True Patriot Love - April 27, 2026


Canada’s Military Fix Is Bigger Than New Gear

Topics
winter gear and survival techniques
Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Mentioned
Brian Mark Carney Topchi Carney Push
What Most Canadians Get Wrong About Taxes ft. Luigi De Rose Is Organized Crime Taking Over Canada’s Streets？ [Weekly Crime Update]

Episode Stats


Length

28 minutes

Words per minute

216.59

Word count

6,100

Sentence count

63

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we're joined by former Canadian Army soldier and former Navy SEAL, Brian Pritchard, to talk about cold weather gear and how to survive in the subzero temperatures. We discuss how to prepare for the cold, how to stay warm, and what to do when the going gets tough.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 as 2026 continues and mark carney and the liberals now with the majority unrolling billions of dollars
00:00:10.520 in new investment for equipment for the canadian armed forces we also have to take a pause and
00:00:14.820 realize that not everything's going to be perfect and there's going to be mistakes along the way
00:00:18.540 and some of that gear will have to be changed or tweaked or replaced to talk more about it
00:00:22.680 as always thrilled to be joined by brian instead brian how are you i'm okay sir how are you good
00:00:26.680 And this is, I think, exciting for a lot of people in the Canadian Armed Forces, in the CAF, that finally the government is stepping up a lot of new equipment, the new Colt Canada, the new assault rifles for the Army.
00:00:39.520 That's long overdue, things like that.
00:00:42.280 But there's also little things that maybe people watching this don't understand.
00:00:46.940 Depending on what branch in the military, you need different boots, different gear to survive and thrive in your role.
00:00:54.240 Yeah, absolutely.
00:00:55.500 Now, so there was an incident a few weeks ago, a few months ago,
00:00:59.080 where Canadian Army were on a multi-week exercise in Alaska,
00:01:03.300 and temperatures were bitterly cold around minus 40, which is 40 below Fahrenheit.
00:01:08.860 And some of the members had cold injuries, and it got back to the press,
00:01:13.120 and people were wondering, A, is it poor leadership or poor equipment?
00:01:17.080 From your time in the Army, how much of a rating do you have for cold weather equipment?
00:01:22.120 Is it rated to minus 30, minus 40?
00:01:23.880 what is it rated when you're out for sustained periods in that kind of cold brian good question
00:01:30.300 technically the specs of the gear i don't know you know i mean i couldn't rhyme that off off of
00:01:35.680 yeah the top of my head but you do you do get issued through logistic unicor a yearly allowance
00:01:41.600 for certain things like um very thick wool socks that if you went to mech or you know what i mean
00:01:48.880 whatever outdoor store kind of thing would probably cost you 30 40 bucks a pair like
00:01:54.400 really really nice socks oh they are good yeah i took advantage of this okay because they're
00:01:59.360 they're they're if you if you like wearing wool socks and most guys get it like they do um you'll
00:02:04.760 order those so you you do get access to or at least the potential to get your fingers on some
00:02:12.840 nice stuff whether it comes from logistic whether it's uh issued to you via clothing stores like
00:02:17.780 your winter boots and your arctic gear and all that stuff is it as good as the stuff you can go
00:02:23.400 out and buy on your own city side probably not you know i mean minus the socks that i'll on my
00:02:29.380 tombstone it'll say these are the great socks because they were really good and some of the
00:02:33.260 nexus game stuff was nice but the the arctic winter boots and stuff they have inserts so you
00:02:39.220 can double triple up kind of your layers so are the guys prepared like in fairness i'll say yes
00:02:45.860 they are for the most part but they're also reaches and this is going back to the original
00:02:50.480 question that you asked me like are they rated to this climate it's like you can spend
00:02:54.960 i don't know days or hours days weeks in this temperature and like eventually everything's
00:03:01.200 gonna go on you you know what i mean like at minus 40 which i think i've seen in the field
00:03:05.100 maybe once or close to it kind of thing like we did a few days of an exercise preparing for a
