Gramps said:
There is a Maximum weight of 20,000lbs on any domestic move (overseas moves are a lower weight allowance), anything over the 20K is paid for by the member. The vast majority of households are well below the 20K.
Actually the 20K lbs limit applies to overseas moves as well in that the total of all your HG&E (i.e. that which goes overseas PLUS that which goes into long term storage in Canada) can be no more than 20K lbs at public expenses (i.e. you pay the additional charges if you're over). What you're allowed to ship overseas depends on whether you're going into furnished or unfurnished accomodation (i.e. you're allowed to ship more if you go into unfurnished accomodation.
A few other things to consider in this debate:
1) The idea that some have mentioned that the final move on release is designed to get you back to your place of recrutiment is only true if you have less than ten years of service. Ten years is the dividing line. After that, you become entitled (with some exceptions) to a move anywhere in Canada you want (including across the street). I would argue that after many years of service many CF members may no longer have any connection whatsoever with the place where they signed (I know I don't). So limiting us to a move back to our place of recruitment doesn't make a lot of sense.
2) As others have said, the house which you found suitable for your last posting may not be suitable for retirement. To give myself as an example again, my wife and I expect to become empty-nesters about the same time that I expect to retire. I will no longer need a four-bedroom house, but I will likely still want to stay in the same vicinity. If the government is willing to move me across the country, why can't I simply move down the street and actually save the taxpayer some money?
3) BGRS does not keep the relocation files. Once they are closed, they are sent to DND and DND holds them in accordance with government archival policy. Any ATI for this information would be dealt with by DND. As a private company, BGRS would not be subject to an ATI anyway.
4) Relocation claims are subject to audit by DND (in fact, there is a minimum spot sampling of them done every year). LGen Leslie's claim is no doubt being audited as we speak (if this has not already been done) and if he has been overpaid or underpaid, adjustments will be made. There is a whole team of people who do this on a constant basis and they subject every claim to scrutiny in accordance with IRP policy/TB direction. There are no favourites and the same policies apply to everyone, regardless of rank.
And on a completely different note, there is no "clawback" on our pensions when CPP kicks in. The original intent of the CFSA was that no one would be able to draw more than a 70% of there best five years salary as a pension, including CPP. However, when the CFSA was set up, it was recognized that most people would start drawing their CFSA pensions at least 10 years prior to CPP starting, so a "bridge" was inserted to fill that gap. Initially, it was actually covered by a separate piece of legislation (the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act - SRBA) and was accounted for separately on our pay accounts. For whatever reason, the CFSA and SRBA were amalgamated at one point and granularity was lost. Nevertheless, the intent remained the same - a maximum total benefit of 70%. The long and short of it is that nothing is clawed back at age 65, but rather the bridge is dismantled and replaced by CPP. It is important to note that this is what we have paid for. If we were to continue to draw the CFSA pension at the previous rate as well as CPP, we would have to pay higher premiums from the get go (and let's not get into the fact that our premiums are going up anyway, because the cause of that is different yet again and is a different topic of discussion).
