A living wage would boost soldiers’ morale
Re: “RCAF members struggle to survive; Cost of living at Cold Lake base has soared,” July 10.
I was dismayed to read the recent reports of military members at CFB Cold Lake being forced to take on second jobs due to an apparent incongruence in cost of living and wages earned by junior ranks.
Canadian Forces ombudsman Pierre Daigle has reportedly found that one-third of the squadron posted to Cold Lake are forced to take on second jobs because of financial constraints. Apparently, the number of soldiers reported to be in this unfor- tunate position may have been understated.
In plain English, the military doesn’t pay our new servicemen and women enough to pay their bills. The gross pay for a new private is $2,806 per month. After tax, this private makes about $2,400 a month.
A cursory search for a one-bedroom apartment in Cold Lake revealed that the average price was just under $1,600 a month.
This means that a new serviceperson posted to Cold Lake will be forced to spend two-thirds of their take home wage on housing alone. This does not include utilities, food or car payments — let alone the necessities inherent to military service. No wonder our brave men and women are forced to flip burgers just to make ends meet.
The military has a measure to reduce the burden of different costs of living across Canada: the post living differential, or PLD. The government describes the PLD as “a means for a CF family to enjoy a relative and predictable standard of living no matter where they serve in Canada.”
Until recently, the PLD seemed to be working, how- ever, in 2007, the Harper Conservatives decided to change the way it was calculated: “The original PLD methodology was developed in the mid-late ’90s; however, the economic conditions under which the previous methodology was derived, roughly a decade ago, are no longer relevant in today’s environment.”
This may be true for most places across Canada, especially in Ontario and Quebec. However, in Alberta, the cost of living has continued to rise due to heightened housing demand and ever-increasing wages, mainly fuelled by the province’s booming oil sector. It is little wonder so many soldiers leave for the oil rigs.
I am not one to offer policy advice to the previous minister, mostly because he didn’t seem to take it from even the most informed of sources. Minister Rob Nicholson’s predecessor never formally responded to Lieut.-Gen. Andrew Leslie’s report on transformation; rather, opting to spend millions on a second opinion, all the while sacrificing readiness.
It appears that the PLD re-evaluation and methodology change have served only to create hardship for those who serve at Cold Lake. The PLD was re-evaluated in 2007. Hopefully, Nicholson will make a re-evaluation of PLD a top priority.
Men and women in uni- form should not have to rely on the ombudsman to bring these obvious discrepancies to light.
It is inconsistent for a government to claim to support the troops when it doesn’t even pay privates enough to support themselves.
My modest suggestion is instead of multimilliondollar feel-good announcements about uniforms and ranks supposed to boost morale, why doesn’t the minister just pay the soldiers a living wage?
That would be a real morale booster.