00:03:11.160 basic winter warfare style course where you're outside for we were only outside for a few days
00:03:16.000 um doing your upton down tent sled pulls stove watch and anybody watching this will understand
00:03:20.900 what i'm saying it's just like you just survive no one is thriving in this environment unless
00:03:26.140 you're some type of i don't know you know i mean masochist like you are literally and if you have
00:03:31.160 good staff they're showing you how to stay as warm as possible last as long as possible you know what 0.95
00:03:36.900 i mean you have to get up in the middle of the night you have to make sure your stove watch
00:03:40.540 um shift is is accounted for like everybody's rotating so you're you're more or less out in
00:03:47.600 this really austere very cold very aggressive climate and your goal is to literally just keep
00:03:55.160 going like yeah you'll probably do a range or two you know what i mean you'll do you'll conduct
00:03:59.760 a section attack or maybe something like that maybe if you have the resources and the range and
00:04:04.360 and ammo but it's it's more or less an exercise in just testing your limit of surviving the cold
00:04:12.120 and figuring out which pieces of kit work best for you because i didn't love the cold like i was
00:04:18.920 a lot more prone to becoming cold i think maybe because i was like pretty lean most of the time
00:04:24.920 in my career so it's like i was just hey not everyone's built for it not prepared for the
00:04:29.480 the cold and some guys didn't and didn't bother them so much so it's very but to to say it's like
00:04:35.540 the fault of one person running the exercise or the kit is not up to snuff that's not a fair
00:04:41.400 assessment there's too many variables there's too much nuance to that those things can be true
00:04:45.840 but I can't say that it happened in this case they do have some nice gear it's a long answer but
00:04:50.340 no and Brian it's a great point on your end because more and more there is a real concerted
00:04:56.460 effort by the government and all of nato for arctic exercises and protecting the arctic against
00:05:01.900 china against russia and there'll be more and more of these and you'll see more and more social media
00:05:07.380 videos and videos stories on your local news and on your website of members of the canadian forces
00:05:12.940 doing prolonged exercises in the far north yeah and and and that's a great question we talked
00:05:19.440 about field craft and survival that i don't think most people watching understand just how difficult
00:05:24.980 it is to survive pop pitching a tent in minus 35 minus 40 and trying to stay warm and sleep and
00:05:32.900 just basic getting through the day yeah it's it is it's like doing a course or training or range
00:05:40.480 or whatever in the summer or even fall or spring versus doing it in the dead of winter
00:05:45.080 is just a completely different experience where those the other climates have their own
00:05:49.700 idiosyncrasies that become like bugs you know what i mean or heat injuries or water take and
00:05:55.560 electrolytes and all that stuff comes up and depending where you are but the winter is a
00:05:59.900 whole other thing where canadian troops i think the ones i've some of the ones i've worked with
00:06:03.960 were extraordinarily good like these guys were whether they were reserve reg who cares you know
00:06:09.440 what i mean but some guys i worked with like i learned a lot from them because they've been in
00:06:12.500 way longer than me and i just got in and they were showing you how to layer they were showing you how
00:06:16.580 to stay dry they were showing you how to you know i mean minimize the amount of sort of exposure
00:06:21.340 that you would get but uh canadian troops are arguably the best trained in the world at winter
00:06:26.560 warfare and by that i kind of mean surviving long enough you know what i mean to get to the next
00:06:31.600 bound and and you know when i you start talking about gear and equipment i know there's people
00:06:36.820 that talk about it but sometimes if i know i'm in the the infantry or i'm in the the armor whatever
00:06:44.220 i'm in the hard army and i'm doing art to course i might take some of my disposable income go to
00:06:49.260 cabela's and bass pro shop and get some extreme camping gear just to keep me warm under my layer
