It’s been several weeks since Insp. Robert Dykstra started in his role as the Sea to Sky RCMP’s new Officer-in-Charge (OIC), and he admits the transition has come with a bit of a learning curve.
“It’s been two months, but I still feel like I’m a baby learning to walk,” he said. “It’s fascinating and exciting, but it’s a lot.”
Good thing Dykstra is no stranger to change. The 48-year-old’s winding career path has taken him from the orderly government buildings of Canada’s capital to the streets of Antigonish doing frontline policing before moving with his wife to the far north of Nunavut, where he spent the past seven years.
Replacing former Insp. Kara Triance, Dykstra also takes over as the corridor’s top cop at a time of major reckoning for the role police play and have played in Canadian society.
“I think what is expected of police officers today is different than 15, 20 years ago. We need to be engaged in that conversation,” he said. “Society has to change, and I think we have to be at the forefront of that. We shouldn’t be hanging back and waiting for society to change and then the police organization changes. I think we need to be at the front of that because people look to us as a behaviour benchmark.”
Pique caught up with Dykstra this week for a wide-ranging conversation about his unique career path, improving community engagement and rebuilding the relationship with the Sea to Sky’s Indigenous communities after generations of mistrust.
Pick up next week’s Pique for Part 2 of the conversation, which will focus on policing priorities in Whistler, how the RCMP is gearing up for a return to post-COVID life, and police’s role in responding to mental health calls.
(The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Pique: How did you get your start in policing?
Dykstra: It’s an interesting story and not a linear one in any shape or form. I actually started my career after university in the public service. I had gone to university. I got my Master of Arts and Masters of Public Administration, and I was just about to start looking at my PhD, when my wife told me, ‘We have two young kids. You need to get a job.’
So that’s what I did. I got a job with the [federal] Department of Finance and started out there as an economist. I was there for about a year and then I went on to the Treasury Board Secretariat, which is one of the central agencies, along with the Department of Finance.
I got to do a lot of policy work, a lot of financial analysis, a lot of program analysis, and it was during that period of time that I actually started working for the RCMP for the first time.
I actually was the program analyst for the RCMP for a period of about two or three years, when I was involved with working with senior managers and policy folks at the RCMP, working on their various program and services, so providing advice and guidance in terms of how they can actually get the money that they require to do contract policing.
Pique: How did you go from there to working major crimes in Nova Scotia?
RD: When I became a member, I had a buddy of mine who was working with me at the RCMP headquarters when I was a public servant. He got me on to the bug of policing and I realized that was what I wanted to do, so I went through depot, did my training and then came out.
I went to Nova Scotia and went from being a senior policy analyst with the RCMP to being a constable on the road: pulling over cars, answering calls for service, conflict management, investigating domestics, thefts, break and enters, 911s, you name it. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life.
Pique: One of Triance’s goals was to improve the RCMP’s engagement with the Whistler community. How do you want to build on that effort?
RD: I’d love to do a town hall with the community once a year just to increase accessibility with police officers. They can come and ask questions and we can engage in an open environment and have a conversation about what’s going on. Reminding ourselves that we are here to support and serve the people of the communities in which we are working.
So for [Whistler], we’re here for the visitors, but we’re also here for the people who live here. We want to hear from them about what their concerns are, what they like and don’t like, what they expect. This is important.
We’re looking at maybe having some open houses as well as a way to invite people in to see our space and get to know what it looks like and how it works … Then, one thing that was brought up to me by [acting Whistler-Pemberton NCO Staff Sgt.] Sascha [Banks], something she had done last year, is a program called Coffee with a Cop.
I just think that’s one of the best ideas in the world. One, because I love coffee. But two, it’s this reminder that we’re just people as well.
Pique: Earlier this month, an investigation into alleged racism towards a Ts’kw’waylaxw woman in Pemberton was closed by the attending officer before he spoke with her. In light of instances like that, as well as the RCMP’s role in Canada’s terrible legacy of residential schools, how do you rebuild that relationship with our Indigenous communities?
RD: It’s a very big question and not an easy answer. I think the most important and probably first step that needs to happen is reminding ourselves that we need to listen, and actually not just listening but hearing what’s being said.
It’s hard for someone to have a real understanding of what someone else’s circumstances are unless they themselves have been in those circumstances. So what’s the only tool that we have to understand it or at least become better aware? That’s listening. Being out there meeting the members of our Indigenous communities, meeting with elders.
It’s really easy to say that we are no longer going to think of this particular term or this particular word for describing a people, or we’re no longer going to do a certain process in this way and therefore everything is better. But people forget that it took decades or hundreds, if not thousands of years, depending on certain places, for that thing to be engrained in society.
It’s not going to disappear just because we say, as a society, we’re going to do things differently. But we have to actually be really active in ensuring that the things we do and the things we say take into account the people that we’re serving.
So with local Indigenous people, we understand there is a lot of trauma. There is mandatory training for members on trauma-based investigations and trauma-based points of view. And again, that’s all about understanding context but you have to practise it, and practise it, and practise it, every single time you go to a call.
You have to understand a person’s perspective, or at the very minimum be willing to sit and listen to it and have that inform your decision-making.
