Five questions with the new Chief Petty Officer at Naval Fleet School (Pacific) 

Chief Petty Officer First Class Stan Budden.

Kateryna Bandura, 
Lookout Editor

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Chief Petty Officer First Class (CPO1) Stan Budden, Chief Warrant Officers Corp, joined the primary reserves in 1993 as an infantryman with the 1^st Battalion of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. In 1996, he joined the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) as a Marine Engineer, which morphed into a Marine Technician in 2017.

CPO1 Budden said he feels privileged and honoured to be given this role.

“Culture change needs to remain the top priority as we build on the needs of the RCN, and I am in a unique position to influence this,” he said. “Naval Fleet School (Pacific) (NFS(P)) is an institution where the best and brightest shape the fleet, and I look forward to facing this challenge.”

 1. What does this new role mean to you?

Serving as the (NFS(P)) Chief Petty Officer (CPO) is an excellent opportunity to contribute to the RCN and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in a meaningful way. I am directly helping to promote the goals of Strong, Secured and Engaged in the RCN.

Training plays a crucial role in reconstituting the current fleet. The training imparts the knowledge and skills that allow the next generation of sailors to serve professionally, safely, and confidently. With work, we can become the RCN Canadians want and deserve, facing challenges head-on.

2. Do you have a specific goal you wish to attain in your new position?

I want to ensure everyone at the Fleet School, staff and students, feels supported. This can be explained with a word I learned from Lilo and Stitch, ‘Ohana’, which means ‘family’, but in a broader sense than most of us think. We are all family as RCN and CAF members. We need to look after each other and treat everyone with dignity and respect, regardless of background, experiences, or age, like we would with members of our primary families.

My secondary goal is to promote a physically fit team. When I left HMCS Ottawa in 2018, I was overweight. Since then, I have worked on my fitness and health to such an extent that I have just completed running a full marathon in Victoria on Oct. 9 – a challenge I never thought I would be able to do. I learned personally that being physically fit not only helps with one’s overall health but mental resilience as well.

3. How do you think your previous experience contributed to your current role?

Serving as the Chief Engineer of HMCS Ottawa required that I understand command integration and how to examine things holistically at a unit level.

As the Unit Sergeant Major for Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre (Pacific) in Vancouver, I learned how to be a command team member and the critical role recruiting plays in the health of the CAF.

Now, as the Fleet School CPO, I continue to help the CAF reconstitution effort by ensuring our personnel is highly trained with the skills and knowledge they need to perform their roles professionally and confidently.

4. What are you looking forward to in your new role?

I look forward to working with an amazing command team and learning from them. The Naval Personnel and Training Group (NPTG) is an excellent organization comprised of professionals dedicated to improving training while preparing our sailors to meet the challenges of the future fleet.

I look forward to interacting with students and showing them that the RCN is not just a job but an adventure. I appreciate all the opportunities my military career has provided me.

5. Do you have anyone you look up to?

I can think of three key people who I look up to because, to me, they symbolize the qualities of empathy, strategic awareness, and resilience.

The first one is CPO1 (Retired) Janet Graham-Smith. She was my coxswain in both Regina and Winnipeg. I learned how to become more empathetic from her. While in those units, she helped me personally when my mom became sick in Newfoundland. I have also looked at how she dealt with people – she was fair. She never gave everything to everyone, but she could help people and treated them justly and with respect. 

The second one is Major Sam Perreault, who is now deployed to Jerusalem on Operation Proteus. He was my Commanding Officer at the Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre (Pacific), and I learned a lot about how different elements think and how a command team should work.

The final one is Sergeant (Retired) Jeff Yetman. He was an infantryman with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry who deployed to Afghanistan three times as well as Bosnia. Not only did I grow up with him, but I learned tenacity and how to deal with adversity as I watched and helped him overcome his challenges. He is a brother-in-arms to me.