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Paid parking DND property

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There has been a benefit cut George.

It has been cut. This is not up for debate. It used to be free, now it's not. It was a benefit.

What is up for debate is if they should have cut the benefit, or put it on T4s as a taxable benefit.

Instead of just following the rules set out by the TBS and CRA, they decided remove the benefit.

That's what has people outraged, on top of all the other cuts over recent memory.

Consider that taxing the benefit may cut into people's yearly tax return, yes, however paying for parking is not tax deductable (iirc).

So instead of getting a smaller return this year, they are out 4 times or more that amount after taxes.

And for what? so the local contractors get another 5% to their revenue stream? so the bases can justify a couple more positions to look after parking?

Does DND really need to make parking management and tracking those funds part of our footprint when so many key positions are already going unfilled, and report after report says we're bloated with useless bureaucracy?
 
Halifax Tar said:
I think he is expressing what many of us are feeling which is a feeling that many benefits we had for being in the CAF is being chipped away.  Sort of a death by a thousand cuts scenario.

It is no wonder we have retention issues. 

It wouldn't take much for the conservatives to get back the military vote.  Just a few adjustments and putting the TBS in their place.  But if the (the Cons) have done anything the last few years its push the military vote away from them and the parking fees in Halifax is an issue that has done that.  If I was planning on running for MP in an HRM or surrounding area seat as a con I would be worried right now. 

There is no worthy defence to making people pay for parking at CFB Halifax.

The military vote is small and insignificant in the grand scheme of Canada.  We (can) vote in election districts all over the country regardless of where we actually live.  There is some knock on effect that can affect voting patterns if enough people in a military community sense feel jilted but writ large we are insignificant as a voting block. 
 
Not to be insulting, but LOL.

c_canuk said:
There has been a benefit cut George.

It has been cut. This is not up for debate. It used to be free, now it's not. It was a benefit.

It obviously is up for debate.  Depending on how you look at it, it may not have been a "benefit" but a "FREEBIE" or a complete oversight of the system.  Read the DAOD's.

c_canuk said:
What is up for debate is if they should have cut the benefit, or put it on T4s as a taxable benefit.

As there was no 'benefit', you are left to debate your right to claim it with your Tax Lawyer.

c_canuk said:
Instead of just following the rules set out by the TBS and CRA, they decided remove the benefit.

No.  They decided to enforce their policy.

c_canuk said:
That's what has people outraged, on top of all the other cuts over recent memory.

No.  People are up in arms because of what you say here, and people now having to pay for something they took for granted:
c_canuk said:
Consider that taxing the benefit may cut into people's yearly tax return, yes, however paying for parking is not tax deductable (iirc).

So instead of getting a smaller return this year, they are out 4 times or more that amount after taxes.

c_canuk said:
Does DND really need to make parking management and tracking those funds part of our footprint when so many key positions are already going unfilled, and report after report says we're bloated with useless bureaucracy?

Actually, DND has been doing a lot of other things in the past two or three decades.  They have demolished buildings to cut down on their payment in lieu of taxes to municipalities.  They have closed down whole bases.  It all does come down to how to run their establishments and follow all the rules they have in place to do so.  I am sure that you have seen other measures put into place that went unchallenged because they did not affect your pocketbook, so you did not complain.  All of them affect you, not just the parking issue.  For members in one large metropolitan area to complain that they have to pay for parking while members in other large metropolitan areas have faced that burden for years now, makes it sound like a bunch of juvenile whinners who do have too much of a sense of entitlement. 

I personally bitched to myself about having to pay for parking, but it was the norm living in a major metropolitan center and even without PLD, it in the long run had very little affect on my financial situation. 
 
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.
 
Many of your points garb811 are salient.  I would like to point out, howerver, that those self same C&PO's you flay did spend their 15 years finding parking in the wilderness when they were young and broke as well.  It's not like they did not suffer the lash themselves.
 
garb811:  that what I would call a checkmate.  Great post.
 
