Defence Minister David McGuinty’s office says it’s considering a combination of approaches to boost pay for armed service members, including introducing retention bonuses for stress trades.
“This investment represents an almost 20 per cent increase to the overall CAF compensation envelope,” McGuinty’s spokesperson Laurent de Casanove said in an email statement to The Canadian Press.
“The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are actively working on how best to implement this investment — looking at options that include a combination of approaches such as retention bonuses for stress trades, increased starting salaries for junior members, and a broad-based salary increase.”
While McGuinty’s recent public commitment to grant the Canadian Armed Forces a 20 per cent pay increase won praise within the defence community, it has also led to confusion — and some experts are saying they want to read the fine print.
Military pay scales are complicated and are based on rank, profession, deployment and other conditions. There are many ways to roll out a boost in compensation.
Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said she thinks this will not amount to an across-the-board pay hike.
“What is clear to me from this statement is that they are looking at all the options,” she said. “We’re still in that big question about what it looks like, because a pay raise versus specialty pay versus an adaptation of the compensation package overall — not in salary — are not the same thing.”
She said the way the pay pledge was communicated initially was risky since the details were not readily available, and that has led to confusion among military members and expectations of a blanket pay hike.
Gary Walbourne, former ombudsman for the Department of National Defence, called McGuinty’s promise vague at best.
“There’s nothing clear in this message,” he said. “A 20 per cent increase overall to CAF compensation envelope, what does that mean? Is it coming in benefits? … Is it going be on a cyclical basis? What’s the percentage increase? Is it based on seniority, rank, merit?”
The former watchdog for military personnel said it sounds like the Liberal government wants to implement a pay boost quickly, but the mechanisms they apply to it are going to complicate it and once the bureaucrats get their hands on it he can see a slowdown coming.
IHe said that if CAF members don’t see a 20 per cent pay bump after the minister’s announcement, it will be déjà vu all over again for military personnel who have been let down in the past by lofty promises followed by implementation that “sucks big time.”
The federal government has multiple policy options for addressing the cost of living for CAF members, such as lowering rent for on- or near-base housing or boosting allowances, such as danger pay.
Duval-Lantoine suggested Ottawa should focus on specialty trades that do not get nearly the attraction that they need to have.
The military has long struggled with shortages of professionals who are hard to recruit and retain — people in the technical trades and logistics, pilots, medical specialists and middle management.
(The Canadian Press)
