all the things. I probably wasted so much money. So much money. I wasted so much money taking, you know, oh, just I'm gonna take a week. Oh, yeah, I've been operational for 20 years. I'm just gonna take another week. And next thing I know, I'm 12 weeks in, haven't done anything. This is when this this happens. This when the legs, the legs happen, right? So now I find myself set back even more because now I have medical issues on top of that. So I come back like six months later looking at the 1200 US dollar jujitsu gi I bought. Going, that was stupid.

Host 5:09:08

How was your transition? So you left in 2021 and you had your whole leg thing happen pretty close to that.

Seb Lavoie 5:09:16

Yeah.

Host 5:09:16

Um, how did that all culminate?

Seb Lavoie 5:09:19

Yeah, this this happened about six months later. I would have been I would have been in some very, very serious trouble had it not been for the members of our organization that stepped up and and helped me through GoFundMe. So I had a a friend of mine run a GoFundMe, and I have some contentions, little things that I wish I did differently. When this whole thing happened with my leg, a big part a big part of what was being addressed with me spiritually had to do with pride and and that fundamental pride that we sometimes have as humans that I just so happened to be anchoring a lot of my behaviors in. And I had a non-necessary surgery for something that I that annoyed me about the way I looked, and that was prideful enough. But once it happened and it went completely sideways, I was in a 10 out of 10 pain, in incredibly suffering, and somebody needed answers as to what had happened. So I said I had knee surgery, because again, my pride simply would not allow me to say what what the surgery was for. And so I was being transformed, as it were, as I now know, from the inside out. But I needed this catalyst, I needed this, I needed this event to really, really spark up the next phase of my journey, which was an absolute transformation from what I was before to being a completely new human by the grace of God. And when I got out and and told people that I had knee surgery, people, a friend of mine started a GoFundMe, and then people started contributing to that GoFundMe, which really helped. Now, I had conversations with my really close friends, and I was like, hey, just so you know, it wasn't knee surgery, it was what this was. What do you think? Like, should I be telling people, whatever? It's like, that's nobody's business. You've always been there for everybody, just let them take care of you. You know, it doesn't matter. Like if you're racing your your your super sport on the highway and you get in an accident, you're not necessarily in an accident because you were racing it. They're not gonna say, like, well, let's not give him money, he raced it. No, you know, so I had this conversation with a few key people that I really trusted, and they gave me this advice. And whether or not somebody would take an exception to this, I'm totally good with that. If they ever come back to me and say I don't like what happened here, I would be paying him back. But what I can say is this I have always been there for our members, and I made a I made a mistake as a as a human being that was anchored in something that I was struggling with for many years before, which led to other or many other mistakes that were nearly catastrophic. Some of them arguably were. And I needed that reset. I needed, I needed that in my life as a human being to become the person. Now, they helped me achieve that, that this transformation, because that GoFundMe funded me, my rehab, it funded my training capacity, it funded the modalities I engaged in my recovery, hyperbaric, multi-barric, red light, like the the list goes on and on. And I was on a very, very strict uh recovery plan that I'd crafted with the help of my you know experts and and and and I was going, I was doing six to eight hours of recovery a day. And all of that was financed through the GoFundMe. So they really saved my bacon big time. Oh, that's awesome, dude. Members stepping up and saving my bacon.

Host 5:13:17

You know, you spend 20 years as a police officer, you know, you walk away as the sergeant major of a very large portion of the RCMP. Um what was it like for you to emotionally separate from the institution? And kind of what do you think your worst day of that transition period uh was? I I bring this up because it's something that we struggle with in America. The transition, a lot of soldier men, soldiers especially, they craft their identity around this position. Cops are known for it too. I mean, the the police officer suicide is pretty high for guys that are recently retired, I think within two years. Um, and so I think the transition's a big part of our podcast as well. And it's something I think we've all struggled in. You and I have talked about it off camera as well. Um, so you know, what was what was that like for you?

Seb Lavoie 5:14:02

So the base premise of the transition is whether or not your identity as a cop, as a military person, is who you are. It tells the whole picture. But more importantly, it's not about who you are now, is two weeks from now, when I've been away from this, what am I? And so now you have an issue of purpose versus what I used to. I call this the the I used to, you know, I used to be this and I used to be that. But it's a it's a skewing of the information in reality because what happens is the person you were yesterday, the day before, a month before, six months before is was necessary to the and instrumental to the person you are today. There is nothing about who you were then that is no longer within you. And all of those skills that you acquired, all of the time you have put in, all of the sacrifices, all of the processes that you've developed will carry over to anything you do. And people are like, well, advanced contact doesn't help in an office. Oh, it does. It absolutely does. You know, you're gonna show up on time, you're gonna be there for your team, you can list goes on and on. But I think a lot of people look at themselves or their former selves as the highlights of their life. And from a dopamine standpoint, it can be. You know, war in your case, is the guys that are here that are that have come here. I'm literally a librarian compared to every guest you've had in here. It's called a spade a spade, right? And so so think of it this way like the intensity of the experience that these guys are living with, how difficult is that to be at Walmart after like so that that's a that's on a spectrum that it would be very hard to fathom for somebody that's never experienced that sort of intensity of human experience. Because we know life and death in the real time while under contact, while doing the job that you're supposed to do. I mean, there is there is nothing that's more intense in the human experience, or very few things, anyways. And so I think a big part of that is the realization that that person that you were then is nowhere, it's not gone. You're still that person. You are channeling the lessons learned, your experience, your life, your all of the things towards something else. Whatever that is, it's completely up to you. And the world's yours there's you can do whatever you want. But you need to believe that you're not leaving that person behind and becoming this other person. You may have something truly transformative at some point, but I ain't gonna be you doing it. You know, I think that a lot of guys lose sight of that. So for me, one of the one of the actionable items, because I hate having this conversation without saying like what it is that I was doing, but I was very multifaceted. I was always learning, I was always studying, I was always learning another another language, another, another, another set of skills or something, something. And I and I had multiple passions. I'd be diving, I'd be, I'd be training, I'd be um studying, watching mountains, going on hikes, doing all the things. So I had like a giant sort of toolbox of things that I did that affected all of my realms of the human experience. And I was able to tap into those at various times. But I what I would do inherently is I would neglect one from time to time that I knew I should have been putting more time in. But if something happened that prevented me from being here, I would reinvest that bandwidth to whatever it is I needed to do. Right? So when this thing happened with my leg and I was under 10 out of 10 pain, knowing you'll never be the athlete you ever were again, I was like, okay, what's next? Well, I wanted academic, I wanted some academic achievements. I've never gotten them. I want to go to school, you know? I'm gonna go to school, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. So so it's it's having the a character, uh build up a self-identity that's multi-layered, that has so many components to it that if you lose one aspect of it, you you're you're losing a small part of who you were, not who you were. So how you anchor your purpose in that, you know? For example, if you're a very physical person, and a lot of guys do that, and that's been a bit a big problem for warfighters. Guys extremely physical, they go overseas, something goes boom, and now they they can't. But their entire life, their entire sort of purpose, person uh sense of personal identity was tied right into physical fitness. But now you can't do it, at least temporarily. That is dangerous, having all your eggs in the same basket, so to speak. So you we need diversity and we need forced diversity. And I and I was really, really good at doing that. And so when I came out of the organization, I was at peace. I had achieved what I wanted to achieve. There was nothing that I felt was needing to be done by me other than all of the things on the outside world that would maybe have a positive ramification on the organization because I think one of the things I didn't want to do was to abandon everybody and just abandon ship. That makes any sense. Oh, it makes a lot of sense.

Host 5:19:30

When did you kind of find your faith? Did you grow up in the church? Were was was was religion a a part of your periphery, or is this something that came to you later in life?