00:06:54.140 of my kit that's been like issued to me yeah a lot of guys did uh and the military started noticing
00:07:00.300 that and in 2018 2017 or 2018 they introduced um the can for gen which everybody colloquially
00:07:07.900 referred to as the boot for gen so the okay you got 2018 brought in you could grow a beard
00:07:13.180 um you could you could buy weed legally and you could get boots in the military so it's like it
00:07:19.500 was like a big deal for like thank you justin trudeau yeah yeah one of the things he uh one
00:07:23.340 of the things he even a broken clock is right twice a day you know what i mean so when when
00:07:27.260 guys were getting reimbursements for their boots it was it was a big deal to a to an infantry
00:07:31.820 corporal to an army any combat arms trade or even folks that were just out of pocket because they
00:07:36.380 wanted nice boots and nice boots are now 400 a lot of the time or sometimes more depending on
00:07:41.180 what you're getting so when the military decided hey we're kind of sick of playing this game back
00:07:45.980 and forth of like everybody's having their own like go get your own thing as long as it meets
00:07:49.740 these requirements has to be this height this color what you can't buy bright orange of course
00:07:54.940 thing but uh that was a big deal and it was that was one of the signs of the military leadership
00:08:00.540 growing and exp and showing that they were willing to listen and sort of the old dinosaur
00:08:05.740 mentality of like well it worked for me it'll work for you it's like okay like thanks you know
00:08:09.660 okay boomer you know i mean yeah yeah yeah but it was like guys loved it well i won't say everyone
00:08:14.540 but speaking for me and the dudes that i knew and the women that i knew they were all over it like
00:08:18.380 everybody went out and got a nice pair of boots usually tan you know what i mean i don't know
00:08:22.140 anyone really that bought winter boots for it because like right the nicest ones usually are
00:08:26.540 your sort of uh three season kit not your winter stuff but yeah it was i think that's a great
00:08:31.500 example i'll finish on saying that the military listened to what the troops were asking for
00:08:36.140 and gave it to them so you didn't have to be out of pocket necessarily too much or at all
00:08:40.780 and if if i made you um the minister of national defense for a day and took over from david mcginty
00:08:47.180 um that's a thing that we need to think more about if we are going to do this massive expansion
00:08:52.940 and they're talking about this 100 000 member basically sort of a quasi reserve where you
00:08:59.820 train for a week and you renew a week a year and that's it and you're not even issued a uniform well
00:09:05.340 you're probably gonna have to buy your own kit when you're doing your you're retraining every
00:09:09.180 year yeah i think it was three hundred thousand that's correct yeah three hundred thousand and
00:09:13.260 there's no way that the clothing stores and the people that as you know what i mean as helpful as
00:09:17.980 they often were and i i a lot of there's a lot of your stories of people not doing this or not
00:09:22.860 getting this whatever but most of the time when i was dealing with people in kid issue clothing
00:09:26.220 store whatever they were good like they were great if they had it i would get it it was relatively
00:09:30.300 smooth process but for that many even a fraction of that many people we don't have the ability to
00:09:36.060 procure that many pieces that quickly for that many people and all the various sizes and colors
00:09:42.380 and shapes you know what i mean that they're going to have to be in because it's not like
00:09:45.260 you buy one boot everybody wears it everybody's got different requirements so it makes it makes
00:09:49.900 sense to like put it on the person here's 400 bucks go get it and now it's on you how how long
00:09:55.020 did it take you to learn proper field craft will you like four season field craft when you're in
00:10:00.060 the army to realize there's a different technique and a different skill set to survive all four
00:10:04.620 seasons well it takes you for sure a year at least you know what i mean really you have to live
00:10:09.500 through the whole yes all the seasons to figure out where your deficiencies are yeah and be exposed
