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Lieutenant-Colonel Véronique Gervais: You really have to put yourself in the shoes of those people living in those countries in those conditions. Our missions these days are not just about killing either.

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Captain Orton: Hi, this is Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about the Peace Support Training Centre, or PSTC, and the training opportunities it brings to the Canadian Armed Forces. With me today in Kingston is Lieutenant-Colonel Véronique Gervais, who is the Commandant of the school. Ma’am, welcome to the podcast.

LCol Gervais: Oh, thank you.

Capt Orton: So, tell us a little bit about yourself.

LCol Gervais: As you mentioned my name is Véronique Gervais and I enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1996 as an Infantry Officer. I graduated from the Royal Military College in 2001, with a degree in French Literature. And, then I joined the ranks of the 2e Bataillon Royal 22e Régiment; the Van Doos as it’s known in English.

During my career I’ve been deployed to Bosnia, and Afghanistan, and I’ve been posted to different training institutions such as CFLRS, the leadership and recruit School in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. As well as the Royal Military College here in Kingston. This summer, I returned from a 3-year posting from the NATO Defence College in Rome, Italy. So, I’ve always enjoyed working in training establishments. So, it made sense to me that I continued on that path. Taking over the command of PSTC was number one on my wish list. So, I was really pleased when I was appointed in that position. But just so you know when I was asked about doing this podcast, the reason that I accepted was not to talk about me. I kind of recently discovered that many Canadian Army personnel as well as CAF members do not know what PSTC is, what it does, and in some cases, that we even exist. And that’s really ironic in a sense, because PSTC is well-known internationally, but not so much nationally. So, thank you for this opportunity.

Capt Orton: It’s funny, one of my first experiences in the Reserves was coming to PSTC and doing some training here with Warrant Lalonde who you know really well. First of all, it’s worth mentioning that another organization that maybe isn’t that well known is CADTC, or the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre. And PSTC falls under that. What does PSTC do?

LCol Gervais: So, PSTC is a schoolhouse, a unit of CADTC, responsible for the delivery of specific individual training. Each year, we train around 1000 members of the CAF, of other Government of Canada departments, and foreign military personnel. Either here at the centre in Kingston or at other locations within Canada, and even internationally. And during the past 15 years we have also evolved as the Canadian Army Centre of Excellence for Information Operations, what we call Info OPS. And, we provide baseline courses on Civil-Military Co-operation, what we call CIMIC, and Psychological Operations, PSYOPS. We currently deliver 6 different courses on those topics; one on Info OPS, two on CIMIC, and three on PSYOPS.

Capt Orton: How did PSTC come to be? How was a need identified for the school, and then how did it all come together?

LCol Gervais: In 1996, PSTC was created as just a small training centre of 8 people. And their mandate was to provide basic deployment training for all personnel who did not belong to a formation; those who did not have access to specific training facilities. So, the majority of PSTC original clients, if I can say, came from the Ottawa region and other HQs across the country. So, 2 years after, in 1998, after conducting training to prepare those members for United Nations missions at that time across the globe, we received our first accreditation from the UN. In 2000, that’s not long ago, only 20 years ago, we became an official unit within the Canadian Armed Forces. So, right now we are currently in our 24th year of operation, which is pretty young for a unit.

Capt Orton: Yeah, and doing some pretty interesting stuff too. So, speaking of pre-deployment training, I think of the conversations I have with soldiers, and sometimes my own feelings on pre-deployment training. You know, some people are like: “Why am I doing all of this extra training when I have already done training? That’s why I am, what I do”. Why is pre-deployment training important?

LCol Gervais: Well because it gets you really ready for the type of mission you’re going to. So, yes, you're trained, but, you're trained for a generic purpose, or in your specific trade. And here, we deliver different types of pre-deployment training, So, there’s the individual pre-deployment training, what we call here IPT. So, this one is designed to really prepare selected CAF personnel for overseas missions. So, members come here, they have been trained in their trade. But they still need a detailed refresher on tactical skills and specific approach to the mission in which they will take part of. So, what we do is we dust off their basic soldier skills. And we get them back into a comfortable position so that they feel confident and ready to deploy. So, on our last course, we had people preparing for deployment to Mali, Congo, and Sudan, so this is not something you train for at your normal unit.