Seb Lavoie 5:19:40

It came much later in life. I did a fantastic job of not engaging in the faith whatsoever. So I was born and raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school as a youth, well, Catholic schools as a youth. And my experience with Catholicism was very much in line with my experience with bullying, where, you know, as an example, in one of my in one of my schools, I was put on all four by one of the teachers, and she had all the kids come in and give a little kick here and there because apparently had done something at recess. So I was beat. And that was a Catholic school with a Catholic teacher, and the giving the permission to other kids to come over and and beat on me when I had a very soft heart made my heart very hard. And it hardened me for a long, long time. And for a long time I was in victimhood when it came to these issues. Now I see them as providence, to be clear. But for the longest time, I had those issues were victimhood. Even though I wasn't somebody that had a propensity for victimhood, I still fundamentally did that. And so that kept me away from the faith. I did I the distrust of the authorities, the distrust of Catholicism, the distrust of and really not understanding the faith as a relationship with Christ. You know, it became the actions of a few who tarnished essentially Christ's relationship with me, which those two things are galaxies apart, right? Humans will do human things. I don't care what their little sash says or whatever, humans will do human things. But that the fact that I led it and went down a a life of quote unquote, a life of sin, because I did, for me, the poison of choice was lust. I was unbearable with that. Lust essentially could have taken me off the path, and it has so many times. And so for me, the and this is one of those, I'm gonna tell you a real like a pretty good story of of how I realize how bad this was. So I alluded to some relationship problems earlier with my ex and everything, and a lot of that had to do with lust. A lot of that had to do with my inability to be the man I should have been. A lot of that had everything to do with me being selfish and and and just giving in to my lustful ways. I got to the point this is a true story. I got to the point where I was lying down in bed after 15 years of service and I would see dark, shadowy figures in my room, like standing above me, looking at me. We are talking reaper-like shape, you know, not really clear, but it happened every night. And it was just standing right above me. To the point I got so familiar with that site that when my wife Alexandra and I got together, I used to say to her, Could you do me a favor and shut the bathroom door? Because there'll be people hanging out there and I really don't want to see them. And she's like, What do you mean? I said, You know, I I there's these people that visit me at night or these dark, shadowy figures at night that hover above me. She's like, Are you serious? I said, Yeah. She's like, What is that about? I said, I think it's PTSD related. And she's like, Oh my god, you know, that's that's horrible and all this stuff. So, anyways, I said, No problem, it doesn't really bother me. So that was my assumption that somehow I had uh a level of of PTSD, which I now know is is something completely different, you know. When I when my relationship with when my relationship with Christ grew, when I really, really invested myself following this incident where where I was exposed to some relational evidence that was completely undeniable, I started growing a mustard seed which started growing and growing and growing. When I moved to Alberta, surrounded by 90% Christians, I saw the way that these people lived, and all of a sudden my mustard seed became a basketball. And it eventually, you know, so over the course of a five five-year period, there was an incredible growth there.

Host 5:24:19

But where did that start?

Seb Lavoie 5:24:21

Well, yeah, I'm going there. My bad. But when this happened, those dark, shadowy figures disappeared. Right? Because my life has turned around completely. Sin makes me sick. Not, oh, let me embrace this. Give me more, give me more. So there was, there was, as far as I'm concerned, there were there were entities waiting for me. Like you're ours, dude. Keep doing you, man. We get you know? Yeah. And and so, but to go back to your question, when this when this happened, there were too many times to count, too many to recount, where I would be at a 10 out of 10 pain. I would buy I was completely by myself in Toronto, which I should have been. I was completely by myself in a hospital in Toronto for 30 days on a massive amount of opiates. I was in a in a dark cave, and every time that I was flirting with despair, as one would, I would get a phone call, a text, a message saying, hey man, just so you know, I I don't know why, but I felt compelled to send you this. Here's Lauren Daigle, rescue me, you know, song. And of course, she's a Christian singer, and it really helped me through some rough times. So I hope it can do good things for you. And I was spending 20 hours, 24 hours, 40 hours with these with this song on repeat. It was just going and going and going, and it brought so much solace to my soul. It was like being in a dungeon surrounded by all these things that are wanting to kill you and having some measure of comfort. And I don't care what that is, you know. But it's the timing on these friends and who they were, because every single time the timing was absolutely divine. And every single time they said the exact same thing. I felt compelled to send you this, or I woke up this morning with a clear vision of sending you this or telling you this or doing that. And every single time it happened, they were Christians, every single time. So there's two key individuals in there. One of them would eventually become my faith mentor, and the other one was a friend and a teammate before. We weren't that close, but when everything hit the fan, he was there at pristine time every single time. And there were too many synchronicities to count. And so, and and for the first time in my life, in the most amount of pain that I was in, I asked for help. I surrendered. I said, God, I don't know, I don't know if you're real. I've never I've stayed away. I'm sorry I stayed away for all these years, but I need help, you know? And every single time I got answers from him. Every single time. I think you know, a bro as as as Psalm 50 says, you know, a broken, humble heart God will not despise. There is nothing that God resents more than pride. And I was all of it. You know? That was I was doing the most of. And and I think I needed to be broken down, chopped to pieces, for the per but but saved for the purpose of being the man I needed to become. I needed the man that he knew I could be, that I'd adamantly refused to be. And with all the warnings I'd gotten.

Host 5:27:57

So was there like a defining moment where something, you know, I mean, kind of gave a really broad answer, but what if you boil that down to one or two moments, um, what happened in those moments and and how did that change and put you on this new path?

Seb Lavoie 5:28:13

Yeah. You know, those little moments, I started tallying them up in my head. I'm like, that was strange. That was a strange coincidence. I just prayed, and I haven't heard from anybody in seven days. And 10 minutes after finishing a prayer, I get a text that says, this, and by the way, I'm sending you a song and it's Lauren Dagel, and she's just so happened to be a Christian singer, right? And and so now I'm starting a song by Lauren Dagle. I'm lying in bed, I'm doing all the things that I'm doing. Despair is kind of slowly leaving my body, and I'm starting to see maybe a little bit of hope. And as hope returns for me, at least spiritually, the the sky that was black, dark for the last two weeks, cracks wide open. There's a little sliver of light, and it hits me right in the chest, like hard. Raises the temperature in my room just like that. And I'm essentially stuck in this laser beam of light that's hitting me right in the chest. And I feel with this with this peace that's only known when it's that surnatural type of peace, you know, something that becomes your breath, like it becomes everything that you are. I felt that, you know, at a very specific time. And then and then when I started tallying up these little synchronicities, I decided to buy a cross. And I just bought the cross so I could honor my friends, the Christians that had helped me through my ordeal. So I went and bought a little cross. I put it on my neck. And then I started being really attached to this thing where I couldn't take it off. I couldn't take it off to work out. If I bent it while I was doing, you know, cleans or something, I would, I would, I would lose, you know, I would I wouldn't be happy. I just my heart was kind of feeling that. And so I started, for lack of better term, having a mustard seed planted. So these all these events equated to a mustard seed. If you have faith as much as a mustard seed, you can move mountains. Right? And so all it took for me was to let the mustard seed do what it does and to transpose it in the right environment. So one of the reasons why it's very difficult for us to understand what's going on spiritually is because we are too busy. That's the issue. And we are too busy by design. We are too busy by design. Keep you don't need to be the enemy, does not need you to all out uh turn your back on Christ, it just needs you busy enough to not think about it. That's all that's all you need. And so for me, when I finally decided to make a move, so my wife and I just so happened to have the same childhood dream, which was to move to a farm. I used to work on a farm as a teenager for a few years, just over the summer, hauling hay bales and do things, preparing for you know future fitness challenges. And my wife was a horseback jumper competitor. And she had had her horse in a BC stable where she had to pay, and there was no real her having her own horse, you know, in a in a in the right location, having her own riding arena, all this stuff. And so her and I just met in 21 and had this conversation about what our aspirations were living-wise, and we realized that we're playing of the same instruments, so so that was a great realization. So we ended up we ended up looking for places to go to. And so we ended up visiting places in Alberta. Alberta is the province east of BC, so BC is the furthest west, and then Alberta is one province to the east. Alberta is the Texas of Canada. It's our primary industry is oil, it's very rich as a province, even though we're subsidizing everybody else in the country. We have a very conservative premiere, we have gun-loving horse, we got branding the old-fashioned way we do all the things that that Texas does.

Host 5:32:44

I knew that's why I liked you, bro.