00:10:14.140 to the guys who see you wearing something that's a dumpster fire you know what i mean like a lot
00:10:18.780 of the mistake a lot of guys will make or girls will make is wearing too much kit early like
00:10:23.660 really layering up and then you get kind of sweaty and then that cold is bad isn't the wet is bad so
00:10:28.860 now you're trapped in this wet gear and it's cold outside and maybe you were moving before but now
00:10:33.100 you're not so you're just kind of frozen so you you look to the like as a second lieutenant lieutenant
00:10:39.020 you know what i mean lieutenant like you you look to the privates corporals mass corporal sergeant
00:10:43.100 warrant like you everybody these guys pretty much knows better than you do as you're a direct entry
00:10:47.980 guy and speaking for myself coming in from university very little exposure to this stuff
00:10:52.620 other than playing outside with my friends growing up pond hockey all that and you you ask like you
00:10:57.580 just say hey man like what system do you have what works for you usually it's the platoon warrant or
00:11:02.140 like the senior sergeants master corporals that are the most switched on because they have the
00:11:05.180 most time in but it could be you you could come across like a super dialed in private or corporal
00:11:10.380 that'll say hey like try this or i use this and you're like man that's a great idea and you just
00:11:14.460 do it i know this in the last few weeks the canadian armed forces have announced a new
00:11:19.820 state-of-the-art helmets for the infantry um new assault rifles from cold canada there is a real
00:11:26.460 change are you getting a sense from just you and the people you know who are still in or just out
00:11:32.220 that there is a change coming yeah i'll give another example um i i don't know exactly what
00:11:37.660 the right i knew there was a rifle i don't know what exactly the rifle is i'm it's probably a
00:11:41.580 a five five six or yes it is so it's yeah so standard nato um ar platform kind of thing um
00:11:48.960 but in a similar in in a in sort of a parallel to that again i won't speak that because i don't know
00:11:54.240 but there are courses running in the background where i was able to lend experience from my time
00:11:59.900 on more advanced courses people say people have reached out to me and said how can i make this
00:12:04.540 better as a course warrant or uh training sergeant or whatever like how do we improve the experience
00:12:10.460 for the junior guy or the person on course and i just rhymed off a few simple things of you know
00:12:15.900 what i mean make sure they all have the same stuff you know what i mean it should be reasonable
00:12:19.580 quality like they want to identify as a team on this course so giving them the dinosaur stuff
00:12:25.020 that's falling apart like it kind of ruins morale before you even get started yes so it's not
00:12:29.820 necessarily about having the newest shiniest piece of kit but give them the thing that that works
00:12:35.340 it's functional it's not broken it doesn't have to be amazing but it has to be not broken because
00:12:39.500 that's pretty clutch um for example like the machine guns that we had access to in the infantry
00:12:44.220 school going through gauge town or meford or wherever you do your your dp1 um like the machine
00:12:49.900 guns were so old and beat up like you're you're gonna have stoppages every few rounds or your
00:12:56.620 your site like the barrels are shot out which means that the bullets are gonna go like wherever
00:13:00.940 like you're gonna be reasonably on target kind of reasonably but not but not with the machine
00:13:05.180 with the machine gun it doesn't like really matter anything but it kind of does when you're being
00:13:09.020 graded on hitting certain targets within a time frame but give them stuff that they're proud to
00:13:14.540 wear that they can identify with one another something as simple as i recommended to a
00:13:19.020 colleague like a ball cap give a guy a ball cap that's got a velcro patch on the front you know
00:13:23.820 what i mean so you can have an identifier like a number maybe another one on his shoulder and then
00:13:27.980 if everybody has the same thing and it's something they keep like it's a next they call it next to
