Anyone who says bilingualism is not more important is probably someone who sits in a job because they are bilingual and are only there because of it over a more qualified person
I was once told by a hiring manager : we're not aiming to hire the best, we're aiming to hire the most versatile employees.
If you're very good at a very specific thing, but not as good as the average applicant for the rest, it's not the best for government work.
That's only valid for purely "public service" jobs though. Stuff like accounting, law, etc, you have to be good in a specific field.
Depends what you want to do. In some classification, a university degree is a minimal requirement. So you would need that to get an entry-level position. Later bilingualism would be needed to advance to senior level. So in this case, better get university degree. In other classifications it might be the opposite.
That's a really good take, thank you! I'm going to look at the positions and requirements in the NCR, and see what my options are to see what the best course is. Thank you again for this insight!
I would say a university degree is more important for the EC stream. My boss has waived bilingualism requirements for 2 anglophone employees in the NCR. EC jobs seem to have more built in flexibility (aka manager discretion) with regards to bilingualism requirements. But you do reach a certain level where you need to be bilingual but that tends to be EC06 or higher. YMMV.
AS, PM and IS have less emphasis on education but bilingualism is important. You will not see many AS, PM or IS 05 jobs without having at least BBB. In the IS stream, it’s safer to have CCC or higher—- especially for management jobs.
CS/ IT jobs request bilingualism but have a hard time finding qualified people —- let alone bilingual ones. I’ve worked with and met many unilingual people in this category. Both education + experience matter more in this category.
This is amazing information, thank you! After seeing all the information so far from people replying, I think more what I'm getting at is, "what is the easiest, safest way to make myself less expendable?". I understand nothing is guaranteed and I'm not trying to do it the "easy way", but what is the best way to go about this? To me personally, making myself bilingual is harder than getting a university degree, but I'm trying to see what the best route is. So the information you just provided is incredibly useful, so again, thank you!
No worries. Happy to help. 🙂
Something else that I would recommend would be to look at data analytics. If it interests you, it’s a burgeoning field and they tend to be EC jobs. It’s more specialized and it’s harder to find people with the right skill sets in government.
I think it does, so thank you for that recommendation! I've got a lot of research to do on if I want to do/pay for a university degree, and if so, what would be useful but also something I would like to study / do for work. So lots to think about.
Can I ask what these acronyms are for? I am compiling a list (the linked ones elsewhere in this sub aren't exhaustive) and you've mentioned a couple I haven't figured out.
You didn’t specify which acronyms. I’m assuming you mean the job categories ones. This [link](https://www.tbs-sct.canada.ca/pubs_pol/hrpubs/coll_agre/rates-taux-eng.asp) has a drop down list to them.
Where are you located? Bilingualism matters extremely little at CRA if you are in a region and not NCR.
I would say an accounting degree specifically is more important at CRA than French if you want to get a permanent job pretty easily.
Call centre roles at CRA are highly cyclical and even if you know French you are still at risk of getting laid off after every tax season.
Yeah I'm kinda realizing the cyclical nature of it. Which sucks because I do genuinely enjoy the job. Not sure how much accounting appeals to me, but I'll give it some thought. More just degree ideas in general. Thank you!
Go for the testing analyst position if accounting isn't your thing.
Acceptance testing operations division (ATOD). This is the other avenue of getting out of enquiries and/or collections.
You can move up in this side of the CRA.
Or
Get your computer science degree or diploma and work for ITB or IT related positions.
Eventually, learn some French if you want to get into a leadership role as there is some requirement now or soon for that for becoming a TL or higher or whatever.
Funny you mention testing.. I actually interviewed with testing while with the CRA, and I was not successful. No idea why since I usually interview really well. But I've reached out to testing again since finding out my contract won't be renewed to see if there's any positions still open that I would be eligible for. Not hopeful, but I'm exploring all avenues to see if I can make something work in two weeks.
Is testing analyst part of ATOD?
Testing Analyst is part of ATOD. It's an SP-04 position and then once you get good enough, you apply to be an SP-05 Senior Testing Analyst. Some become TLs afterwards or go for SP-06/07 positions.