Seb Lavoie 5:32:47

So I ended up we ended up finding this property, and this property, again, another one of those. You know, my wife was looking for properties everywhere on the MLS, which is a computer system where you can find properties, and she saw this property pop up every single time she was on a computer, and she never clicked on it because the quality, the qualities were poor, so she didn't really feel compelled to look at this photo. It looked like a Minecraft picture. And eventually she said she was so annoyed of it popping on her computer that she clicked on it, and it brought her to a larger picture, and she's like, This looks pretty nice. Like the picture are crappy, but it looks like the place might be nice. Do you want to go check it out? And I'm like, I looked at it, yes, I do. So we took a drive to where we currently reside, and we we went and had a look at the property, and I set my feet on that property, and I was a hundred percent sold on impact immediately. It was like God drew this place for us, and so within a span of about two or three, so it took six months to get it, and I'll spare you the details on you know um how much of a pain it was. But basically, this place could have been sold two or three times. But the people that owned it were very strong Christians and they loved us, and they wanted us to have it, so they refused to sell it to other people while they were waiting for us to sell our place, which by all accounts wasn't gonna sell. So they said no to two or potentially two or more sales on account of us getting the place. Wow. Right? And so again, here goes, here goes a little bit more. Oh, two Christians treating us the way Christ would and do all the things. So again, another learning experience for us. We finally get there and we've experienced physical things out there that are unexplainable. Like I have seen, I showed you some some of the oh man. I I mean, bro, when the grass is green, the under the undercoat of the grass is green, the long grass is gold, and it goes like this, and it sways, and it becomes almost like um what do you call the the thing that has two colors, and when you when you move it over, it it kind of holographic, like a hologram, essentially. It becomes like a hologram, and then the sun, there's triple rainbows. The sun is hitting us directly in the chest, exactly like it did when I was in the hospital. The whole thing felt like a giant setup with God saying, check this out, guys. This is all yours now. You know, here's a blessing, something that I blessed you with on account of your relationship and the ways that things are going. So my wife, who was a baptized Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox lady from Serbia, but had never had stayed away from the faith her entire life for very similar reasons in me, said to me, I think that has to be God. You know, she said, I and I said exactly the same, the same thing. So this is kind of where her and I decided, here, let's not commit to this Jesus business too quickly. I want to do, I want to start reading the Bible because actually I've been I've been converting people to non-Christianity and I've been objective and I've been objecting and doing all the things that I was uninformed to do on account of my own personal bias, but I never took the time to read it, to study it, to really, really get to the bottom of what the message is, the interpretation of it, all of those things. And so I can't, I I I don't know why, but that's never been a thing. I've never done that. And I there's very spiritual reasons why that's the case. Why would you be tempted to do that? And so we embarked on this massive journey of learning. It was all about learning, and I took it on, we took it on like nobody's business. Why Orthodox? Oh, that that didn't come around until much later. Awesome. Okay, yeah. So we um, you know, we started, we we actually started reading screw like the King James Bible, and we started reading the King James Bible, reading the interpretation, doing all of the things and and and and and learning. But we also started watching videos of of historical. I I'm a pretty scientifically minded person and I was a rationalist most of my life. So I'm I I've very much like to marry up science and and with with faith, which I think you know a lot of great scientists have done. And so I'm not pretending to be a great scientist, by the way, but but we we we ended up you're not an expert and you're not a scientist. Got it.

Host 5:37:48

Spreading your balls, man. I'm not even sure I'm Canadian.

Seb Lavoie 5:37:53

So so so we we ended up you know launching into this massive review of everything we thought we knew about the faith, historically or otherwise. You know, the the boat found a mound error at that nobody knows why it's there, but it's somehow in the Bible and has the dimension of the of the ark, you know.

Host 5:38:14

Uh so were you reading things? Obviously, you're reading the Bible, but were you guys what kind of things were you consuming outside of the Bible?

Seb Lavoie 5:38:20

Uh I would say generally content, right? Like YouTube, YouTube documentaries and generally specifically source documentaries, just not like some random person. But if somebody is a bit of a Bible scholar and has a million followers, there's a good chance that there's some value in there, right? And so some of those, some of those things we were, we were doing. But then we also had friends, and all of our friends where we live are 90% Mormon. And they treated us like gold, all of them. They really treated us like gold, and none of them ever try to push anything on us until the day that we said, hey, we're we're kind of wanting to explore a little bit more about this Jesus thing. And they said, Why don't you come to church? So we went to church, we did some things, and then next thing you know, we were gifted a book of Mormon, right? And as a good researcher, I read the entire book of Mormon. I read all of the things, and that led led us down a road where we were essentially a week away from being baptized as Latter-day Saints, as as Mormons.

Host 5:39:28

And is that a thing that is that what is that how you join the Mormon church, you get baptized?

Seb Lavoie 5:39:35

Yeah, there there were some uh there was some um so we had uh visits of um some um what do they call it? Missionaries. So we had missionaries come in, we were we had six or seven or eight sessions, Bible sessions and missionaries conversations, all those things. And um and and and we were kind of a week away for lack of better term of getting baptized. So we've had some of the people that were engaged in us studying, and some of the people that we loved, and two of those people were the people that sold us the the house, Iber and Becky Beezer. They Iber built a house that we live in, the log house, and he was a legend in uh in the area where we're in, and just a just a beautiful soul. And we had asked him to officiate the the baptism, and we had asked Becky to do a speech, and we had involved a few more of our friends from the area that were gonna come and and be a part of that special journey. And we had a last meeting a couple days before or a week before the the baptism, and we had some questions being asked to us. Do you truly believe that this is this and that is that? And I think it had to do mostly with you know the Book of Mormon, those types of things. And I think that a big part of me wanted to, but I it it did not quite feel right, and I wasn't being truthful. I I didn't believe some of the some of the things. I didn't I didn't believe them, but I felt guided away slightly, and I'm not suggesting that's everybody, that that was my experience. I was guided, I was guided away, and I was pointed into extending the amount of time that we were researching to know what was right for us, kinda. And my wife felt the exact same way, but she didn't say a word because she thought that maybe it was just her getting cold feet. But I did the complete opposite. I sent her a message the next day and I said, Hey, I did something. I hope you won't be too mad. I canceled uh the baptism. And she said, Oh, thank you. Wow, yeah. She's like, I was feeling the exact same way, but I just didn't want to be the downer. And I think a big part of this is these people have been amazing to us, our neighbors are the people that are, you know, I'd be on a hunting trip and I come back and I had a horse fence built. Like that's how they are over there. It's crazy how they how much they help themselves. And I understand that not all communities are the same and all this stuff, but where we are, it's incredible. And so it was a very difficult decision to make to sort of disappoint everybody, but we were prioritizing our relationship with Christ. That's what we were prioritizing, and I was gonna spare no feelings, you know, in in that pursuit. And so my wife, as I alluded to, was a baptize, she was baptized in an in a 1700 years old church in Serbia. Like incredible, incredible place. And she's Orthodox. Her mom is baptized Orthodox. Her mom had said to us several times before, you know, Orthodoxy is where it all started, you know, and that's where those were her words. It it's a little bit more complex than that, but that's where her words. And so we decided to give orthodoxy a shot. But before that, we wanted to go to other churches, so we went to other churches to try to find what we were looking for. And for me, with the amount of help I needed for the specific healing that I needed to do, I needed to be away from like a mega and evangelical church where people dress like they're going out in a club and do all the things. Because for me, nothing wrong with that. I love a good Jesus concert and all the things, but I just it felt like being in a club. And it was just fueling some of the things I need healing, you know? And so for me, it it was it was more a question of going and feeling these different places instead of okay, here's the theology I aligned behind originally, right? I yes, I did care about theological accuracy and history and all this stuff, but that all kind of came in a little bit later. I wanted to see what it felt like. So I went to a bunch of different churches that we have, and I felt nothing in any of those for the most.

Host 5:44:22

Is there a lot of churches in that area?

Seb Lavoie 5:44:24

There are, yeah, because it's Alberta, it's it's kind of like Texas, right?

Host 5:44:27

Yeah, there's a church on every corner here.

