Canada’s top military commander more housing on Canadian Armed Forces bases is needed.
Gen. Wayne Eyre said Thursday that a lack of affordable housing and growing difficulties making ends meet have emerged as top complaints from Armed Forces personnel to senior leaders.
An internal report by the military’s morale and welfare unit in 2018 found one in four Armed Forces members are required to relocate every year due to training or operational needs.“Now we’re somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4,000 to 6,000 units short on our bases, which is also accentuating the housing problem,” he said.
The report also found that a special allowance called the post-living differential established to offset the added costs service members face in more expensive communities is falling short as the current rate has been frozen since 2009. The Canadian Armed Forces is currently short thousands of members, a fact Eyre highlighted during his breakfast address, in which he warned the military has been “stretched pretty thin.”
Eyre also noted that while Russia is currently top of mind, concerns about Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region have not gone away, while extremist groups and even climate change remain ever present.Article content