They Will Burn it to the Ground

'When you lose pilots, that's a big deal. They didn't care.' (Part 2 of 6)

Part 1: Snowbird 3

Lieutenant-Colonel Riel Erickson was in charge of the Moose Jaw air force school from August 2020 until May 2023. Screen capture from a 2021 Ministry of National Defence video (click image).

During much of 2020, as pandemic restrictions became the new normal, Captain Bart Postma was on paternity leave. “Which was awesome,” he says. “I get to take parental leave? Yes, absolutely, I'm going to spend time with my wife and new baby.”

When he returned to Canadian Forces Base Moose Jaw in October, an indoor masking policy was in effect, even though the province of Saskatchewan hadn’t yet mandated this. “The rules were just so ridiculous,” he explains,

You had to wear it walking into the building, but when you got to your desk in a communal, giant, open concept area with everybody, you could sit down and take your mask off. When I taught ground school, the rule was I had to wear the mask walking into the classroom. But once we were all in the classroom together with the door shut, we could all remove our masks and start talking, with no social distancing.

Post-flight debriefings, he says, were still taking place in tiny, unventilated rooms in which masks were removed as soon as the door closed. “So it was just all nonsense that clearly had nothing to do with health. A few guys were coming up to me.” In lowered voices, they’d say, “‘I can’t believe you’re walking around here without a mask. It’s so stupid.’ And I’d reply, ‘Well take it off, then.’”

Lisa, his wife, nods, “It was pretty disappointing that military men have no balls. You’re the only one that had any balls. I don’t know how else to say it.”

As a Christian, it’s against Bart’s religion to behave dishonestly. This institutionalized dishonesty hour after hour, day after day, was a bridge too far. Science-savvy people weren’t merely pretending the mask policy made sense, they were insisting he pretend, too. In his words, “You’re lying, and you want me to participate in your crazy lies.”

On a military base, he explains,

When you’re told to do something, you’d better do it. But I just said to myself, ‘Well, we have fundamental human rights.’ To me, this is a religious belief. It’s black and white that I have rights, especially when it comes to religion. I figured this would be simple, because everything was going remote, anyway. I already had a computer to access all the files at home. I could do my job as a flight instructor without actually entering any buildings.

I’ll check the schedule from home, call my student, have a Zoom meeting. We’ll meet at the aircraft. I’ll do my flight, land, put the airplane back into the system, debrief again on a Zoom meeting. The airplane we flew had oxygen masks, so positive pressure. If I was flying with a student, I’d immediately be in an oxygen mask. I could even keep it on at the end until the student left if they were so worried. I thought those were the conversations we’d be having.

For two or three weeks, he says, “I got away with it.” But eventually he was hauled before his commanding officer. “When she told me I had to wear a mask, I asked for religious accommodation.” Directive 5516-3 says Canada is home to many people “with unique spiritual beliefs,” and that the Canadian Armed Forces has a “duty to accommodate” those beliefs. The directive explicitly acknowledges the link between religious beliefs and “particular articles of clothing or styles of dress.”

Canadian Armed Forces directive 5516-3 regarding religious and spiritual accommodation. Click image to read full text.

One notable aspect of the COVID era is that all manner of preposterous, newly minted policies were zealously enforced. Comply or else. Simultaneously, those in charge behaved as though all the old rules had suddenly vanished. There’s little evidence the air force ever evaluated Bart’s religious accommodation request on its merits.

Canadian Armed Forces directive 5516-3 regarding religious and spiritual accommodation Click image to read full text.

During that first tense meeting, his commanding officer rejected the idea out of hand. He was advised his refusal to wear a COVID mask disqualified him from flying, and thus from employment on the base. He was told to mask up or leave the building. When a handful of blue surgical masks were slapped down in front of him and he still refused, he says “they then switched to, you can’t leave the building unless you put this mask on. I’m like, ‘Are you guys serious? Are you detaining me?’”

He broke the stalemate by suggesting the conversation continue by phone. He’d just go fetch his car keys and coat from his desk. He was forbidden to do so. Instead, he waited in a stairwell while those items were brought to him. From his perspective, the tone of the meeting was the opposite of reasonable and professional. After raising a religious objection, he’d been threatened and humiliated.

In the days and weeks that followed, all of Bart’s practical suggestions about how he could perform his duties without setting foot indoors were rejected. Advised his unmasked presence was a danger to the health and safety of fellow pilots and their families, he was assigned a strictly work-from-home role.

“So we talked,” he says, including Lisa in his glance. “We crunched some numbers and said it’s probably time to pull the pin. Based on the way they were acting, I saw how vicious they were going to be with vaccine mandates. And they sure were. I was worried they’d find a way to give me a dishonourable discharge and take away my pension.”

In April 2021 Bart, then in his late forties, advised the air force he’d be retiring in July. “I look back on the military now with a lot of heartache,” he says of those 24 years. It was a gut punch to realize “they don't care. They will burn it to the ground.”

Psychopaths behave irrationally, even to their own detriment, he points out. “That’s the perfect description of what I was seeing. They're going to torpedo the school. We're already in a manning crisis. When the vaccine mandate came online, more people said No. When you lose five or six pilots, that's a big deal. They didn't care.”

next installment: Faith in Humanity is Restored

Hashtag #BecauseOfYou. In May 2023, LCol Riel Erickson ceremoniously handed over command of the flight school to LCol Philippe Turcotte - who curiously only stayed in the job for two months. Colonel Daniel Coutts took over in July. Did LCol Erickson leave matters in such dissarray that LCol Turcotte bailed in dismay? Should the Canadian military have spent less time talking about LCol Erickson’s gender and more time worrying about her management style?