Historical aspect for consideration:
In the 90's, many of these allowances were created or increased in order to get around the 'no pay raise' and 'pay freeze' actions that we lived through.
This was also the source of much of the advanced promotion that we still see to this day. Getting a sailor (or soldier/zoomie) promoted was the only way to get them a pay-raise, and when your monthly income was frozen at $1625 per month, getting promoted to LS/Cpl was a very nice bounce in pay, particularly if you got Specialist pay with it.
So, here's the problem with creating allowances to increase our troops pay. They are not part of the base pay. Which means they are not part of your best five years for your pension calculations.
I would much rather see our base salaries increase which they seem to have done...that $1625 has now become $2985/mo. (Which is actually almost $500 ahead of the rate of inflation for 1994-2015 using the CUPE Inflation calculator
https://cupe.ca/cpi-calculator )
Looking at the same stat, a LS/Cpl IPC 1 Specialist is also almost $500 ahead of inflation since 1996 as well.
Honestly, I'd rather have our base salaries higher, if that means our allowances are lower, because in the end, our pensionable earnings is based not off our allowances, but off our base pay. Higher allowances will recognize those who deploy, face risk/hazard/etc, however, they don't do a thing for our pensions.
Just my thoughts...
NS