Seb Lavoie 5:44:29

Yeah, yeah, same. And so eventually we would go to um, I did some research on orthodoxy, and I I knew that, you know, from zero from the first century all the way to or from zero to 1054, there was one church, and then it's split into two Orthodox, Eastern, Eastern, Western, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic. So I knew that. I knew that most denominations, even though there's 45,000 of them, can 1517 years later. So for me, it it was just a question of if I show up 1500 years to the party, am I qualified to talk about what's real and what isn't, you know? Like so I had an issue with that historically. I understand it's not that simple. A lot of the denominations created after had valid grounds on some of the things they were. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not even getting into this whole denominational thing. There's people that love Jesus and people that don't love Jesus. But I needed to. And that's a polarizing conversation in and of itself. A hundred percent. And I needed, I needed something that that that that was that worked for me. And so I started looking into the orthodox. I like the history of it, I like the the passion around it. I had I like the fact that it was monastic because I'm a personality that when I engage in something, I need to be giving it my hall. And especially when it comes to faith, you need to be able to give it your all. That is uh, you know, it has to become that number one priority. And I like the monasticism of it where I have to engage my body, my full body in the worship that I have to, and I don't mean it in a transactional way, I mean it in a relational way, but it's very, very conducive to be consistent. You are consistently in some sort of worship, you know, consistently invoking the Jesus prayer, consistently praying for extended periods of time, consistently fasting, consistently. So I have to engage all of my senses in that experience of faith and relational of relational, of building that relationship with Christ, because guess what? I spent an entire lifetime denying him. And so for me, I know time is of the essence. I wanted that, I wanted that as much as I wanted to breathe at that point. Now my faith is growing and growing. And once we started experiencing, even when we first started studying, we started experiencing a lot of spiritual attacks. And a lot of people won't know what that means, and I wouldn't have a few years ago. But it was the it was incessant, and it was the most vivid dreams you can possibly have of a very specific set of circumstances that create an environment of conflict in your family, so that your wife and you can get at each other's throat, and it gives her dream of her own accord that go to the complete opposite. And now you're sharing your dream, she's she's sharing hers. Hers work on your insecurities, yours work on her insecurities, and now next thing you know, you're fighting. So there is there is an attempt there at derailing the whole project. And we used to stop and say, Are you seeing this? Are you seeing what's happening right now? We're being played against each other. You know, my wife is a very family-oriented person. She would have dreams that I was burning the entire house down with gasoline, doing all this stuff, killing everybody. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then I would have dreams that I was like making out with somebody that wasn't her. And I hadn't had a dream like this in a decade at least. And now not only was I having dreams, but if originally I would have a dream, and in my dream I would shut down the opportunity to do that. So then what the dream would do is take me up and down in a roller coaster, for example, or in a plane, or in a race car, and it would create all these really strong excitement emotion, and then it would roll in with the coup de gras, which was whatever chick or person that was there that I was supposed to be attracted to. And now somehow it it would somehow work because there was a an activation of my inner. Does that make sense?

Host 5:48:42

Oh yeah.

Seb Lavoie 5:48:42

Like it was it was it was willful, it was purposeful, it was directed, it was undeniable. I mean, I have never in my entire life had dreams like this. And the the closer we got to make a decision to where we were gonna go and how we were gonna study and all of those things, the more vivid, repeated, and unceasing those attacks were. And so, you know, when that started happening, I was like, you know you're on the right path when you give yourself to something, and something is really trying to stop you at all costs. And I really understood the multi-realms that we're living in here and what are some of the forces at play. And then you start seeing it everywhere, as as Muzash said, once you see the way broadly, you see it in all things. But now with like the whole, you know, Hollywood and and whatever his name is, uh that list.

Host 5:49:39

Uh Epstein.

Seb Lavoie 5:49:40

Epstein, and you know, all of the things, and you're seeing all the demonic activities that's going on there, all of some of the some of the diabolical things that are happening and everything. Like you just know, you know, you saw the the Serbian soccer game where they had a picture of Jesus, they get fined. There's a picture of Satan and everybody celebrating, and it's just incredible. The world is is is led by the enemy, and we're we're in it. Um all the way to our next. And so, and so for me, that really validated instead of keeping me away as it was intended to do, it validated what I was doing. Because there is no reason I'm I'm under such consistent attacks unless there is something at play, i.e., my soul or you know, or something. And so that is sort of where that is sort of where we we we went to the Orthodox Church. I sat on the pew. We were standing mostly because as you know, in Orthodox, in Orthodoxy, most of the service is standing.

Host 5:50:43

I haven't been to one yet. We're gonna experience one tomorrow. Yeah, I've been to the Orthodox Church. Evan was here and really opened my eyes to Orthodoxy. I have another friend, longtime friend Nate, who became an Orthodox Christian, and it's it's something um I I definitely want to experience nonetheless.

Seb Lavoie 5:50:58

It's it's it's incredible, and I I like it because in in the sense that the whole worship session is around Christ, and Christ, of course, has given his life for us on the cross in a very sacrificial way, in a in a way that most humans will never understand the love that it takes to do something like this for somebody else, knowing what that somebody else has done to you to begin with. But standing instead of being comf comf comfortable in your service and kind of chilling and letting your mind wander, when you're standing, there's a certain level of reverence to pain and and suffering. And I'm not suggesting that standing in church is equivalent to being crucified. But what I am saying is a little bit of pain reminds you of the cost of sacrifice in the context of worship, you know. And I think that that is an incredibly powerful piece for me. It's difficult with my leg, but I still do it. I'll sit down from time to time because I don't have a choice. But the whole worship. with the body is is a is a is a very intricate or um it's a it's a very fundamental piece of the worship ceremony orthodoxy. So we sit there after a while because eventually the the priest will say a few words and we'll have a reading and when he does that we we get to sit down. And I sit down and uh a sunshine a ray of sunshine is coming through the stained glass hitting me right in the chest at the exact same spot that I was hit in when I was in the hospital in Toronto. It's the same feeling it fills me up with peace from head to toe and I'm back. I was like got it Roger this is where this is where I'm supposed to be and so when that happens I then realize you're playing catch up you're green. You're very green in your faith you're very green in your relationship with Christ you're very green in all of those things. And quite frankly it's going to take you years to catch up. So that's when I decided maybe I'll I'll go to school. And it wasn't again none of this is transactional. I don't care about the paper. I don't care about having another degree I don't care about how long it takes me to do it. I care about developing the knowledge base of having the ability to articulate ancient Christianity in today's context having the ability to understand my own faith having the about the ability to understand scriptures both you know old and new testament having the ability to understand witness text having the under the ability to read patristic second century patristic father's uh witness accounts and and and and and and have a certain degree of understanding and so that's when I signed up to do the master's of of theological studies which is essentially a de uh uh a master's in in ancient christianity that is where that decision came from it was simply for me for my own knowledge for my own betterment if of course for the betterment and the knowledge of my family my wife likes it because we we have Bible studies and I'll we'll we'll talk about some of the things that I learned and she just loves it it fascinates her but she has you know her memory is is not nearly as good as mine when it comes to academia so she's much better than me in a lot of things but has there anything in your academic studies that's either confirmed or denied kind of what either you feel or what you found in orthodoxy? I love everything about orthodoxy. I really do I love everything about orthodoxy I find that there is an uncanny depth to orthodoxy so I I told you earlier I was a baptized Catholic right so I converted from Catholicism and was chrismated in orthodoxy two years ago in June and I just there is something so incredibly amazing about theological doctrines about the way to worship about patristic fathers and some of the some of the amazing explanation rationalization articulation of some of the things that you feel so I'll give you an example of this just a which is quite new to me but it was it was amazing and there is a name for this in Greek but I can't remember what the name is I'm you know like I said I'm I'm I'm Evan's T Mu version so I gotta get Evan back here. So one of the one of the things that I started realizing as my faith grew more and more and more and I became on sin became intolerable to me I started feeling the same feeling at the same location every time that sin was either on the horizon or that temptation was around or that I was getting stressed out or any of the negative emotions that we experience in a human experience. I would feel it in the exact same spot right here in my gut, in my belly. And I I never understood that but it had me thinking like hey when I was really young I used to feel fear when I was getting bullied or when I was going to get a beating coming back from school or whatever I felt the same fear at the exact same spot and I would run and I was a very fast runner thankfully because I would have gotten a lot more beatings. But my entire adult life every time I felt this right here so one day I was I was doing some research and I jump onto an anytime these feelings and emotions are coming. I would like to get an Orthodox Christian perspective on that. And it essentially goes into this super long diatribe that speaks about the fire placed into us to long for God. And when the world was broken we started misfiring so we reallocated this to idols and to false gods and to and to to things of this world and worldly matters. And so basically this fire which consume you consumes you as a youth fires in all kinds of direction and attaches itself to things that make you feel better. Now lust is a very interesting thing because lust has a physical release attached to it whereas a lot of those things do not and so take for example working out and lust those are two exteriorizations of that fire that you can, you know, that you can physically say once I have this fire in me, if I go do a crazy workout it will pass temporarily and if I have a physical release it will pass temporarily but it comes back immediately and sometimes stronger right so there's really no way to reallocate this properly because it's intended for God. It's intended for to long for Christ it's intended for that it's not intended for all these ancillary things that we assign value to in this worldly world. And so for me having the realization like hey this fire that you feel that comes at the onset of sin or all those things is actually that's the Holy Spirit's work like keeping me aware of what it is that's going on. And I never caught on to that because I just wasn't there spiritually. But now I actually sense it coming which is grace of God. That's the grace of God to be feeling that coming and having the ability to interfere with the process. You know if if if I if lust happens like somebody walks by and I I get a a a look and as you know what enters your eyes enter and can enter your heart enters your your your eyes it then enter your enters your head and if you allow it it enters your heart. That's how lust is how how surreptitious it is and how insidious it is and we don't guard our eyes very good as men we quite to the opposite often right and so for me understanding that through the lens of orthodoxy I was able to say first of all guard your eyes at all cost and second if something enters your head deny it and do not let it enter your heart. So I would feel it think it stop it reallocate it maybe do a a bit of the Jesus prayer which is a very very simple prayer in orthodoxy which says Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner or Domine Jesu Christere mei peccatoris and Latin or you have Greeks and a variety of other languages and I I know them all and I will repeat them and it and it and it reallocates and I will say God take this fire that I feel here and reallocate it where it ought to be reallocate it to you. And immediately it goes it dissipates immediately and so that is one but this is an incredibly deep like what if I was to show you the write up on this it was about 10 points long and it really feeds into a very very very deep concept now my wife and I were experiencing conviction very differently. So conviction from the Holy Spirit which is when God tells you no no you're on the wrong track that's not where I want you to go and you feel it internally oftentimes you'll be denying it you'll be saying oh no that's just me whatever but once you become once you become faithful you realize that no this is actual spiritual guidance and you're being you're being directed. I would experience conviction like you put me in the air fryer and my wife it was gentle as gentle as could be so we started looking through the the lens of orthodoxy why is it and and and and the fact is the soul responds differently to different types of conviction and so orthodoxy has them all laid out you know this is how the soul responds when the person X, y, and z this is how the soul needs to be prompted in order to react in the perfect so basically what it said is if my wife was convicted the way I am she'd be in despair. If I was convicted the way she is I wouldn't listen so it's extremely deep and rich in theological um underpinnings aside from obviously being very rich in history and tradition and all of those things. A lot of people don't know that there wasn't a New Testament until two decades later after the apostles proclamation and charygma and the the teachings of the apostles was already being done from word to mouth yeah Evan was here man and he gave a master's class and kind of the history and I was pretty ignorant to most of it um prior to you know us doing podcast preps and then you know his uh recollection on the podcast I just found it fascinating.