00:13:32.060 skin so anything that t-shirts underwear caps things like that you keep that there's no giving
00:13:36.220 it back when you're done it doesn't make sense it's just it's a consumable so got simple things
00:13:41.100 like that at the end of at the end of two weeks eight weeks whatever the course is people that
00:13:46.460 identify it just makes them more keen to be there you know what i mean it's a simple thing but when
00:13:52.140 i was on course you know what i mean doing the more advanced stuff it's like all that stuff was
00:13:56.220 given to you right away so everybody immediately felt like they belong there like that's how i
00:14:01.820 felt so maybe maybe i'm just speaking for everybody but that's how the sort of morale went up we were
00:14:06.700 so impressed with the quality of the gear and the the how much you get issued you get so many
00:14:13.340 different variables like you said cold weather gear wet weather gear dry weather and it made an
00:14:17.100 immediate impression of you and everyone else in the course immediate impression because you're
00:14:21.020 like okay i'm being treated like a grown-up this is a professional environment with a professional
00:14:25.420 atmosphere like whereas before you know what i mean your gun doesn't work or your pistol jams or
00:14:30.140 or your your tac vest velcro doesn't you know what i mean so you're trying to get into the zone here
00:14:35.260 but you end up just being so annoyed and disenfranchised and demoralized by like oh man
00:14:39.780 can't we just have at least basic stuff everything doesn't need to be an arcteryx issue but like give
00:14:44.600 me something that works and that's what they're starting to do and courses are implementing that
00:14:48.600 and a buddy called me and said man your ideas were very well received the guys love the gear
00:14:53.280 like they're they're they were super keen on it they got feedback in the course oh wow this and
00:14:57.100 that. So yeah, it's like, it's a simple thing that it's, it's a, and I'm going to give credit
00:15:02.440 to the military here in the army and the senior leadership. They're, they're listening and
00:15:06.420 they're getting, and they're giving the appropriate level of, um, feedback response that they're
00:15:10.820 hearing. Can they scale it to 300,000? I don't think so, but, uh, I like, I like what I'm seeing
00:15:16.680 in this trend anyway. And I know, um, he's Navy, but Admiral Topchi, who's a senior flag officer
00:15:22.480 in the Canadian military, he's one of the rare no BS senior officers I've ever heard
00:15:27.060 in an interview in the Canadian forces.
00:15:28.860 And he realizes this is not good enough.
00:15:30.940 We have to be better at this.
00:15:32.240 And with that kind of attitude top down, I think it helps the brand new person entering
00:15:38.140 the military.
00:15:39.260 Yeah, absolutely.
00:15:40.020 Especially when there's a guy that's been there five, 10 years or whatever, and he's
00:15:44.420 able to sort of take the new guys under his wing or her wing and say, like, this is nice
00:15:50.100 gear.
00:15:50.460 You know what I mean?
00:15:50.860 And usually people will sort of put that on and immediately recognize that.
00:15:54.020 Like when you put on something that's crisp and new and nice or at least functional, you're like, okay, good to go kind of thing.
00:15:58.840 But when you struggle to even with the basics of it and your stuff's falling apart, it's just it becomes very negative, like almost immediately.
00:16:06.460 I've been following a few accounts and one of them is a senior officer at the main Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre.
00:16:12.340 And they're cranking out as many as they can accommodate every week.
00:16:16.820 And I know they're doing extra stuff in Borden and Meaford and other parts of the country.
00:16:20.880 So I think when Prime Minister Carney makes the announcements, they're going to add all these members of the military.
00:16:27.040 The K&R forces can only do as much as they have this infrastructure and capacity for.
00:16:31.980 And I think that's part of what we're going to see the next little while, Brian, is not just the gear, but the housing and the place.
00:16:38.240 They have to have a place to live and sleep while they're doing all this training.
00:16:42.160 Yeah, the housing stuff is long overdue.
00:16:43.680 And I chatted with Jim about this a couple months ago.