Actually, free lunches on board HMC Ships in home port has little to do with keeping food on board in case the ship has to deploy at short notice.  We only specifically store food like that in the Ready Duty Ship.  Other ships strictly store to meet the requirement to feed lunch five days a week (and breakfast and supper to the Duty Watch).  The chief reasons are:

a)  We don't want people to leave the ship at lunch time.  There are no facilities (commercial or otherwise) within easy reach of either of HMC Dockyards that could handle the influx of sailors coming off the ships looking for lunch.  For everyone to get off the ship find lunch and get back would mean a huge loss of productivity on board as lunch "hour" would be considerably longer.  However, more importantly;

b)  We don't want people brown-bagging their lunches.  Ships are enclosed spaces where vermin can multiply at a great rate.  There are no places on board ships (nor places to put them) where sailors could properly store their lunches.  This would likely lead to personnel storing their lunches in their lockers/cabins.  Not everyone is partcularly "food-safe" and the risk of improper storage (not to mention forgotten lunches) would increase multifold, leading to the attraction and multiplication of vermin (cockroaches, fruitflies, rats, etc).  The fumigation of a ship is full-blown refit operation and extremely expensive.  Feeding the ship's company lunch five days a week in order to avoid this is quite cheap in comparison.

In short, although cook training/practice, reduced food wastage and a perk for sailors are all side benefits of this policy, they are not the main reason for doing it.
 
jollyjacktar said:
Many of your points garb811 are salient.  I would like to point out, howerver, that those self same C&PO's you flay did spend their 15 years finding parking in the wilderness when they were young and broke as well.  It's not like they did not suffer the lash themselves.

"I was treated like crap.  Therefore, as a new leader, it is my role to treat my subordinates like crap."

 
dapaterson said:
"I was treated like crap.  Therefore, as a new leader, it is my role to treat my subordinates like crap."

DING DING DING

Thats how it rolls, and thats why the wheels on the bus are not going round and round anymore.
Instead of trying to fix situations, they are making it worse or just washing their hands of it.
 
Not sure if this was already posted. If it was, I shall remove it.

August 11, 2014
Military staff at CFB Halifax wage war on new parking fees
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1228722-military-staff-at-cfb-halifax-wage-war-on-new-parking-fees

"HMC Dockyard rang with frustration at lunchtime Monday as about 200 sailors and other employees marched to protest impending parking fees."

See also,

Dec 20, 2013
CFB Halifax struggles with parking lot scramble
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/cfb-halifax-struggles-with-parking-lot-scramble-1.2471297

"To limit the scramble. the navy was only allowing people with eight or more years of seniority to get inside the gates to look for a spot."

In a related parking discussion,

Sailors Can't find Parking Spaces 
http://army.ca/forums/threads/47166.0;nowap

"The parking problem in Halifax was one of the reasons for me ditching my snow shovel and heading out west."


 
jollyjacktar said:
Many of your points garb811 are salient.  I would like to point out, howerver, that those self same C&PO's you flay did spend their 15 years finding parking in the wilderness when they were young and broke as well.  It's not like they did not suffer the lash themselves.
:facepalm:  Typed with a straight face no doubt.  And you guys are pointing fingers at things like losing cheap booze, sliders and the other "thousand little cuts" as to why there's a retention problem in the the ranks when this attitude prevails with the RCN "leadership", at all levels.

Pusser said:
Actually, free lunches on board HMC Ships in home port has little to do with keeping food on board in case the ship has to deploy at short notice.  We only specifically store food like that in the Ready Duty Ship.  Other ships strictly store to meet the requirement to feed lunch five days a week (and breakfast and supper to the Duty Watch).  The chief reasons are:

a)  We don't want people to leave the ship at lunch time.  There are no facilities (commercial or otherwise) within easy reach of either of HMC Dockyards that could handle the influx of sailors coming off the ships looking for lunch.  For everyone to get off the ship find lunch and get back would mean a huge loss of productivity on board as lunch "hour" would be considerably longer.  However, more importantly;

b)  We don't want people brown-bagging their lunches.  Ships are enclosed spaces where vermin can multiply at a great rate.  There are no places on board ships (nor places to put them) where sailors could properly store their lunches.  This would likely lead to personnel storing their lunches in their lockers/cabins.  Not everyone is partcularly "food-safe" and the risk of improper storage (not to mention forgotten lunches) would increase multifold, leading to the attraction and multiplication of vermin (cockroaches, fruitflies, rats, etc).  The fumigation of a ship is full-blown refit operation and extremely expensive.  Feeding the ship's company lunch five days a week in order to avoid this is quite cheap in comparison.

