Q and A with Chris Gilbert and Arnold Betzema
october 12, 2022
Saskatchewan/Manitoba Regional Professional Development Day, October 21, 2022
Interviewer:
Thank you for doing this Q&A today, and telling us about your upcoming professional development day. Would each of you mind introducing yourselves? Who you are, what you do, how you’re involved in the CSSE, and how you’re involved in this event.
Chris Gilbert:
Sure; I’ll start. My name is Chris Gilbert, and I’m going to be Vice Chair of the Northern Lights Saskatchewan Chapter. I used to be their Events Coordinator, and now I’m moving into the Vice Chair position for the next term and probably then moving into the Chair position.
I’ve been with the CSSE since 2018. I was involved with the planning process for this professional development day last year, which was a huge success, and now I’m involved again, doing odd jobs and helping where necessary for this year’s planning.
Arnold Betzema:
I’m Arnold Betzema. I’ve worked for the past eight years as a Program Manager for Energy Safety Canada. Prior to my current role, I was the Safety Coordinator with an oil and gas company for seven years in Southeast Saskatchewan. I’ve been involved with the CSSE for most of this time. I became a Certified Health and Safety Consultant (CHSC) in 2018.
I decided to join the chapter through encouragement from Ryan Bast and a few other people who are in the South Saskatchewan Chapter. I’ve also worked with Lorinda Jacobson in several areas. I felt it would be a good way to enhance my networking skills to join the executive of the South Saskatchewan chapter. In terms of this event, I will say that I’m just kind of riding on the fence and that Susanne and Trevor, who’s now our South Saskatchewan Chairperson, have been doing a lot of the groundwork; and of course Dana Johnson from Manitoba and Chris from Northern Lights as well. I was able to line up one of our speakers from Energy Safety Canada for this event. I think it’s exciting now that CSSE National is getting more involved so that we can have a better, more consistent footprint across the country. I’m looking forward to this cooperation
Interviewer:
I’d like to know a bit more about the event. Can you describe some of the sessions and speakers that are most interesting to you or that you’re looking forward to?
Arnold Betzema:
I think Andrew Sharman is going to be interesting. I haven’t seen him speak before and I’m excited about his presentation. With his European base and what he can bring forward to the event, it’s going to be very valuable.
I’m also looking forward to the presentation from Robert Waterhouse, who’s going to be speaking on behalf of Energy Safety Canada about the Building Capacity to Manage Pressure training modules. Robert was part of the team that reviewed a fatality that occurred in Alberta and developed the program to assess the risk and manage pressures. The creative sentencing program in Alberta provides funding to Safety Associations to develop resources to educate workers to reduce the risk of serious and fatal incidents relating to high pressure. Building Capacity to Manage Pressure is available on the Energy Safety Canada website for free for three years.
Chris Gilbert:
I’m looking forward to his [Peter Sturm’s] speech as well, as he is the Chair of the CSA Incident Investigation Standard. He is probably going to offer some incredible insights into incident investigation and how to assist the safety industry to dive into incident investigations and basically pushing that WorkSafe Saskatchewan model of Mission: Zero.
Interviewer:
So what can attendees expect from this year’s event? What are some of your learning objectives and goals for attendees?
Arnold Betzema:
It’s a chance to get to hear what other people’s thoughts are on various topics and to be able to hear different perspectives in the health and safety world as well as to build networks.
Chris Gilbert:
And I think the networking aspect of it is a big part, especially when you run three chapters from CSSE and then expand it to the whole country, it certainly adds a lot of value. And adding onto what Arnold said, one of the major benefits is the collaborative process with numerous different chapters, where we have the actual attendance and we have the power to reach out to speakers that otherwise we might not be able to. And so bringing in these incredibly knowledgeable speakers for our entire membership adds huge value and great opportunities for not only just our small regions but opening it up to a national audience as well. Last year, we had quite a few people join from outside of our local planning chapters and that was a huge success for us. So moving forward with that again just pushes that networking opportunity and that chance for everyone to grow professionally.
Interviewer:
Can you tell me more about this? As in, how did this collaboration come about?
Chris Gilbert:
Arnold, you were involved last year a little bit too, right? Basically, because COVID moved us to an online platform only, the idea came about as we were asking ourselves the question, why are we just limiting it to local chapters and why is that limitation there? And the answer was, well, we don’t have that limitation anymore.
And so reaching out to the Manitoba and South Saskatchewan and Northern Light chapters to kind of head this project—and I’m not going to name any names because I can’t remember exactly who’s idea it was, so I don’t want to misspeak—but there was that idea and I believe that a couple of the chairs or the chairs of each chapter just kind of sent an email asking the question, is this something you’re interested in? And then yes, there was buy-in and year one was a huge success, and I don’t expect this one to be any different.
Arnold Betzema:
I will say, my intent was to become one of the directors for the South Saskatchewan Chapter and then they kind of convinced me to join up and be part of the professional development day, because Trevor had been actively involved. What I understood is that it was through discussions and reach-outs and I think the availability of pooling resources, that we were able to obtain high-level speakers. I think that was a really good perspective, to put all three resources together. And again, when it’s virtual you can reach everybody. I mean, not that we want to live in the virtual world forever or anything, but it was because of the pandemic we were going through that the possibility came about. So we were able to collaborate and work together and I think the half-day session last year was successful, and through further discussions, we decided to make it a one-day session—about six hours of content—I think this will add more value to the day.
Interviewer:
Is there any advice you’d give to other chapters that are looking to work together on this kind of event?
Chris Gilbert:
I will say, never hesitate to try to reach big for speakers, for people you want. The speakers both last year and this year were some pretty large names. And knowing that we are a volunteer group and that people are donating their time to help, reaching out to speakers and reaching out to your provincial or local associations like WorkSafe associations—essentially all your safety associations—they’re more than happy to get involved with promotional events like this and help bring in these amazing speakers.
Arnold Betzema:
To add to what Chris is saying, I think you get so much more by collaborating with other chapters. Within your own active chapters there’s typically a few people who are really driving the bus to get the events moving. But when we reach outside of that room, things really take off. And to grow my own professional status, I know I have to put something into it in order to get something back from somebody else. So the more you put into something, the more something will come back. And I think through this experience I’m looking forward to continuing to grow the relationship between Chris, Susanne, Dana, and Trevor and everyone within our chapters, a chance to celebrate the success of this event. It’s a lot of planning, a lot of extra hours. But once you look at the end result, it’s very beneficial.
Interviewer:
Thank you both so much. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, or that you would like people to know about this event or your collaboration, or anything?
Chris Gilbert:
I’d like to note the sponsors for this event, the main ones being WorkSafe Saskatchewan, SAFE Work Manitoba, CSSE National and, Grainger as well—those are our four sponsors. A huge thank you to all four of them for giving us the resources we need to run a successful day.
Arnold Betzema:
And I think this is something we could continue to work on as a group and have another virtual professional development day. As we move out of the pandemic and back into live events, I think it just adds a lot of value—especially because the big CSSE conference has been postponed for several years now. It’s just a way to connect and collaborate. And I think that it also adds value to the organization as well. I’d like to take part in more CSSE events. Being a part of the organizing committee does take a bit of time, but it also adds value to my own professional development.
Interviewer:
Thank you both so much. Best of luck with this amazing event!