Host 6:02:23

I mean orthodoxy if I understand it right and if I can remember what kind of Evan taught is I mean it has its original origins to Paul right I mean and that's kind of orthodoxy started kind of you know right after Jesus left.

Seb Lavoie 6:02:38

Is is that correct yeah so really Pentecost right so 50 days 50 days after Christ's resurrection or 10 days after ascension Paul essentially gives a direction in in Thessalonians 2 I believe something along the lines of continue proliferating the words our actions our liturgical practices I'm not doing it verbatim because I'm not Charlie Kirk and I don't have that kind of recollection gift but um but essentially that's precisely what it was so one of the things that happens is scripture as New Testament as we know it didn't come in until hundreds of years later right like for the first two decades all of this was word to mouth from the apostles up to their to the people that they led and so everything mattered liturgical services the way they did things so to say I'm I'm just gonna take this out of context so let let me let me let me try to this is at least the way that I articulated to myself imagine you're an ATF agent and you understand everything about the inner workings of your job because you've been in it for so long. So imagine you're you're you're you're a person in an organization whatever organization you want it to be and you understand the inner workings of that organization and you understand it at a much deeper level than just the policy that's written in the policy manual. And you're able to reconcile the reality with the policy but all of a sudden you're dead now and it's 700 years later and somebody says take this policy book and and run it the way it's meant to be run. Whereas imagine if you taught somebody and they taught somebody else and they taught somebody else so by the time you reach that 700 year mark you now have it you have you now have some authority and some continuation.

Host 6:04:48

The only thing I have an issue with is you know you look at there's an old game we used play as kids I don't know what to call it banana you sit in a circle and you know the person that starts it tells something to somebody and then they tell it to somebody and you know naturally by the time it gets all the way around the room you know it's completely changed from what it was started.

Seb Lavoie 6:05:06

Do you ever worry that some of that has happened in in religion so if if we if we act on that premise then we're saying that the Holy Spirit isn't in charge. And so it's a faith issue right because if if if if we have faith we know that it is exactly what it ought to be not that it should be something else that we don't know about. Because even if that was the case we wouldn't know.

Host 6:05:35

How do you reconcile with all of the scrolls or books that weren't put in the Bible I mean one of the biggest ones that always comes to my mind personally is the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch it's uh such a powerful book it's something that's you know it's it's the only book I've read that really talks about heaven at length um and Enoch's visitation of heaven and there was a concerted effort to keep it out of the Bible for whatever reason. I don't want to pretend like I act Northern I know because there's a lot of historical stuff but um I I guess I mean you're not an expert neither am I so this is just two dudes having a conversation.

Seb Lavoie 6:06:12

Yeah but what is your definition what is your personal thoughts on that you know yeah I've I've seen those and I've I've looked into into some of the canons and why things are involved and where things aren't and where why things were selected while others weren't and you know there's a lot of the times it's not about nefariousness. A lot of the times there's an actual articulation of why that's the case and sometimes it's as simple as this was so far off the baseline that was taught to another 11 people that we simply cannot stand behind that. We we simply cannot like it is just it's completely out of line with what you know so sometimes it's just a matter of that it it's an interesting thing because when we think of something like the Nicene Council for example which was the first council in in 325 with with all of the religious leaders of the church at the time all coming all coming together and I believe maybe an Aryan doctrine was responsible for that anyway it doesn't matter. But basically to to assert some of the some of the the theological rules some of the theological underpinnings some of the some of the understanding of the faith and how it was going to continue to be proliferated and all of those things to make sure there is no misconception people imagine a bunch of nefariously inclined humans going into a room like most of those guys were pious real pious some of them were monks. You know we're not talking about people living in opulence and having all of these and so I think there's a there's an automatic distrust of any process that involves conferring on something and making something that isn't necessarily the case you know and so I don't know is the answer. Like I don't know for sure why the book of Enoch specifically why but all I know is if if if we if we have if we have faith in the if we have faith in Christ and if we have faith do we throw the baby out with a bath water so to speak you know I had a prof I have a professor in university his name is Father excuse me Eugene Pantiak. He's written something like 12 or 14 books uh ancient Christianity he is a biblical scholar of epic proportion Harvard graduate he's got another PhD somewhere else and his area of expertise is translation from Hebrew Aramaic into Greek into you know so he understands the actual breakdown of every single word of scripture in all of the varied languages and what the small subtleties changed in the interpretation of the verse. And I sent him to something because I was reading all this about the Old Testament that was right before the messianic prophecy course and I said to him Professor Pantiac how do you reconcile some of the things that you know about with the Old Testament and how it came about and some of the sources that were involved in it and all of the things how do you reconcile that with the faith your fate and that was important for me to ask him that he responded this long sometimes it's God sometimes it's men so I think that what we're doing inherently is we're putting so much weight in some of the some of the things that if you if you take them out of the equation they don't change the fundamental premise like they really don't but we we assign so much weight to it and we think if I can prove one thing to be a fabrication then the whole thing is a fabrication like there isn't going to be human influence in there. That's my point.