In short, although cook training/practice, reduced food wastage and a perk for sailors are all side benefits of this policy, they are not the main reason for doing it.
The two most often heard excuses when I asked what the point of giving free meals was. 

First, the employer has absolutely no requirement to ensure its employees have ready access to restaurants.  There are many bases where access to restaurants is even less of an option than Halifax.  I would point out there is a cafe in the Dockyard in Halifax not to mention an actual, onshore, kitchen right on the jetty that serves meals to walk in customers that is also providing no cost meals to some.  And I certainly was told by some of my MP who, when lunch time came and they were on ship conducting an investigation, that they would need to find another location to have their meal because they were not going to be invited to eat at the Mess.  I guess wasted time is relative. 

Second, there are other locations where we now charge soldiers, sailors and aviators for their meals even though they have even less opportunity to brown bag it or go to a restaurant than a sailor on ship.  Those poor folks in St Jean on Basic, Borden, Gagetown, all of the other locations we send people to receive their initial trades training, including the Fleet Schools in Halifax and Esquimalt, are being ordered to live in shacks where they have no kitchens to cook for themselves and are coughing up for full rations.  Some of these folks are struggling with that cost while maintaining a second residence for their spouse and children on a salary of $34k per year while being forced to pay over $500 a month for food, just for themselves.  And some people making six figures, base salary not counting sea pay, are given free meals.  Because the RCN can't figure out how to provide them with access to a fridge. 

Quite frankly this is the most inane excuse ever.  Just like with parking, the navy has had ample opportunity to come up with workable solutions and provide refrigeration and heating appliances for their sailors but has made the conscious decision not to in order to maintain a privilege nobody else in the CAF gets.  Every mess I've been to on ship had a microwave and I seem to recall fridges as well...they just prefer to maintain the status quo of the perk and trot out red-herrings like this as reasons to try to justify spending public funds on a discretionary activity that is no longer justifiable or defensible in any way, shape or form.  Perhaps you should re-purpose your ready duty beer fridges that can no longer be used for that into lunch storage facilities.  If the Capt "needs" to maintain the privilege of taking his meals in the private dining area in his cabin, give him a mini-bar fridge...but I suspect there's already one there and I'm sure his steward would be more than happy to heat his lunch for him in a common microwave and bring it back to him so he doesn't have to impose upon his Officer's in their mess.
 
dapaterson said:
"I was treated like crap.  Therefore, as a new leader, it is my role to treat my subordinates like crap."

Not the point I was making.  My point was to call to attention, the fact, that was missed by garb811 in his post that those who are presently using the parking pass system (and I am not one of them, btw) and are in the C&PO levels also waited the 15 years to get their chance for a pass.  That was all.  He made it sound as if the angels sang from on high, the Lord God Almighty parted the clouds (ala Search for the Holy Grail) and anointed the chosen ones with parking passes.  Reality was somewhat different.

garb811 lumped all C&PO's together, tarred and feather all together as well, as you are doing in your response.  I have no doubt that there were some from that mess level who made some noises as I am sure there was some from the weird room level as well.  It is disingenuous to cast aspersions on everyone as it would have been a minimal few who would have the ability to try and stop the process.  Not everyone made noise.  That, I may suggest is just as poor an example of leadership for subordinates as well.

garb811 said:
:facepalm:  Typed with a straight face no doubt.  And you guys are pointing fingers at things like losing cheap booze, sliders and the other "thousand little cuts" as to why there's a retention problem in the the ranks when this attitude prevails with the RCN "leadership", at all levels.

