After Cold Lake soldier caught busking to make ends meet, viability of military pay in booming ‘little Fort McMurray’ called into question
National Post
Jen Gerson
17 January 2014
CALGARY — Last week, 25-year-old Cpl. Darenn Tremblay set up a folding blue lawn chair on a snow-packed sidewalk in front of a Cold Lake, Alta., big box store, picked up a guitar and began to busk.
Next to him, a folded cardboard sign said: “I am in the Canadian Forces posted to Cold Lake with family any spare change will help.”
The young corporal offered his upturned green helmet, for spare change.
“I do that because we don’t have any money to pay our rent basically,” Cpl. Tremblay told the Sun newspaper chain. He is now facing an investigation for disrespecting the Armed Forces, and declined to respond to other interview requests.
Reactions to the stunt vary: several soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity said they were deeply embarrassed about the use of a helmet.
“It’s a very disrespectful pictures to all CF members,” said one. “Before we are posted to Cold Lake, we go through several interviews with regards to seclusion, as well as the cost of living there. He would have known what he was getting into being posted there. He should be charged and booted from the Forces.”
Like most soldiers, the 1,750 military personnel and 450 civilian employees who work on the base are generally service-minded people, little inclined to kick up a public fuss. Incidents like this are rare and jarring.
But that doesn’t mean the soldiers in Cold Lake don’t know why Cpl. Tremblay needed to busk.
After a oil boom that has dramatically pushed up the cost of goods, services and rent, advocacy groups and local political leaders have found themselves appalled by the conditions faced by the young soldiers. While higher ranking officers and single soldiers are comfortable, junior staff with families are struggling to pay basic bills. As many as one third of soldiers on the base have taken a second job just to make ends meet.
CFB Cold Lake, 300 km northeast of Edmonton, has been one of Canada’s premier air force bases for more than 60 years. A massive swath of land just outside the town of 14,000 is dedicated to air weapons training.
Below the action in the air lives a rapidly growing oil patch. And like other oil boom towns, as the workers moved in, the rent and cost of living began to rise dramatically.
To mitigate such problems, the military uses a bureaucratic formula called a Post Living Differential (PLD), which is meant to even out the local economic differences between military personnel.
However, the fee has been frozen since 2010, so it hasn’t factored in the spike in rent in military-owned housing. Soldiers in Cold lake receive a PLD of $319 a month — less than half what those stationed near Edmonton receive.
It’s also considered a taxable benefit — it winds up putting only about $100 in a soldier’s pocket every paycheque.
“A lot of oil patch people will call Cold Lake ‘little Fort McMurray,’” said the town’s mayor, Craig Copeland.
“Rent in Cold Lake has gone up from five years ago. You used to be able to get a two-bedroom apartment around $1,000 to $1,200 a month and now, because of the latest boom in the oil patch, in the last year and a half or so … rent has really shot up. Now two-bedroom apartments, good ones, are going for between $1,800 to $2,200.”
About a decade ago, the military stopped subsidizing its on-base housing. Instead, they began to charge the local market rate for rents. In order to maintain a “nationally consistent process,” the military calculates the rents in Ottawa using Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation data.
That process isn’t forgiving to soldiers who live in remote towns struck by oil wealth.
“A normal person would look at this story, see a house built in the ‘50s and ask ‘Why in the world are you charging market rate rents for these people? They work for you? Why do we need to gouge them on the rent?’” said the mayor.
Fearing backlash, few soldiers were willing to speak candidly about the situation. Christine, a soldier’s wife with three young children, said even spouses are too concerned to complain publicly.
“We get crap living conditions,” she said. “Every year my husband gets a raise and our rent goes up. It doesn’t matter.”
After almost two years on the base, she said her husband’s paycheque of about $58,000 is not covering basic expenses.
“Our paycheques do not pay our day-to-day living. We were very lucky in the sense that when we came here, we had money saved up, but that’s all dwindled and we’ve been pulling out of our house-savings fund,” she said.
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