Maybe, just MAYBE, if the RCN gave each and every person working in the Dockyard and Stadacona equal access to the opportunity to actually get a parking pass, I MIGHT, just MIGHT have an iota of sympathy for what has been imposed upon you.
Those members currently serving in Halifax and complaining about how hard "everyone" is being done by are conveniently leaving out a very salient fact and that is that parking at the Dockyard and Stadacona has always been, and continues to be, out of bounds to a significant number of the members who work there. Ironically enough, those are the members who would benefit most from the continuation of free parking, those with the lowest pay due to just having joined. Those members have never been able to obtain a parking pass and are still unable to do so. When I was posted to Halifax I believe the "magic" figure was 15 years in to qualify to apply for a parking pass, then it was dropped to something like 12 and now, after looking up the current CFB Halifax parking policy, I see it is 5.
Think about that for a second...what other Base in Canada has ever forbidden, as a formal policy via a Base Standing Order, ANY member of the Canadian Armed Forces from parking their POMV in FREE taxpayer provided parking simply by virtue of the number of years of service when all else is equal in order to guarantee parking is available for members who meet that arbitrary number of years? Bueller...Bueller...? Right. NONE. And you, who are complaining about having to pay for parking because you work there meaning you qualify to apply for a parking pass, which means you are at least an LS making $57k a year and who quite possibly have at least a few years of qualifying sea time to pad out your sea pay, have the gall to complain that you are being made to pay, what...$75 a month?...for that privilege while anyone with less than 5 years of service are told, "don't even bother to think about asking to park your car here" even if they were willing to pay twice that. Get. Over. Yourselves.
I had an inside view on the parking issue in Halifax while there and each and every time there was an attempt made to resolve the parking issue without instituting paid parking it was torpedoed by those people who refused to accept the fact that in order to try to avoid the imposition of payment, the easiest and most likely to succeed solution was to open the doors and make it scramble parking. First come, first served, no matter what your rank, no matter what your years of service with the exception of some reserved spots for the customary positions. Just like the "free" parking at most other Bases across Canada where "reserved" parking is limited and if you want a spot close to the door, get there early or tough. Members of the C&POs mess were the worst, loudly and actively resisting the loss of "their privilege" which they had "earned", while leaving the poor lower deckers, for the most part, to try to find places to park on the streets blocks away from Stad or the Dockyard or, god forbid, pay to park in a private lot if they wanted to drive but didn't want to spend 30 min driving around in circles looking for a spot. Or they could ride the bus, pay for a transit pass that those who had "earned" free parking didn't have to buy, quite possibly drive to a location where they could then catch the bus if they didn't live close to a route and then hope that their trip went smoothly and they hit all their connections lest they ended up being late with all the joy that would bring down on their head. And those with "privilege" wouldn't listen to the warnings about what was coming because parking had always been free and would always be free, Treasury Board and CRA be damned. That is the sense of entitlement that has led to the current situation and it is sad that the majority of the people actively resisting in the early days when scramble parking likely would have worked are now long retired and this has no impact on them, other than when they have to buy a parking stub to go hang out with their cronies at Juno Tower and bemoan the death of the RCN by a thousand cuts as opposed to realizing that the RCN needs to change with the times and stop pretending we are still living in 1950 where the Mess you belong to entitles you to differing levels of privilege.
My solution? Demand outstrips supply. Let the free market reign. The Base Commander should jack the prices until the demand drops off to match supply. You are a PO1 and don't want to pay the premium? Do what you are forcing your junior members to do. Go find a spot on the street and hope you don't get ticketed or towed. Get a spot in a private lot if you want a bit of peace of mind. Buy a transit pass and take the bus. Mooch a ride off of someone who is willing to pay the premium. Or, if you want to maintain an artificial cap on the price, level the playing field. Once a year, after APS, hold a lottery. You want to apply for a parking pass? Put your name in the hat along with the 2000 other people who want a shot at the 1100 parking passes available for Stad and the Dockyard and give the AB an equal chance at a pass alongside her Divisional Chief since he isn't willing to cough up a the premium price that the free market will bear. Or, give shotgun parking a go and then watch the fun as people start showing up for work at 0630 hrs and hitting the gym because they are willing to come in a bit early to guarantee a spot but that was the most often used argument against shotgun parking to start with, senior members were worried they would be beaten to the spots by junior members who were willing get up early and sacrifice a bit of personal time to make sure they could park.