Capt Orton: Right.

LCol Gervais: So, the training touches on diverse topics, such as Combat First Aid. Which is not only for combat situations, I must say. But it focuses on the dangerous, everyday life in the developing world. Other examples of things that we teach in this training are explosive threats and IED awareness, preventative medicine, convoy drills, foreign weapons, human right awareness, and so on. So, candidates will also receive up-to-date information on in-country health, personal safety, cultural and political awareness, that type of training.

So, another type of training that we deliver is called SFCB, which stands for Security Force Capacity Building. So, it consists of those activities that seek to build the capabilities of other security forces. As an example, we train our CAF members deployed in Ukraine, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon on the subject, which deals with, again, a wide range of topics from effective employment of a language assistant, working with an interpreter pretty much, negotiation technique, teaching within another culture and diversity management, just to name a few. And we also deliver two other types of pre-deployment training, one for civilians from other government departments which is called the Hazardous Environment Training. Everybody calls it HET. And also our UN accredited course, the UNMEM United Nation Military Expert on Mission. So just for this course alone, since 2018, the international commitment has been such that we’ve seen students and instructors from 7 different countries like, Ukraine, Peru, Switzerland, and Malaysia.

Capt Orton: I find it interesting you talked about cultural training because that’s, you know, I think part of my training here was a one-day kind of cultural training brief. And, it really makes you realize that people don't think the way that I do necessarily. You know, they talk about the importance of time for some cultures versus other cultures, and a bunch of other factors. What are some of the challenges with cultural training? Especially when you’re talking about international operations in Iraq and then Mali, very different environments, what are the challenges there?

LCol Gervais: Often when we talk about deployment in other countries, people just think about the physical danger, the unpredictability of some areas where our soldiers are deployed to. But I believe that on the cognitive side, one of the hardest things to prepare for is to avoid the use of the Canadian lens to influence our perception. It’s to try to see things through the lenses of the nations you’re dealing with. Understanding their needs, how they perceive themselves in the situation that they are in. This is extremely hard, but it’s normal that it’s hard. Because, we all have our normal biases or our own personal experiences that shape our vision of things. And, you can read as much as you want to prepare yourself for those deployments, and I strongly encourage that effort, but you also have to go to those countries with an open mind. You cannot take anything for granted or assume things. Because, you will be surprised. One simple action can be interpreted in a whole different manner.

Capt Orton: That’s an interesting point, and I’m sure there’s probably some combat arms soldiers out there, I’m a combat arms guy, so I’m not saying this in a negative way, but there’s probably a soldier out there thinking to himself right now: “I’m a combat arms guy. I have a specific job out there, why do I care how other people think?” For your average corporal, what impact does understanding that culture have on the mission for them?

LCol Gervais: If a corporal, or whatever rank, goes on a mission with an attitude like that, they won’t succeed, that’s for sure. You really have to put yourself in the shoes of those people living in those countries, in those conditions. But usually our troops get it pretty quickly. And our missions these days are not just about killing either.

Capt Orton: Yeah exactly. You think about a combat mission and even in a combat context, understanding how other people think and other people act makes your job that much easier I would say.

LCol Gervais: Yes.

Capt Orton: So, can you give us an example, of maybe, where there was a cultural misunderstanding that led to a mission becoming more complicated than it otherwise might have been?

LCol Gervais: Just from my personal experience in Afghanistan, we could see at one point that what we thought from our point of view that would help some villagers was to provide wells in their village. But for those people, all they really wanted was a vet for their cows, for their animals. Because, we were back to basic needs. And without their animals, they will not be surviving pretty much, feeding their families and all that. So, thinking about a well makes sense, like availability of water, it’s a basic need too. But for them most importantly was to treat their animals right, take care of the animals so that they could feed the village, and feed their families.