Yes, I typed what I did with a straight face.  I waited until the 15 year mark just like everyone else at the time.  That was all I pointed out BTW with the exception of they could have done it as a taxable benefit on the T4.  I work part time in a location where parking is a taxable benefit, you have a parking pass, X amount is calculated for each month you have the pass and it is added to your T4.  Simple, not rocket science.  There is no reason it could not have continued with the parking pass system used previously.  You hold a red, white, green or whatever pass, it is charged at such and such a rate.  Make it all scamble and open it to all.  Problem solved, equitable and fair.
 
Perhaps the base needs to come up with a mitigation strategy for this.  One possible alternative would be for the base to provide a shuttle service to and from the dockyard in the morning and the afternoon with a bunch of pick up points in and around HRM that members could use to get to work.  Growing up in Bathurst, NB, we had a couple of large mines that were about 40 min outside of town that between the different sites employed around 3000 people. 

The mining company offered a shuttle service to and from the mines that had a number of different pickup points around the region.  Usually each village in vicinity of Bathurst had a central pickup point where employees would meet at a designated time to go to work and they would be dropped off at the end of their shift at this same location.  Bathurst itself had around five or six collections points in different parts of town where workers would RV prior to heading to their respective site. 

Obviously this sort of thing costs money but this could be mitigated by using some of the money collected in parking fees to finance this.  It also provides an alternative for those who don't want to pay for parking with the catch being that they are travelling to work for free but are on a fixed schedule which means they may not be able to leave when they feel like it, in which case, using public transit is an alternative option.   

Deals could also be negotiated with local businesses, such as a grocery store, to allow members to be collected from that location and leave their cars there.  It could be beneficial for the grocery store as their parking lots are rarely ever full and people often might need to pick something up for dinner on their way home from work in which case being dropped off at a grocery store is a perfect place to do just that.

A study would need to be done on how feasible something like this would be.
 
I recall seeing a story in the Chronically Horrible once about a worker at the Dockyards who, every morning, would park at the Casino, go in and put $5 into a slot machine, then walk to work.  CHeaper than other parking options, apparently, plus a chance of a windfall.
 
RoyalDrew said:
Perhaps the base needs to come up with a mitigation strategy for this.  One possible alternative would be for the base to provide a shuttle service to and from the dockyard in the morning and the afternoon with a bunch of pick up points in and around HRM that members could use to get to work. 
Why? A DND bus system would just duplicate the city bus system while consuming resources from DND and robbing revenue from the city.
 
RoyalDrew said:
Perhaps the base needs to come up with a mitigation strategy for this.  One possible alternative would be for the base to provide a shuttle service to and from the dockyard in the morning and the afternoon with a bunch of pick up points in and around HRM that members could use to get to work.  Growing up in Bathurst, NB, we had a couple of large mines that were about 40 min outside of town that between the different sites employed around 3000 people. 

The mining company offered a shuttle service to and from the mines that had a number of different pickup points around the region.  Usually each village in vicinity of Bathurst had a central pickup point where employees would meet at a designated time to go to work and they would be dropped off at the end of their shift at this same location.  Bathurst itself had around five or six collections points in different parts of town where workers would RV prior to heading to their respective site. 

Obviously this sort of thing costs money but this could be mitigated by using some of the money collected in parking fees to finance this.  It also provides an alternative for those who don't want to pay for parking with the catch being that they are travelling to work for free but are on a fixed schedule which means they may not be able to leave when they feel like it, in which case, using public transit is an alternative option.   

Deals could also be negotiated with local businesses, such as a grocery store, to allow members to be collected from that location and leave their cars there.  It could be beneficial for the grocery store as their parking lots are rarely ever full and people often might need to pick something up for dinner on their way home from work in which case being dropped off at a grocery store is a perfect place to do just that.

A study would need to be done on how feasible something like this would be.

That would be a good idea.

However, when I tried to set up a shuttle to save the CF a bundle in TAA to transport the Reserve Class B's from Saint John to Gagetown, you wouldn't believe the amount of obstacles thrown in my way.