Host 6:10:10

But there is going to be and I think that's why I've enjoyed talking to you and people like Evan and I expressed this last night when you and I were talking I've come to this point in my life where I know enough to know that I don't know anything. And you know I I've gotten I don't know if it's the podcast or just my own personal quest but anytime I get around people that try to pretend like they have the answers or they know everything, I instantly want nothing to do with them. Because for those of us that understand life and and are in this pursuit of faith nobody has shit figured out man. I mean it's like I told you in the card too you know if you think about everything we know about heaven is from people that haven't been there because nobody's come back you know other than Enoch right I one of Enoch was one of the few people that God called to heaven. So you know I I've kind of struggled with my my own religious beliefs and I believe in God absolutely um I've struggled kind of with the the modern Christian church if you will and I think maybe that's why I find orthodoxy um so interesting because it's so rooted in history hasn't changed a lot over the years which I kind of like man it's it's it's the same thing. But again man I don't pretend I think I focus more on my relationship with Christ than I have studying the Bible and we could argue all day long um how you need one to have the other and I'm not saying that it's not important but I've seen so many people that are I mean theologically smart that can just push people away about Christianity in general. Of course uh because they know the Bible back and forwards but it's like who cares man if you can't reach people and we can't you can't be empathetic and you know there's plenty of people that do things that I don't like and I don't agree with but I mean I don't hate them and I don't you know you can still God still calls us to love everybody and and if you look at who Christ was hanging out in the Bible he wasn't going to church dude he actually wasn't a big fan of the church. He flipped tables and stuff. Yes but he went to houses and met and by the sea and met with groups of people and hung out with prostitutes and tax collector collectors and tried to reach you know some people in society that were you know potentially unreachable by societal standards. And so I don't really know what I'm trying to say but I I think I appreciate that about you know you and and people like you that you don't pretend to have all the answers and that we're all on this journey together. I think there are certain inalienable things the Bible's pretty clear on uh you know ten commandments whatever you know there are there's rules right and there's this idea too like you go to every every funeral if it's you know uh they're they're in heaven and I'm I'm like I don't know if everybody goes to heaven bro um you know and we we this thing we we like to believe um but some of it has to do with some of the things that you do on here and the choices that you make and you know the way you live your life and nobody's free from sin. That's why you know Christ died on the cross right but um I don't know if if it's is it accidental if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over knowing it's wrong and knowing that you can just you know apologize do it again apologize. Is it really an accident or is it willful disobedience and then you know that that that begs the question. And that's where people start getting uncomfortable and that's been my problem with the church. There's a lot of these churches out there that don't take a stand on anything and they're just there to collect the the basket don't want to ruffle any feathers don't want to talk about politics don't want to talk about what's really going on in the world and you know some of these this battle between good and evil that we want to ignore. Um so yeah um I think I I just really appreciate the dialogue. Do you have anything to add? Uh 'cause I want to talk about kind of some of your your work stuff.

Seb Lavoie 6:13:59

Yeah, I do. Um I I guess I would be I and I and this is a conversation I have with people all the time because a lot of people think they're they're demonizing the church and not that you were doing that, but some people do that, demonizing the church and say, you know, Jesus didn't come here to start a church. Jesus definitely started a church. He definitely did. You know, Jesus gave the apostle, apostolic succession, asked them to go minister on his behalf, gave them the power to forgive sins. So he didn't come here for that. He came here to obviously conquer death, save humanity, and essentially establish a kingdom of God. That that was his primary purpose. But yeah, and maybe I spoke wrong.

Host 6:14:43

No, no, it wasn't anti-church. I think he was anti, I don't know, Pharisees.

Seb Lavoie 6:14:46

He was anti-Pharisees. It was more, it was more about the posture of the heart of the Pharisee that was having a transactional relationship with him as opposed to a relational and uh uh you know a relational relationship. So I did all the things, the liturgical things, I did all the commandments, I read the the books, I do all the things, but you're doing it transactionally, not that good. You you you you have no repentance, you are judging those that are not following you. You are so essentially he was doing everything that he shouldn't be doing, that we shouldn't be doing as humans, and I'm not pretending I'm not a Pharisee. I'm just I'm just pretending, I'm just saying that that's what Christ had a contention with, not so much with him being in a church. If he had been the per the man he had been in the church, he could have been a disciple of Christ for all we know, you know, really. Um but I think that a lot of people think I I escaped in the mountain with my Bible, and and that's good enough. Jesus never came here to establish a church. No, Jesus did establish the church. He did. And and it's not like there's nothing wrong with going in the woods and being with a Bible. I love doing that. But we have to be careful that we don't start creating you know issues where we're by by having such a strong opinion about what whether or not Christ was here to start a church and what the today's church is and discount all the churches because Christ once gave it back to a Pharisee that was that had the wrong posture of the heart. We have to be careful we don't get sucked in this, because there's a lot of communities where these churches and these uh these uh organizations help you, help you, heal you. You know, you can you you can get engaged with the with the sacraments in there, which are which are God's grace extended to humans. It's not about earning salvation, it's about it's about strengthening that relationship. And all of those are coming through, you know, uh Christ implemented the Eucharist. The Eucharist is an important piece, is a is is is the central piece of divine liturgy in orthodoxy. You know, so you have a lot of things that are happening in the church that are exactly aligned with what Christ wanted. But unfortunately, if we if we discount all of the churches on account of what humans have done in some instances, and we're like, well, Jesus was never here to establish a church. Well, he was. Historically, that's not even disputed. And so even the denomination, other denominations are not disputing that generally. What they are disputing is the authority of the apostles, and if it's still relevant today. That's generally what happens where it gets where it gets contentious. But the historical accuracy of of the of of him doing what he did and when he did it isn't isn't really it isn't really, as far as I know, uh a theological axe to grind.

Host 6:17:40

But the Bible also clearly states where two or more are to gather in my name, there should I be in their midst. And so we could argue, you know, not that I want to, but we could also argue what the meaning of the church is, right? I think I've had a problem with certain religions, and I'm gonna name them, but you know, there's these people in these churches become these figureheads and this rank structure, and it's like, you know, you you you have to pray to them and you know they can intercede on your behalf. It's not in the Bible, man. Yeah, it's not a biblical principle.

Seb Lavoie 6:18:06

It's not, and here's the thing, and this is one of the things, sorry, I'm gonna get off the orthodoxy bandwagon soon here. But one of the things that I really like about orthodoxy is say when you when you're confessing, you are confessing in the presence of another sinner to God as a witness. So this the the priest is a witness in a sinner, and you're confessing to God. You're not confessing to the priest who has divine authority to, you know. Even even with the apostle succession, that is not our orthodoxy view it. And um it is it is an action of of confessing your sins in the presence of another person that's there as a witness and it keeps you humble. I can talk to God all day and tell him all about the bad things I did, because there's nothing there's nothing to chip away at my pride. But if I have to do it with a person I respect, such as my spiritual father or the person that leads my worship, it's difficult. And your ego takes a hit and your pride gets broken down.

