'Stability and calm': Former Edmonton police chief Dale McFee tackles new challenges as top civil servant
Dale McFee was anxious about buying his first large property, a strip mall in Prince Albert, Sask., where he worked as a police officer.
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Based on his successful four-year stint with the Prince Albert Raiders, McFee had a good name in hockey-mad P.A. but he didn't have the money for such a large purchase, so he went to an older local business person, a mentor, to convince him to invest. McFee was well into his lengthy presentation when his mentor stopped him, putting his hand over McFee's prepared papers.
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'Dale,' he said, 'we know you'll get it done. We're investing in you. We have the faith in you.'
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The two bought the property. In the end, his partner made a lot of money and McFee made some. But what McFee took from the meeting was more valuable, the lesson about the need to properly assess people, to recognize their talent, then to put faith in those who have demonstrated they can get the job done, just as his mentor did with him.
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'What I've seen since I've been here is there's a lot of good people, a lot of strong people, a lot of really bright people,' McFee told me in an interview, 'and it's to try to get them into the right spots to actually create the difference.
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McFee has spent his life building and leading. He has coached teams and led organizations for many decades. He did it as a player and leader on the expansion Prince Albert Raiders, helping to take them to a national championship in 1985. He did it as a coach in minor hockey and soccer. He did it as Edmonton police chief, helping solve one of the most vexing problems the city has faced in years, the lawful and humane dismantling of street encampments.
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Few of these accomplishments came without controversy, and now McFee is heading into another hotbed of conflict and controversy, taking on the lead role in Alberta's government as the deputy minister of executive council and head of the Alberta Public Service.
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The job is a whirlwind of dealing with different issues, people and personalities.
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'It starts with a day where you're talking tariffs, and then you're talking health care, and then you're talking border, and you're talking caribou preservation and everything in between, and that's before lunch,' McFee said. 'And I think what I bring to the job is stability and calm.'
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McFee, who was in policing for three decades, worked his way up to be chief of the Prince Albert Police Service, then president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. He spent six years as Saskatchewan's deputy minister of corrections and policing. He was also senior deputy minister of transformational change in Saskatchewan, looking at fixing any system that needed major updates.
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He learned that to deal with complex events, the key is to dig into things in order to grasp what is going on. 'Don't panic. Figure out what it is that you're actually going to do to provide the solution and figure out the path forward. And part of that for me is just to build talent and to build leadership within the organization.'
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