00:16:46.820 uh where he brought up a bunch of really salient points of again nobody's expecting to live at the
00:16:53.560 ritz when they sign up in the infantry no i think that's a pretty no i think i think that's a little
00:16:58.100 bit far-fetched but you should be at least um not picking mouse poop out of your you know what i
00:17:05.280 mean like yes like regularly it should again it doesn't have to be amazing but it has to just be
00:17:10.600 enough like give them that sort of 70 80 solution if you have 10 guys in a room whatever you know
00:17:16.640 know what I mean but if it's clean if it's hygienic if you know what I mean you're expected
00:17:20.840 to maintain that because you'll be you'll be making your bed lots and and cleaning the floors
00:17:25.460 and doing inspections and all that all that fun stuff but the housing thing is huge and there
00:17:30.680 needs to be an improvement not just in the housing provided for your yourself and your family when
00:17:36.440 you leave the base like that housing needs to be improved a thousand percent yeah but also the on
00:17:41.220 base housing which is depending on which base you're in like in Borden you're going to do pretty
00:17:45.320 pretty well maybe the best i've seen in trenton that kind of thing or if you're in um gauge town
00:17:51.220 or petawawa like it's there's very huge differences in what you're going to experience
00:17:56.080 and what you should expect depending on where you're at and i think that's the problem it
00:17:59.800 should be relatively similar wherever you go that your the baseline you receive is going to be at
00:18:05.400 least something that you're not worried about getting legionnaire's disease or some of the
00:18:09.260 stuff that we were told what might have been a risk where we were and brian this is something i've
00:18:12.920 I've, I've talked about for years, if only the government would have done just a little
00:18:17.160 bit year by year, when it comes to equipment and housing and clothing, they wouldn't be
00:18:21.700 scrambling as much as they are right now, because now they find themselves really racing
00:18:25.940 to catch up.
00:18:26.940 Yeah.
00:18:27.940 It was just poorly planned.
00:18:29.500 Like most things in the military.
00:18:31.500 It's like every time they do something, the first time they've ever done it is a running
00:18:35.040 saying from, from anybody who's been in for a little bit, but I like what I'm seeing.
00:18:39.680 I like what I'm hearing, but they're going to need to somehow put some kind of jet fuel on the fire that they're trying to light because they're going to need to scale this up literally thousands of percent to accommodate the folks they're trying to bring in and try to retain the people that are asking the questions.
00:18:54.620 what am I doing here? Like, why, why am I still here kind of thing? Or do I want to stick this
00:18:59.140 out to see? And I just, I'd like to see it happen because they should, they should have the fun,
00:19:04.360 good, you know what I mean? Bonding memories that I, that I made and that I built and the
00:19:07.620 friendships and the professional relationships that we, that I was able to experience.
00:19:11.140 I think Brian, like there's such a high youth unemployment rate in the country right now.
00:19:15.520 And the Canadian forces to say, Hey, we're spending billions and we want you,
00:19:18.900 but what advice would you give to some 18, 19 year old, 20 year old young woman or man out there
00:19:24.580 thinking about joining the military what what advice would i give a young person about to join
00:19:30.580 the military um think carefully about what your expectations of the actual job will be type of
00:19:38.900 thing like if you sign up for the infantry and you know what i mean you are not someone who likes
00:19:45.220 going on long hikes or or or camping with guns or hunting and all kinds of weather yeah so like
00:19:53.860 Like have expected and then work with what you're sort of there's like you can be an HVAC in the military, I'm pretty sure, or carpentry.
00:20:01.320 So like figure out, you know what I mean, what is realistic within your skill sets or aptitudes and then write down.
00:20:08.740 I think they make you list your top three choices and you don't always get your first one.
00:20:12.140 So make sure that they're sort of.
00:20:13.580 So it could be admin or HR.
00:20:15.380 Yes, yes.
00:20:16.400 And then and there's and like the support trades are absolutely essential to making sure that everybody in the rest of the military.
00:20:22.180 because i think support is like at least half if not more of the people involved so like nothing
00:20:27.300 happens without them so take pride in those roles as well like you're you're not you're in the
00:20:32.660 background so you're not the tip of the spear so what like it maybe you realize after five ten years
00:20:38.020 of being a log that you want to be an armored officer or whatever like you can always change
00:20:41.860 later too so don't so plan for what you're going to do within your skill sets and aptitudes and
00:20:47.380 And then, you know, I mean, put the time in, suck it up and push through like it's going to get better.