Host 6:19:08

Yeah, and when Evan explained that on the podcast, that is that sort of what he said? Yeah, that's kind of I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And you know, I we're not gonna dive probably much much more into this, but everybody's gone already. Um, I mean, like Seb's done a good job of explaining, but if you if you have a lot of questions about orthodoxy, I would ch also challenge you to listen to to Evan's podcast. Um, I can't even recall all the things that Evan said, but Evan, you know, really explained it, and that's what his chosen calling is. He's finishing as orthodoxy. I hope he gets stationary. I mean, but um yeah, I always appreciate having this conversation, man. Faith's a big part of my life, and I'm still um, I don't want to pretend like I got anything figured out because I don't. Um I I love God and I love people, and I really try to use this platform um to, you know, just really spread a good message. I don't have a hidden agenda. I didn't have a hidden agenda for you coming on, other than I wanted you to come on and tell your personal story, but also talk about your faith. It's a big part of what you and I discussed. And it's it it is a a part of our platform. I mean, it's kind of been our thing. We're a we're you know, we're faith-based. Um, and that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And um, you know, I don't, you know, you mentioned almost joining the Mormon church and then not doing it. I mean, you you hit the nail on the head. I've Mormons are great people, man. Um, I don't necessarily believe what they believe, but I've they're great people. They're some of the most community-oriented people, they're helpful, um, and they're just good human beings. And, you know, they really believe what they believe. And, you know, that's I don't know, man. Sometimes I wonder if we die, or we're all gonna end up at the same place, and then we're gonna figure out, man, like who's right and who's wrong, right? Like it's you know, it's that's something I think about often. Um, you know, one of the you know, you and I were talking about I mean, one of these days we're we're all gonna expire. We all have a clock, you know. Some of us are just gonna get there sooner than others, and um, you know, you can't help but but wonder, you know, and I I've always been uh just a I I've always questioned not just life. I'm just really curious, you know. I've um some of the things I went through with PTSD and our are treatments that we you know discussed offline that we've both done individually that are in the same sphere, really open my eyes to you know, just the world and and sp spirituality and the the hidden spiritual warfare that goes on that people don't see. And I mean, I have very attributable things. Um I mean, perfect example today. You know, you and I pray before we start uh this morning, and what happens, man? We literally break one of the cords to the camera, and you know, we we we didn't even have a replacement, and we had to do something to fix it. But you know, is it an accident? Probably not, because you know, at the end of the day, there's somebody that probably really doesn't want us, or a spiritual entity that really doesn't want to have this conversation. And so um, yeah, man, I'm just I'm super thankful for people like you that are willing to have this conversation about faith open and awesome, because you know, a little a lot of times, you know, you've heard people say, like, oh, you know, religion is such a private thing. And and yes, it's a private personal choice, but there is something going on in in the community, especially amongst men, where people are coming together. They don't, and you know, it's not always happening in a church. And I want to make it crystal clear, I am not anti-church. No, there's a lot of really great churches, a lot of great pastors, and you know, I've just had, and we just started recently going back to a church that we really seem to like. But again, man, there's definitely something going on where men are are seeking um other men in a warrior type culture to and faith is being found in those conversations. And it's I find it fascinating because it's really cool, and it's not the traditional um evangelic, I don't know, man, what do they call them revivals? It's but I do think there's something going on in the world, man. I used to say there's something going on in America, but now, you know, here we are, a Canadian, and we're finding out what's happening in Canada. I've talked to some dudes in Australia going through the same thing. And I'm talking like warriors, you know. I think the only problem I've had in certain church settings, and then I'll be done with the topic as well, is man, some of these, some of these pastors, not all of them, some of them, uh, they're not the most manly dudes that you would want to lead, right? Or you would want to follow into some kind of tough thing. And I'm not saying that all pastors are soft, but you know, there's this idea, almost pacifist idea about Christianity, which couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, the Bible's a war manual. There's plenty of things that happen uh in the Bible um where God deals directly in, you know, whether it's burning a city or taking out an entire Philistine army. Um, you know, so this idea that all Christians are these weak, um, you know, pacifists, you know, I don't know, wussbags. And it's it's not the truth, man. It's not and that's not the case. And so I think maybe that's a little bit of been my problem too with some of the modern Christianity. These aren't some of these Christian leaders, but there are some strong pastors, and you know, I've seen a couple of them on social media recently where you're like, dang, dude, these guys are preaching fire, and you're like, man, I'd I'd follow that dude, you know. As long as you understand they're human, right? A hundred perfect person was Christ.

Seb Lavoie 6:24:11

So anyway, man, I think I did not speak on behalf of the entire Orthodox Church, just for the record. No, no, no, no, no, no. Neither did Evan, dude. Like, I do.

Host 6:24:25

You know, I was treating that dude like he's he's been a priest for 10 years. He was so cool about it, man. Evan's just a just a great human being. I love that dude. If you haven't listened to Evan Purpuris' podcast that he did with us, I'd I'd highly recommend it. Evan's just salt of the earth, man.

Seb Lavoie 6:24:38

Great podcast.

Host 6:24:39

Um YouTube pulls the leash on this kind of content. You know it, I know it. There are parts of these conversations I'm having with the guests I'm bringing on that don't make it to the main channel the way they should. Things get too unfiltered and too real for YouTube. It's not advertiser-friendly, but we refuse to steer away from those discussions. So we launched our Patreon. If you want the full version of our content, no ads, no cuts, the conversations we actually can't put on YouTube, well, that's where it is. Plus, there's early access before anything drops publicly. Product releases you won't see anywhere else, and a direct line to me. And you also get behind the scenes access to what we're building. This isn't a tip jar. It's the inner room. Go to patreon.com forward slash the vanguard wall and join the members. Everything I can't say here, it's already there waiting for you. Patreon.com forward slash the vanguard wall. I kind of want to transition a little bit. Um, you know, you started Raven Strategic. It's the company that you own and run. Um where did kind of where was that born out of? When did it happen? And kind of, you know, um, where have you been? Where where are you now? And where are you taking that?

Seb Lavoie 6:25:42

Yeah, so I started in 21 with Raven. Um I picked the name because the Raven is a strong, capable bird that also has uh an intellectual capacity that exceeds, you know, some of the other birds. And so it's like the the perfect intersection of sort of warrior scholar type in a metaphorical creature, you know.

Host 6:26:08

Ravens are super super smart, yeah, and they're common like Viking.

Seb Lavoie 6:26:13

Yeah, yeah. And so uh Raven Strategic in 2021, this happened right before my leg incident. And the idea was just to have uh a company that was gonna do a whole bunch of different things. Essentially, Raven is an umbrella company to everything that Seb wants to do. You know, it really doesn't matter, whether it's in the field of international or domestic security, whether it's in the field of assigning some capable guys to do some capable task, uh again in the same context, or uh strategic level planning at you know at the at a national level, which is some of the stuff I've done in the last couple years. Um, we've done coaching so leadership coaching, individual performance coaching. So taking somebody that's right here and has hit a certain plateau and take him to the to the next level of their own personal endeavor, whatever that looks like, whether it's a CEO of a company or or somebody that's just needing to bounce stuff off you know another person. Generally, I don't get paid for that generally, because if somebody sends me a DM and says, hey, I want to bounce something off, I'm struggling. I generally don't charge them. So I'm not very good at making money with that. But then mommy 250. I'll respond to this DM. Um, and so that's kind of what it was, man. And now it's evolved into a subsidiary or a proxy publishing house called uh Raven Praxis Press, which is the the the the company that's co-publishing the two books that we have coming out. So The High Fidelity Mind by Sean Taylor, former JTF2 guy, who's also a multiple-time world champ, mountain biker, uh solo endurance racer, 24-hour solo, as well as a performance coach and a variety of other beautiful things. He's just a great human. And then, of course, the warrior in the garden, which is a book between Sean Taylor and I. So this is one unified voice in that uh warrior in the garden. Both both of those books have addressed very different things. The the high fidelity mind is more of a logical framework to understand performance under stress and understand ourselves. And it's basically a logically led introspection into performance and troubleshooting performance in the in pressure, in pressure testing, in pressure test, basically, in humans. And so Sean was the perfect guy for that. He's a computer system engineer who's an absolute savage in a variety of different fields and has you know rose to the top of all of these fields. Great husband, great father. He has it much more in balance than I ever did. And uh, and he has done a fantastic job in capturing and and and establishing a quote unquote process for the logical, logical thinkers out there to frame what it is that they're doing, to set the right lens on, to be able to understand and evaluate and troubleshoot their their behaviors, their reactions, and their procrastinations, and all the things. So that's the the fundamental of the high fidelity mind, which is coming out first. Then in December, we're hoping the warrior in the garden is coming out. This is the more holistic. It has 14 tenants. All of those tenants are really about um life in general. You know, it can talk about leadership, relationship, communication. Like it just goes on and on, and I can't remember the 14 tenants on top of my head, so I won't try to go through the list. One of the interesting things with the warrior in the garden is the warrior in the garden, the the fundamental underpinning is that most events and most things that happen in life have no real positive or negative load. We give them the value that we give them the value on account of how we're framing them. And so it really shows how something for somebody may be, say, a micro drain, and for somebody else that might be a great thing that brings their family together. So I'll give you an example of this real quick, just so people understand. But I was talking to a guy recently, and he was telling me a story about how he's got three sons, they all wear the same socks now, because he was finding himself folding socks for hours and hours on end, and he realized, man, why do I have all different colors of socks? Why don't I buy them all white with nothing on them or blue and nothing on them, and I can just pair them up, you know, easily and not have to worry about this. He's he realize he's spending so much time, you know, folding the socks. And so I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. That's genius. You go to Costco, you buy, you know, 30 pairs, you put them in the wash, who cares? You when you when you can't match one, you just dump it. Like, who cares? Or you keep it for later, you know. But then I'm sharing this conversation with another friend of mine, and he's like, Oh, it's interesting. Me and my family, we actually take the the socks out, and that's part of what we do together. And we do games with this, and we have conversations, and we watch movies while we're doing it. And so for one group, this was a a bonding moment with a joint venture. For another group, that was a micro drain that took away from his bandwidth, which was already being taxed, but by a bunch of other things. So we're very quick to talk about micro wins, but we're not very quick to talk about micro drains, the the small little things that add up over time that take the life out of us, or take the life out of your wife when you're away, or whatever the case may be. And so that is sort of what the word in a garden deals with. 14 tenants, it gives the two sides of the coin, it's essentially a written dialectic where you have three people having, or in this case, two people having a conversation about a certain topic, and that topic is tossed this way, that way, and the other way to give you something to think about and come up with your own workable solution. That's what the warrior in the garden is. So those are the two books coming out in the foreseeable future here. Um, sorry, I forgot. One piece with the warrior in the garden. So that book's we started writing that book in 21, and we could never get it right. We could never get what we wanted in there, what exactly it needed to be, what the what the fundamental sort of what what what it was gonna be about and how were we gonna go about doing it. And I had a massive, massive prayer session one night, and I was like, God, I have no idea what what should be in that book, and I have no idea what to put in it. We have so much information in our heads, all these things, and I woke up the next morning, grabbed a pen, grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote 14 tenants right like this, what my wife was watching. And then for the entire week after that, every day or every second day, a bunch of stuff came into my head, and I was telling my wife, take this down. And and she would record everything I said. It just flowed through me. And so I'm not suggesting, and I'm not I'm not in the pretentious realm of saying that this was a a book inspired by God, but I was certainly guided spiritually in in achieving that because we've been trying to do that since 21. And when I briefed the concept to Sean Taylor, he was floored completely. And he was like, no question, I'm in 100%.

