The deterioration of infrastructure, spotty access to wifi and a major shakeup to how military families are moved from posting to posting are some of the issues the Canadian Forces’ ombudsman heard about during a visit to Canadian Forces Base Kingston this week.

National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman Gary Walbourne has been the military’s ombudsman for close to four years.

As ombudsman, he’s responsible for investigating complaints and acts a neutral third party on issues involving current or former member of the Canadian Forces, cadets or civilian employees of the military.

His office is independent of the chain of command and reports directly to the minister of national defence.

“These stakeholder engagements for me are probably the most important thing I do,” Walbourne said in an interview with the Whig-Standard. “It’s getting to the coal face. My whole raison d’etre is to make sure the members of the Canadian Armed Forces and the civilian employees of the department of national defence are treated fairly.”

Walbourne tries to visit about a dozen Canadian Forces bases each year and he was in Kingston for most of this week, meeting with the base commanders, military personnel and families.

While there are common national challenges facing the military, the sheer size of the Canadian armed forces creates issues that are regional and local in scope, he said.

“Things like infrastructure spending is a problem here in Kingston, maintaining the sports facilities, the museum has a leaky roof. That’s a local issue,” he said.

Walbourne pointed to the base’s gym, in particular, as an example of a building he said is in need of work to fix a roof leak, repair the elevator and squash courts need repairs and a mould issue needs to be addressed.

“These are all issues that have a profound effect on morale.”

A bigger issue that will likely affect military personnel across the country, and one that Walbourne said he is concerned about, is the implementation of a new relocation system.

“I think every base and wing across the country is going to be impacted,” Walbourne said.

“What I am afraid of is, if we are not going to put in the right resources now up front we are going to be dealing with it administratively after trying to clean up the files, trying to get people back to the right place, making sure they have been fully compensated or drawing back dollars if they have overspent.”

The military is planning to shift to a system where military members and their families will be issued pre-paid credit cards and expected to make more of the decisions about their move.

But the details of how the new system will work still need to be made public, Walbourne said

“We need more detail and we need to communicate this and communicate it very well in the very near future,” he said.

“People are starting to get a little anxious about that and I got a lot more of that angst, and God bless our men and women in uniform, but I got a lot more angst from the spouses.”

The military is to provide online support and 24-hour call centre support, but Walbourne said while he supports modernizing the system he said he worries the supports won’t be in place when the new system is introduced.

elferguson@postmedia.com