Industry Canada Reviews

Pros

Good technical position with good to very good training . Benifits O.K to good. Good place to gain additional or new job experience

Cons

Technical parts of the job farmed out to the private sector. Percentage of time spent working on the road became too much.

Pros

Can take vacation at will.
Flexible work hours.
Teleworking is permitted.

Cons

Promotions are not fair and transparent. Favorites are immediately promoted up the chain while senior and deserving people's advancement, potential, and career development is completely ignored.

There is a distinct language bias by French Canadian supervisors and management.

There is relatively no turnover as the jobs are dead-end. Working at CIPO simply erodes one's skill set, and after a few years, your stuck. You are not marketable in engineering nor are your skills recognized by other departments in the federal government.

Advice to Senior Management

Everyone deserves the opportunities for promotion and professional development - not just kids graduating from Quebec universities.

Pros

Job Stability, Work/Life Balance, Fairly Good Compensation, Indexed Salary, Great Pension Benefits, Career progression is good if you enter multiple competitions.

Cons

No Bonuses, Bureaucratic Work Environment, Little Communication between Employees, Takes patience to find the right niche for you in the government, Senior Levels Compensation is terrible for the amount of work they do

Advice to Senior Management

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Pros

Government pensions are excellent. The work/life balance is very good, especially for women who need to take maternity leave, or time off when their children are sick. There is an effort to promote women -- a very thin glass ceiling.
The issues are very interesting, but often there is not enough time to explore them in depth.

Cons

Compared to the private sector the pay is low. (although the benefits compensate)

Industry Canada is a huge bureaucratic organization, with a fairly rigid hierarchy. It makes it difficult to communicate effectively and to move the agenda forward. Often more than one group is working on the same issue at the same time, at cross-purposes. Moreover, Industry Canada is relatively weak compared to other departments, and so policy decisions can be overridden by others, which can be demoralizing.

Advice to Senior Management

Pare down the department. Think carefully about how you will manage industry policy in a recession so as to adhere to conservative principles, and not resort to industry subsidies.