Host 6:33:46

That's awesome.

Seb Lavoie 6:33:47

Yeah. So there's there's going to be some very, very, very incredible value out of that one. And so that's kind of where we're at right now. Um, I work in close protection for the moment, so I'm subcontracted to a close protection project, and it uh have been so for the last year or so. If there is opportunities coming down the pipe and and people are looking for people to help, or you know, capable personnel, so to speak, they can they can certainly come to me and I can put them in touch with all kinds of capable people and qualified people to deal with whatever problems set they might be dealing with.

Host 6:34:24

What kind of realm? So I I've got leadership, um, leadership engagement and training. There's obviously um a combative slash law enforcement application. Sure, that's definitely within your qualifications. What other kind of stuff?

Seb Lavoie 6:34:36

Yeah, strategic, strategic advisory of uh of almost any realm. We're talking to human performance, um, leadership application in a corporate non-corporate world, as well as in military organization, LEO organization. Um, we're looking at uh foreign training assets, like you want your NGOs to to be trained, to go in a certain area, have SMEs that can that can do that. If you need people to go with them, we have SMEs that can do that. So there's it's it's really it's really like a uh sort of uh a very broad.

Host 6:35:14

Yeah, and you've got one vast network um that you can reach as well. That's something I learned about you very quickly. Precisely. Um, how how can people find you? Well, obviously gonna put all your links in the descriptions, but for those listening on an Audible podcast or something, yeah.

Seb Lavoie 6:35:28

For the time being, I think my Instagram is probably the best way. I've been not nearly as diligent as as I should in updating and keeping it. Uh I've been struggling with being in the limelight a bit.

Host 6:35:39

It's a vortex, man. I know it is. Yeah, it it nowadays for the you know, you kind of almost have to have it, but man, it it will suck your time. I'm really bad about social media. I'm bad about responding to to messages because I I just I don't know, man. Social media is not really real all the time. And, you know, you see these personas and then you meet them, and you know, they're not even the persona they put out to be. So, but it is the it is the modality where we can reach out and people. And it's actually, you know, as I'm over here bashing social media, that's how you and I connected. So yeah. Um it's uh it is a good tool when when used properly, I guess, is all I'm saying. What's your um what's your Instagram?

Seb Lavoie 6:36:15

Uh so S-L-A-V-C-C-M-D-R. So S-L-A-V-C-C-M-DR slab cobracommander. That was my nickname on the team. Cobra Commander? Cobracommander, yeah.

Host 6:36:29

Um well, we'll make sure we put the the links in the description. Um, you know, we we've been talking for quite a while, and we didn't even cover some of the things I wanted to cover, which just means that we'll we'll have to have you on again. Um Canada is actually our second biggest audience besides the United States, was actually shocked to see analytic-wise. Um so I get to ask you the question if you could recommend somebody to come on the podcast. Who would you recommend? I'd say Sean Taylor. Nice. Well, yeah, we'll be reaching out to Sean, bro. Yeah. Um, dude, what a what an amazing experience to sit and talk to you. I feel like time really stood steal. Um and it it was just it's it's great to be, you have such a just an awesome personality. You're a very uh easy person to get along with. Um, but you're also a savage of a human being. You're, you know, the we didn't even fully get to cover your your leg, but I mean, losing your leg and being able to come back from that mentally. Uh, you and I were talking last night. I mean, you you deal with some excruciating nerve pain that a lot of people don't really understand. Um, because you know, you were telling me last night, like you don't have a foot, but right now it feels like your foot was on fire, you know, last night you were telling us. And so that's a lot to push through mentally um sometimes, but I think it's just a testament to who you are. Um, and you know, we didn't even talk about your current wife that much, but I haven't had a conversation with you since we've met where your wife hasn't been at the center of that conversation in some way, shape, or form, um, and your kids as well. So, you know, you're you're obviously a family man, um, and you've made that crystal clear in every kind of context and conversation that we've had and how important it is to you. And you know, you can't change the past, but you're definitely trying to change your future. And I think it's just freaking awesome, dude.

Seb Lavoie 6:38:13

So thanks, brother.

Host 6:38:15

Shout out to your awesome wife.

Seb Lavoie 6:38:17

She is a beauty.

Host 6:38:19

Um I'll give you the final closing thoughts, man. Normally I I'll I have a little thing I say at the end, but um, yeah, what would you what would you like to leave, or what were you what do you hope that people get out of this podcast?

Seb Lavoie 6:38:30

I think if we if we could want anything for people would be the power of discernment when it comes to deciding um which hill is worth dying for, and what are we what are we prepared to sacrifice to achieve what it is that we are after. And so achievements in this worldly world are part of life and they're uh God's grace, and we can, and there's lots of good things that we could be doing once we get there. The cost of it is something that we don't often consider. And there is a difference between sacrificial a sacrificial cost and a cost of an account of self-righteousness and indulgence. And I think that being a human being is really finding that balancing act between being and doing what what we feel we're being called to do and do it in the way that we feel we're being called to do it, and minimizing the amount of bodies we leave trailing behind. And if if you if your audience can take anything from me is you can have all of the things that you want in the way that you want them and still mitigate the cost. All we need is true and solid introspection and potentially God. Not potentially, though. Yes, yes, that's what I would say.

Host 6:40:00

Awesome, brother. Hey, everybody listening, man. I wouldn't have a podcast if you guys didn't tune in. So to each and one, every one of you, especially if you've made it this far, uh, thanks for the support. It means a lot. Um, I I read all the YouTube comments, um, especially on the long form. I don't read the shorts, man. There's just too many of them. But I really take I really appreciate you know the folks that have supported us, whether you're new to this channel or whether you've been here since day one. It's just it's it's very humbling and it's awesome. So you guys stay safe out there. And if you can't be safe, be violent out here.