Ref the idea that parking should have simply been made a taxable benefit and added to "your" T4 at the end of the year and therefore there would have been no need to employ all those people involved in the administration and enforcement of the parking system... Given the fact different areas of the Base are charged different amounts, not everyone parks on the Base nor desires to even if everyone had a shot at a parking pass, some people only get a spot for part of the year etc etc, you can't just automatically add "$x" to everyone's T4, so therefore, someone, somewhere, has to track and account for those members who have a pass. So...where does the money to pay for that administrative overhead come from if the Base is simply letting the "monies" from the "parking fees" that are being accounted for as a taxable benefit lapse by being uncollected, or be effectively diverted to the General Revenues fund via your reduced tax refund at year end, as opposed to being available at the Base level to pay that admin overhead? How about the payment of the enforcement personnel? And, no, MP cannot simply do it themselves; prior to the paid parking it was a full time job for several Commisionaires alone, with MP doing top up and that was without people being royally offended because they couldn't find a parking spot they were paying for yet someone without a pass was illegally parked. Or someone deciding that even though they couldn't find a spot they had "paid for a spot" and would just park where they thought there was room. And those guys who are now paying a premium for a reserved spot who are no longer willing to let it slide when someone parks in their reserved parking for "just 5 minutes while they run into S-90". Fact is, the Base Commander made the wise choice. He knew money was going to be needed to pay for administering parking...there was always a cost in administering and enforcing the "free" parking in Halifax anyway due to the parking pass system and limited number of spots, so he saw an opportunity to not only meet the demands of CRA and Treasury Board but to also help him stretch his budget by charging locally and, it appears he is also taking some of the pressure off of the Base SNIC crews by using some of the money to fund snow clearing of parking areas by private contractors.
At the end of the day, parking in certain areas of Halifax is a commodity. Demand outstrips supply. You now pay for parking in those areas. There was a very active effort by a good number of senior RCN non-commissioned members in Halifax to restrict access to that limited commodity at no cost for their sole benefit to the exclusion of their subordinates (kind of goes against the credo of Mission, Men, Self but we are talking about earned privileges here so that really doesn't apply, right?) and if you want to start pointing fingers, that would be the place to start. Perhaps if those individuals had been willing to listen years ago when this topic first came on the radar, the current pain could have been avoided. They refused to and eventually the Base Commander was likely left with no choice. Given what happened in Toronto (
Police parking a taxable benefit, Canada Revenue Agency rules and
City staff back-taxed for parking) where some people were assessed thousands of dollars in back taxes, interest and penalties owing, this really isn't as bad as it could have been, especially considering CRA would have been looking at an additional four or five years of deemed taxable benefits compared to the 2010 audits in Toronto.
Finally, ref the comment about free soup and lunch (not to mention the seemingly always present cookie, sticky bun, fruit, cracker and cheese platters with on tap free coffee and juice in the C&POs mess no matter what hour of the day, at the time at least) making fiscal sense because each ship must keep two weeks of stores on board and if they weren't eaten, they'd just be thrown out. The Base kitchens tried to justify giving their staff (military and civilian) free meals by saying the food they were eating only would have gone in the garbage anyway as well. CRA didn't buy it then and I doubt they would buy it for the RCN either if they ever chose to take a good look at the practice as in this day and age there is no justifiable reason, or even the ability, for each and every ship in the fleet to be at such a high readiness state that they require two weeks of perishable rations on board.
