QUESTION PERIOD — National Defence
Chief of the Defence Staff
May 27, 2019
My question is for the Leader of the Government. Senators got a 2 per cent salary increase, which is roughly equivalent to the increase in cost of living, despite some senators telling the press we earn too much and should take a pay cut. The day after the dismal political failure that was the Vice-Admiral Mark Norman case, which General Vance dropped under circumstances the government refuses to make public, your Prime Minister raised General Vance’s top pay increment from $291,000 to $306,000, which is a 7 per cent increase. That’s three times more than senators got and many times more than middle-class Canadians get. When the U.S. armed forces’ most senior officer earns the equivalent of $240,000 Canadian, how can you justify that kind of pay raise? The timing strongly suggests it might be a reward for his help covering up the truth in the Norman case.
I thank the honourable senator for his question. I totally reject the implication in the question that the adjustment to the compensation of our Chief of the Defence Staff is in any way related to operational matters involving the vice-admiral and the circumstances surrounding that.
Let me simply report this to the chamber. As honourable senators will know, the performance and the compensation accorded to senior officials are reviewed on an annual basis. There’s a category of compensation for each level of appointment. The adjustment was made consistent with the category for the compensation for the Chief of the Defence Staff.
It would be inappropriate for me to comment further on matters of personnel, but we do believe in a system of transparency of revealing these adjustments not just for the CDS but for other officials at senior levels.
I get that there’s some kind of agreement with public servants, but the private sector tends more toward performance bonuses.
I’d like to know what it was about General Vance’s performance that earned him a 7 per cent bonus.
Honourable senators, again, without getting into the specifics of any one case, the performance evaluations and the consequent awards are generalized throughout the senior ranks of the public service and take place in a transparent fashion.
