Pet Transportation and Boarding Expense Reimbursement from Personalized Funding Envelope of the Canadian Forces Integrated Relocation Program

Topic

Pet Transportation and Boarding Expense Reimbursement from Personalized Funding Envelope of the Canadian Forces Integrated Relocation Program (CF IRP)

Case number

• 2015-106 (F&R date: 2015-07-31)

Issue

Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Public Service are able to have pet relocation expenses reimbursed from the Customized Envelope whereas Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members must pay for these expenses from the Personalized Envelope. While benefits provided to CAF members need not be identical to those provide to members of the RCMP or the Public Service, they should at least be comparable.

Recommendation

The Committee recommended:

• The retroactive reinsertion of reimbursement of pet relocation expenses into the customized envelope of the CF IRP, at minimum, in the form of a transition provision to allow members the time to arrange their affairs accordingly; and
• A review of all pet transportation and boarding expense claims denied from the customized envelope since the September 2012 amendment to the CF IRP took effect.

Final Authority decision

The Final Authority (FA), the Chief of the Defence Staff did not agree with the Committee's recommendation to grant redress by seeking Treasury Board (TB) approval to retroactively change the benefit, as well as to review all similar cases. The FA concluded that changes to the CF IRP were brought as part of the CAF's effort at deficit reduction, unfortunately without reflection on the second order effects. He stated that with a number of benefits having moved from the custom to the personalized envelope, the latter most often being solely comprised the Posting Allowance (PA), this resulted in the PA being used to offset moving expenses rather than its stated intent of providing an extra benefit for the disruption that relocation causes. As such, the FA agreed with the Committee that reimbursement of the high expenses related to moving pets OUTCAN should not come from the personalized envelope. He directed the Chief of Military Personnel develop a TB submission to rectify the issue going forward.