00:20:52.340 The training in the beginning is rough and it's not always a blast, but it will get better and have sort of a plan B type of thing.
00:20:59.840 So if this thing really is you found yourself not in the right spot, then pivot and do something different and see if it works out.
00:21:06.460 Because I think there's a lot of young people in Canada who maybe get the wrong idea from Netflix and movies and that, that they're going to be in full metal jacket.
00:21:13.960 But that's not everything that they're going to be going through.
00:21:17.380 Yeah. If you join the infantry thinking it's going to be like call of duty and then you spend three months making your bed, like you gotta, you gotta, again, weather your expectations, uh, but you'll, you'll make amazing friendships and you'll, and you'll have incredible training that will translate in the civvy side.
00:21:33.040 If you know how to articulate it on a resume, don't worry about that now, just suck it up.
00:21:37.520 You know what I mean?
00:21:38.200 Push through, build the resilience, build the mental toughness, the physical toughness that you're going to get as well.
00:21:43.900 and just it's there's nothing like it like you're not gonna experience really anything like this in
00:21:48.320 the civilian world unless you went into policing which is paramilitary anyway yeah so policing fire
00:21:53.280 like you'll get a maybe kind of a similar experience to some degree but um yeah like
00:21:58.660 just kind of play to your strengths and like have a plan b in case you might need to pivot
00:22:02.920 did you see some young people that may be joining you thought inside like i don't think they're
00:22:06.960 going to make it and then they grew and evolved and matured and became completely different people
00:22:11.280 oh yeah absolutely i had i had doubts about myself even making like there was times when i had to dig
00:22:15.980 deep and because i joined later in my late 20s as a reservist i was always trying to balance
00:22:21.500 career uh like full-time career with part-time career military and i struggled with that quite
00:22:26.720 a bit for the first few years constantly losing contracts and jobs because i kept asking for so
00:22:31.400 much time off to go do training and it was very stressful financially so for the for the maybe
00:22:36.220 another piece of advice i'll touch back on to the young folks is like join the reg force like join
00:22:40.640 the full-time military it'll take away almost everything that you need to worry about in terms
00:22:45.720 of where you're living what you're eating finances for the most part uh that's like these are all
00:22:51.020 sort of solved for you and then you can just focus on being a savvy and equipped professional and
00:22:57.240 having started in the reserves that's kind of the mistake that i had applied to the reg force but my
00:23:03.420 the application process is long and tedious and paul and i talked about this too but yeah like
00:23:08.740 join the reg force uh give away you know what i mean that part of your brain that will distract
00:23:14.420 you from all the things that are preventing you from excelling on training and uh yeah just focus
00:23:19.860 on what's ahead of you because you're probably not gonna have to worry about screen time and boot
00:23:23.860 camp will you probably no maybe you might get some at the end of the day but you'll be too busy
00:23:28.740 running from one task to the next quite literally so and i think if the young person joins a regular
00:23:34.180 force and spends a few years and then they transition to a civilian career they could
00:23:39.020 still be part of the reserves but they already have the training correct yeah exactly a lot of
00:23:42.760 people do that or or the other way like you can join as a reserve and go reg like i did or join
00:23:46.860 reg and go reserve a lot of people do that and they've actually made another thing that they've
00:23:50.860 done correctly or they're about to do correctly i'm not exactly sure where it is in the process but
00:23:55.700 they were there's classifications for regular people and or sorry regular army and reservists
00:24:01.680 what the distinctions were kind of arbitrary but important for finances and contracts and things
00:24:06.480 like that and they've started to do away with some of that or they're planning on it so
00:24:10.320 you can be kind of a reservist but you're a full-time member of kind of still
00:24:15.520 the regular like i'm butchering this but there's a plan to make this where you can stay in a city
00:24:21.600 like you don't want to get posted out so you're like i want to stay in ottawa i want to stay in