Capt Orton: That’s a great example. Yeah and also, you talked about using interpreters and the proper employment of that. So, let’s say you’re watching tv and it’s a war movie or Afghanistan or whatever, and you just see a platoon commander with their interpreter, that seems pretty straightforward. But, as maybe you know, and I know as well, but maybe others don’t, that’s a complicated process. Why do you need to know how to use an interpreter?

LCol Gervais: Because, like the first thing, do you speak to the interpreter, so that the interpreter speaks with your host, your guest? Or, you keep looking in the eyes of your guest, and the interpreter does its job on the side? People don’t know that. You don’t know until you really go through our training, and say the reason why we are doing this in this way. And also, there’s so much more than just words also. Words are important, the physical aspect of explaining ourselves. And sometimes little gestures for us mean nothing, but they could mean something else depending who you are speaking with in their culture. You know, just shaking hands means different things in different cultures, or stuff like that.

Capt Orton: And that’s the thing. Now we’re talking about a lot of different layers here. You have your own cultural values and biases, so you’re going into another country with that inside of you. Then there’s an additional language barrier, and all that, but then you add the intermediary of a third person who is also acting as a filter in some ways. That’s a lot of moving parts to just talk to another person.

LCol Gervais: Oh yeah. And there’s lots of things of course lost in translation. Like I come back from 3 years in Italy, and I’m going to say most of the people over there, they just speak Italian. A few do speak French or English, and you would think that: “Oh, it’s just Europe, they are really similar to us”. No! I discovered pretty quickly that, no. We have different cultures, that our roots are different. So, we think differently. And I’m not talking about the country in Africa where there are obvious differences. Those are really cousins to us, especially me, being a Franco. But, no there’s a lot of differences and it was hard, I must say, to adjust. But again, you need to go there, in other countries, with an open mind.

Capt Orton: Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, you’re talking about a G8 nation, and even then, it’s complicated. And then you go to something for example Afghanistan where you have nomadic tribes that don’t even consider political boundaries to be real boundaries. And yet, in our minds, that’s a thing, that’s real. But for them, it doesn’t exist. And that’s just a small thing, that in terms of military operations, can be a huge challenge to overcome.

LCol Gervais: Oh, it plays a factor. And that’s why we give all of those courses, so people take in consideration those things when they do planned operations. It’s not just about the kinetic effects.

Capt Orton: That’s right. Alright, I think that pretty much covers everything we need to cover here. Is there anything else you want to add?

LCol Gervais: Yes of course, thanks for giving me the floor for that. So, we do have an open invitation to members who have completed their pre-deployment training here at PSTC. We want them to return after their deployment and pass on all the information, the experience that they gather from their mission to other deploying members. As well, as a training institution we are lucky to have extremely knowledgeable staff. But, it’s a plug here. But we also have several Reserves Employment Opportunities, what guys call REOs in the military language, available for Reserve Force, and we are always looking for motivated NCO’s and officer instructors to join our team. And finally, if I may. In these COVID times, when more people are working from home, I want to highlight an opportunity for any CAF member who might want to do some professional development or learn something different. So, PSTC is a partner of POTI, the Peace Operation Training Institute, which provides e-learning at no cost on multiple subjects such as, introduction to the UN system, different courses on Women Peace and Security agenda, child protection, leading in Peace Support Operation, just to name a few. So, it’s free and you can earn individual certificates. So, you can find the link to our PSTC e-learning platform directly on our PSTC page.

Capt Orton: Alright so check it out on Google, do your Google searches, or, talk to your Chain of Command and they will help you get in touch with the Commandant of PSTC to do that professional development.

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Thanks so much for coming on the podcast ma’am.

LCol Gervais: Ah, no problem. Thanks for the invite.

Capt Orton: That was Lieutenant-Colonel Véronique Gervais, Commandant of PSTC. I’m Captain Adam Orton, don’t forget to subscribe and check out our back catalogue of episodes, there’s a lot of good stuff in there. And, as usual, stay frosty.

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