LCol Yves Turcotte joined the Canadian Forces in June of 1985 and attended the Collège Militaire Royal in St-Jean. He graduated with a degree in computer science and received his commission as an Officer in 1990.

Following his training as a Signals Officer, he held various management positions in the National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, procuring and deploying IT equipment.  In 1997, he joined 1st CDN Division headquarters & Signals Regiment where he held the positions of Second in Command of the Support Squadron and of One Squadron. 

He completed a master’s degree in software engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada from 2001 to 2003.  

In 2003, he joined the Director Land Command Systems Program Management where he held various positions, including Senior System Architect for the Land Command Support Systems.

He took Command of 714 Communication Squadron, Sherbrook in 2007. Promoted to his current rank in 2008, he then joined the Army’s staff in the Director Land Command Information where he served as the capability manager for the Army Command and control systems and oversaw the deployment of system upgrades in Afghanistan.

In 2010 he was posted back to the Director Land Command Systems Program Management as a section head and took over the In-Service Support of all Army communication equipment and, subsequently, as a section head responsible for the support of the software maintenance and development for all the Army command and control software and of the management of the Land Software Engineering Centre. 

Since 2015, LCol Turcotte became Section Head in the Directorate of Cyber Force Development (D Cyber FD) in Director General Cyberspace (DG Cyber).  He is the responsible officer for the planning and development of the future Cyber Defensive Capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).