00:24:24.720 halifax i want to stay in edmonton and then you're still in the regular force but your
00:24:29.520 career is on a different path as you've now chosen i don't want to be posted every couple
00:24:33.840 years or whatever so they're being more accommodating to people's needs of especially
00:24:38.360 spouses that have postgraduate degrees or whatever and like these people want to move or they don't
00:24:43.940 want to move and she's got her psychology degree and she's doing very well exactly don't post me
00:24:48.260 out of here my wife's making 300 grand a year right it's like you know what i mean but i still
00:24:51.720 want to serve exactly so they're listening and they're and they're accommodating and that's that's
00:24:56.060 cool they should be doing that yeah and i have to give um you know carney and his crew credit i
00:25:01.480 when they start talking about the two percent to be honest with you i didn't think they'd do it
00:25:05.160 and when they started talking about the commitment i thought it was words but they really are backing
00:25:09.720 up their words and they've made some statements they want to move away from a lot of american
00:25:14.060 equipment and go to more european international equipment and canadian made equipment and now
00:25:18.580 i'm seeing they're actually are making more and more equipment for the military in canada yeah
00:25:23.580 they they have to just because the amount of bureaucracy involved in getting these contracts
00:25:28.460 is it would be much smoother probably or at least less friction if it was all done domestically or
00:25:34.540 the vast majority of it done domestically so that's that's another good and that's jobs in
00:25:38.540 canada too so yeah i i would carney's carney's trending in the right direction with all these
00:25:43.580 things for sure now so if you had advice for someone to say hey i'm in the military i'm
00:25:48.460 listening to you i am going to go to my local bass pro shop cabela's whatever and outdoor shop and
00:25:55.420 get some gear what's the one or two pieces of go-to gear if you're a reserve entry regular
00:26:00.940 force infantry you have to have infantry guys specific yeah uh you need good boots you need
00:26:06.620 good boots and you need wool socks whether they are thin sort of summer wool socks or thick
00:26:13.420 extra arctic wool socks you need next to skin needs to be wool socks and i would recommend
00:26:19.260 uh solomons for boots there's a whole stream of different boots that they make that are great
00:26:24.380 they're that good yeah they are very good uh loas are good rocky rocky like any any kind of boot
00:26:29.820 that's not the issued boot is like is you're probably gonna have a better time it'll fit you
00:26:34.460 better your feet will have a better chance of surviving um because i've seen some i've seen
00:26:38.940 trench foot on courses before really well you can't really your boot's not going to stop that
00:26:43.420 like your foot's going to you're going to be wet up to like sometimes your neck almost in a swamp so
00:26:48.300 prepare to get wet um but yeah you need good boots and for winter stuff like good for me good gloves
00:26:55.500 the gloves they issue you are not always great or they don't necessarily fit properly so if you were
00:27:00.300 to go out and get like wool liners with another shell that can accommodate like that's personally
00:27:05.740 your hands and if your hands and feet are looked after everything else will kind of be a little
00:27:09.820 bit easier because it's easy to keep your chest warm with all the layers of course it's the
00:27:13.820 extremities that'll go first and that's what gets you right yeah what got me yeah and i think too
00:27:18.540 if i like if i'm in the navy like i'm i'm gonna get the best wet gear rain gear because you're on
00:27:24.060 the deck of those ships it's all salt spray all the time yeah exactly yeah so it's quite
00:27:28.380 interesting brian thank you so much always appreciate your insight thank you
00:27:37.980 patriotic means looking up for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is being
00:27:45.020 in the country you love surrounded by people you love and great weather being a patriot is being a
00:27:49.820 part of your community and caring for it it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from
00:27:54.220 patriotism is the one thing we all share it's okay to be critical of government and still
00:28:00.140 be a patriot it's gratitude to your country of course i'm a patriot i'm canadian it's my home
00:28:05.980 Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.