02.20.2017 06:25 PM

Can I use my katana sword when people aren’t listening to my stories?

I am told this is for real. Link here.

Ottawa is crazy. 

7 Comments

  1. rww says:

    Apparently it’s an internal competition so you cannot access without an account

    • Kevin says:

      Sceptical. I logged in, and predictable got a “Not Found” on the process #.

      Of course, that’s not to say Ottawa is NOT crazy. Today is the last day of Winterlube and the weather has been perfect. Everyone’s been out having a great time.

  2. Jack says:

    If it is real, this ad is everything that is wrong with Ottawa and the public service.

    Yes, its amusing, but everything in this posting is indicative of why voters hate bureaucratic capitals. This exhibits the self-rewarding nature of government and working for government.

    Internal hiring aren’t uncommon in the public sector and are quite common in the private sector. However, this posting requires perspective applicants to be residents of the National Capital Region (NCR) and existing Government of Canada (GOC) employees. That slashes your candidacy pool drastically and restricts this position to those who have already been a part of the federal public service environment. This eliminates any potential applicants outside of the Ottawa region with similar education/experience.

    Limiting your scope to Ottawa also effects the type of candidates you consider. As it stands, the public service in the NCR is extremely homogenous; i.e. old, white and have been working for the GOC for an extended period of time. Political parties come and go, but the bureaucracy rarely changes — and this is a huge problem. There is no point in advocating for diversity in politics if you aren’t going to affect the same change in the public service that will ultimately be responsible for carrying out your agenda. This matters immensely because who you staff your departments with effects how your departments operate. Ottawa is a bubble inhabited by similar people, and insisting on cycling top jobs amongst those who are already a part of that environment is antithetical to any collective inclusiveness that one could preach from the House of Commons.

    In one of the recent Conservative party debate, Lisa Raitt said something that really struck me. The debate was in Halifax where employment for young Canadians seeking to join the professional workforce is grim. This is a situation playing out across Canada but is particular poignant in the East Coast. What Lisa had purposed was that Ottawa [the federal government] begin to decentralize employment from the NCR and start to hire Canadians in different regions. The supposition being that if the GOC is going to create public sector jobs, then why insist on creating them all in one place?

    This is a particularly important proposition on Lisa’s part because it hits at the very heart of public apathy and cynicism to centres of power. There are a lot of well paying government jobs in Ottawa and if capital regions like Ottawa or even DC continue to reward themselves with top-tier jobs and stellar salaries then it doesn’t matter how many people Trudeau hugs because it does nothing to address the fact that system still ceases to change for the better.

    As a millennial with a postgraduate degree, I know firsthand the struggles of gaining meaningful employment. This job posting is a pretty big fuck-you to people seeking opportunities and hitting walls. Being constantly told by the GOC that it will create jobs to then see the Privy Council Office restrict its hiring to those already embedded in the Ottawa environment is exactly why things like Donald Trump happen.

    • Kevin says:

      Very true. But it does keep the taxpayer from paying for moving costs. And restricting applications mostly to those already employed helps keep a cap on the size of the public service, as well as minimize training/orientation costs. The danger is exactly what you point out though. Ottawa becomes a bubble, and very inward-looking.

      • Jack says:

        Honestly, the cost associated with hiring personnel outside of the bubble are worth taking to prevent the very thing this posting is going to achieve, in my opinion.

        Expenses like training/orientation are quite insignificant within the context of the overall operating budgets of large federal departments. Its the long-term costs of maintaining the “bubble” environment on the taxpayer’s dime that should be concerning for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

  3. Kevin T. says:

    I watched Sho Kosugi movies growing up, so of course I am going to try.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.