Opinion - Liberators of the Netherlands in 1945, today... - CBC

[dapaterson]

Looks to me like an ideal defence operations civil servant -- conceptually EX-Zero or EX-Negative One. Make JCSP a mandatory requirement of the hiring process. Slide the pension plan over (or double dip if 25+ years of service). This allows for personnel with deep expertise in one of the ADMs or the environmental staffs, retains access to their years of experience, and means no requirement for these ageing staff officers to continue to expend work place effort on the range, parades, or PT.

Pensions are already portable; job requirements can be written to favour experience gathered from the military.  And in Ottawa it seems that those pesky "military" things like fitness and ranges and other IBTS type things can be waved off.

Which creates disincentives.  Military pay is generally higher than equivalent civilians.  So I know at least one LCol whose reaction to an Executive position was "Why would I take a pay cut?"  Given the same environment but greater demands in terms of time and effort, would you take a pay reduction?

 

[Good2Golf]

Looks to me like an ideal defence operations civil servant -- conceptually EX-Zero or EX-Negative One. Make JCSP a mandatory requirement of the hiring process. Slide the pension plan over (or double dip if 25+ years of service). This allows for personnel with deep expertise in one of the ADMs or the environmental staffs, retains access to their years of experience, and means no requirement for these ageing staff officers to continue to expend work place effort on the range, parades, or PT.

Agree with you, Ostozac, that conceptually it is a concept with notable merit.  Practically, I don’t believe it would ever happen.  The Public Service senior leadership sees these ‘junior executive’ drop-ins as a threat to their progression and not ‘of the same mindset.’  There is a stated program where retiring vets are supposed to be given consideration pre- and post-release, but I can tell you from practical experience and application to several EX-01 and AS-7/8 EC-7 positions as a well-qualified, bilingual applicant, there was definitely not as much practical support by the PS as stated by policy.  I didn’t spend much more energy, and quickly moved to industry and never looked back.  Better benefits, better comp, better inclusion of individual experience and skills into the institution/company.  While I would have liked to see how a follow-on career in direct support of Defence would have unfolded, what I saw was representative of why it appears externally to Canadians that there is much dysfunction. People like to paint it as purely/mostly a uniformed/military shortcoming, but there are others who appear to have an even more difficult time looking i. The mirror and self-critiquing.

I predict nothing will change and the finger-pointing will continue, to the ongoing detriment of actual operational capability.

:2c:

Regards
G2G

 

[Good2Golf]

Pensions are already portable; job requirements can be written to favour experience gathered from the military.  And in Ottawa it seems that those pesky "military" things like fitness and ranges and other IBTS type things can be waved off.

Which creates disincentives.  Military pay is generally higher than equivalent civilians.  So I know at least one LCol whose reaction to an Executive position was "Why would I take a pay cut?"  Given the same environment but greater demands in terms of time and effort, would you take a pay reduction?

If that LCol’s decision was to port his/her pension to the PS, then yes, conceivably an EX-01 position would result in a modest pay reduction, but they would likely qualify for an immediate CFSA pension and could draw that pension while working in the PS EX-01 position so they’d be looking at at least something like a 0.9 (EX-01 lower than LCol IP4) + 0.5 (using a 25-yr immediate pension) = 1.4x their LCol pay.  If such an individual wanted to complete the remained of their working career welded into NDHQ, then staying in The CAF doesn’t make sense. ???

 

[daftandbarmy]

Looks to me like an ideal defence operations civil servant -- conceptually EX-Zero or EX-Negative One. Make JCSP a mandatory requirement of the hiring process. Slide the pension plan over (or double dip if 25+ years of service). This allows for personnel with deep expertise in one of the ADMs or the environmental staffs, retains access to their years of experience, and means no requirement for these ageing staff officers to continue to expend work place effort on the range, parades, or PT.

Of course, it wouldn't work. Three quarters of them would immediately transfer to other parts of the civil service where they aren't required to deal with defence-specific nonsense and could happily fly to conferences business class without senior leadership blowing a gasket.

I know some senior people who retired from the CAF and joined government, at a fairly high level. They didn't enjoy it much and, after a couple of years, left at a high rate of knots. The cultural differences are just too great, I think.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

That whole decision thing and the concept of personal responsibility is a bit much for most of senior management.

 

[Weinie]

That whole decision thing and the concept of personal responsibility is a bit much for most of senior management.

Blanket (misleading) statement maybe? I know a ton of folks who make decisions, and accept responsibility for them if they go pear-shaped.