commissioner

Canadian Grain Commission

The job itself is great and enjoyable, it’s interesting and the commission invests a lot of time and effort in training employees. However, the nature of the job being shift work and mandatory overtime with the added stress on waterfront grain inspectors due to a lack of fairness, transparency, foresight and succession planning, takes its toll. As a employee you have little to no way to manage your work- life balance. You can’t have a weekend off when you need one, and you are always under the threat that you may be forced to be deployed across the country to work overtime and long hour for up to two weeks at a grain terminal out east. If you don’t mind being treated like a disposable employee worn out and then discarded, where the scheduling and work policies are neither consistently applied and/or verbalized, where you will be required to work at least 6 days a week and possibly deployed across Canada, then you might be right for a job with the CGC. 

During my 7-year tenure at the Canadian Grain Commission working as Administrative Assistant to numerous Grain Research Scientists, I performed my duties in an open environment along with other co-workers who also provided support duties for the scientists.
My duties included:  making international travel arrangements, obtaining visas and passports; preparing and verifying travel expense claim forms; following the Government of Canada's Travel Policy as well as the Financial Administration Act.  I also typed a myriad of letters, reports, abstracts, and technical documents.
The scientists were highly-educated, i.e., PhDs and performed their duties competently.  They treated all staff with dignity and respect.
It was a continuous-learning environment including International doctorates who came to the Grain Research Laboratory for different amounts of time to gain more knowledge of Canadian wheat, barley, oats and grain-seed oils.

Overall my summer co-op position with the Canadian Grains Commission was very educating and a great work experience in the science/laboratory field. All management and co-workers were very friendly and willing to lend a helping hand to a new student in the facility. Between managing a project and working along side chemists on research projects I was kept busy throughout the day. The hardest part was learning to use new instruments or equipment, but once I was comfortable I enjoyed the work and reward of understanding how to use these instruments. I learned how to develop new methods, use new instruments and quality control in the workspace. I thoroughly enjoyed my placement at The Canadian Grains Commission for the summer of 2012. 

Technical support, Remote desk support, Monitoring servers, server patches, make sure the servers are up and running fine, take care of clien machines
Learned a lot from headquarter staff about handling servers, vmware stuff, switches and routers stuff
The hardest part is receiving call any time at night.
The most enjoyable part is you are always on the bit, up to date with technology

terrible place to work, old run by an old boys club if you are not in the cool group or related to someone important or sell your first born child you will go nowhere, nepotism is rampant here also management has no skills required to be in a manager position they are terribly unskilled to fill a manager position, they do as they please and blacklist people for unknown reasons

I loved working with everyone there. I only met friendly people. I was only hired on by contacts so you don't have any benefits. That's my only complaint. You learn so much from the people there, they help you grow and everyone there is like a family. I left because I did not like the fact that I was only hired on 3 months at a time, never knowing if I'd be hired back on. Other than that, amazing place!

Sexism? I can go on if any of this gets cut!!!
When the manager found out I had kids, he asked how could I work this job?
Extreme overtime?
I worked 4 doubles and was sick on Friday but came to my shift. I was told I was required to work Saturday, but I work over my required overtime. I was told to get a doctors note for a day I was not scheduled to work.  Was punished.  
  Won

You're in good hands with the staff here, and there are plenty of opportunities for both student employment and growth. Along with fair pay and opportunities for employment after Student Co-ops are done.

However, be wary that anything can change in a heart-beat due to the CGC being an arms-length Government Corporation.

Worked there for 36 years - do I need to say more.

Was a Grain Inspector most of the time but was continuously learning as they had a great continuous training program.



Preparing grain samples for analyses and inspecting grain samples and grain elevators for infestation.  Reporting the infestations to the grain elevators.

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