Oh, and George. I don't have a bun in the parking fight except that it's another 1/1000 cuts. You will never convince me that simply noting that the member receives parking as a benefit on their T4 is more difficult than actually running a parking business. Even if different parking spots have different rates (seriously? who's doing that? and why?)

Peoplesoft, MM, and the Gal all have places to record what building you work out of, those buildings will have parking spots. Yeah it really is that easy to add it as a single line on the T4. Bases already record your PMV Plate number.

As for it was a freebie not a benefit argument. Doesn't matter what you call it. The CRA decided that parking that is not charged for is a taxable benefit. They defined it as a benefit, therefore under CRA rules it was a benefit regardless of how the CF seen it. The CF doesn't get to decide what is a benefit and what isn't.

If you believe otherwise, please find in the CRA documentation where they define "Freebie" and delegate the authority to the CF to define benefits.





 
RoyalDrew said:
Perhaps the base needs to come up with a mitigation strategy for this.  One possible alternative would be for the base to provide a shuttle service to and from the dockyard in the morning and the afternoon with a bunch of pick up points in and around HRM that members could use to get to work. 

Years ago, the  base had a duty boat to ferry sailors from the Dartmouth side of the harbour to drop off in the dockyard. City transit workers raised such a loud objection to taking away their jobs, that the base had to stop offering the service. So to start a shuttle service would raise the same concerns.
 
@c_canuck

sigh.  Please explain where you are entitled to said benefit. taxable or not, in any of our regs or theirs.  You won't because it isn't there.  You only lost what you shouldn't have had to begin with.  if I overpay you and take it back, that isn't a cut, its putting things back in order.

You were technically overpayed, now you are not, just be thankful they aren't going after you retroactively.
 
garb811 said:
:facepalm:  And you guys are pointing fingers at things like losing cheap booze, sliders and the other "thousand little cuts" as to why there's a retention problem in the the ranks when this attitude prevails with the RCN "leadership", at all levels.

You, are an outsider and out of your lanes, to be quite frank.  I say this, because I came from your trade, worked here in it in Halifax and know the difference between the two worlds.  Many people are unhappy with the direction the RCN is going with respect to changes that are ongoing.  Some of it to be fair can be tacked onto leadership issues or lack thereof but that is not everyone's burr under the saddle blanket.

As for your slamming Pusser's reasoning, again, you're out of your lanes.  He makes valid points on health and habitabilty concerns which are real and viable.  On ship you are living and working in a contained system, anything that could adversely affect the health and fitness of the crew is a real concern.  Unless you've spent time at sea, you cannot appreciate how much you are affected by these factors.  There is a reason cleaning stations, however much they suck doing them, are important. 

Pusser's reasoning on productivy/cost is sound.  Unlike Army bases, and yes, I served in 1CMBG, don't have the same needs as HMC Ships.  There are many factors that come into making sure sailors are available for work on time when required.  Both FMF and/or contractors may be on board doing major repairs to the ship on a tight timeline or schedule.  Planning for the projects can take weeks and months and can cost many millions of dollars.  It a project gets off track for whatever reason it can have a major detrimental effect on operations and deployments for that or other units.  Army units don't have the same logistical/repair needs a ship does, therefore there is much room to disagree with you on.  Productivity was one of the main reasons "sliders" were stopped.  FMF was not getting the work done on time that they needed to complete due to personnel issues on ship.  As much as I don't always agree with Pusser on things, he is more correct on this subject despite your objections.
 
MCG said:
Why? A DND bus system would just duplicate the city bus system while consuming resources from DND and robbing revenue from the city.

Is it a DND responsibility to help the city make money?  I get your point about duplication of effort but then again, providing a service to young soldiers who might be hard strapped for cash, especially while having to live on the economy in a big city because DND has divested all the PMQ's and Shacks they used to have might be seen as in a positive light as a move by the chain of command to improve morale and welfare. 

Using some money collected from parking fees for Snr NCO's and Officers who get a parking spot and pay for it would also be seen as giving back to the masses so to speak. 
 
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