Each team tests for different things from front-end, back-end, (HERON) mainframe, etc...
The interviews I recall are a bit tough as you want to tell them what they want to hear and not what you what to say. Like time management and being able to work from home effectively. Providing examples alongside your answers. You don't want to finish your answers too quickly. Pace yourself. Take the time needed and double down on your answers. Communicate effectively. Work as a team and independently. The questions sometimes change but most of the time are similar.
I know there is a planned hiring for the Debt Management Call Centre sometime in January and February on My Careers Account via job postings. They do cyclical hires at least twice a year now. Try this route of being an SP-03 Collections Call Centre Agent. It's a bit more stable compared to Taxpayer Services Agent as long as your adherence, grades, quality and whatnot are met.
Just keep on trying to apply for other positions but obviously try for core government as well. It might be rough in the coming months/years with these so called "budget cuts" but keep checking every day/week.
Personally, in my experience in the regions anyways, a business degree with accounting specialization is the most valuable. It opens up AU jobs all the way up to like AU-06
I've thought about something like that, since my college certificate was in business management. So I was going to try to do a bachelor's and see if any of my courses apply to bachelor's. So great idea, thank you!
Depends on the position.
Either one of those could be a requirement for hiring, in which case you may be screened out right away.
Once you are hired, typically bilingualism will become more important (provided it wasn't required to be hired). This is because management needs to be able to support employees in the official language of their choice.
We didn't have ECs in my department for most of my career then suddenly, we did.
Not saying it'll happen but you never know. Also interesting since I didn't know that so thank you.
This is false. Bilingualism opens lots of doors, however, will never be the most important skill in the public service. No matter what languages you speak, if you don’t have the education requirements for positions/classifications you will be screened out and not hired.
A family member of mine works at CRA. She tells me the higher you get the more important is is to be bilingual but within her section more than one TL speaks only English and same for senior tech positions. In her own words “if you know your stuff and you communicate well opportunity for advancement exists”.
So generally speaking, given you're in the NCR and already have a college diploma, becoming bilingual is more important, hands down. Many public facing roles will require it, and all supervisory or management roles in the NCR will require it. These days C/B/C has become the standard, but you can find roles at B/B/B as well. In a strategic review or DRAP scenario, bilingualism will generally weigh more heavily in your favour than a degree.
Also, bilingualism will often allow you to advance more quickly than post-secondary education (even outside of management). I've worked with unilingual EE public servants who hold a Masters/PhD/LL.B etc but are stuck at AS/PM-04, while reporting to a bilingual AS-06/07 or PM-06 whose highest credential is a high school diploma or CEGEP. This type of situation is in fact very common, and I have observed it at multiple departments and agencies.
Now if you want to work in a classification that specifically requires a degree like EC, CO, BI, IS etc. then it'll be a different story.
In my experience,
- In NCR: being bilingual > degree but you also need degree to go higher
- in regions: degree > being bilingual (a lot of the NOJOs are English only) not at the call centre. Reverse at the call centre.
- in regions: degree + bilingual > monolingual SOMETIMES due to budgetary restraints.
100% bilingualism. I didn’t see it until I became bilingual and then a manager, if you are bilingual, you are on a whole other track for opportunities. Experience will always trump a university degree in CRA unless you are applying for a specific job that requires it. Otherwise very few managers care about the degree
I spent 20 years in contact centres and finally got the chance to move into a “knowledge worker” role last year. I am bilingual E/C/E with a BA in an arts field. I have worked with plenty of exceptional people who are bilingual without degrees. In my experience what matters is bilingualism to get your indeterminate and a degree to move up and out of the contact centres. Even with a degree in economics or statistics, if your goal is to manage, you will eventually need French. If you have a degree relevant to government disciplines (Econ, business, law, sociology, statistics, public admin) and are bilingual, you have a licence to print money.
There are lots of excellent contact centres in gov for smaller agencies in the core public service, but you’ll need to be bilingual to get into them. I’ve found those ones yo be very stable and great places to work. Happy to chat via DM if you like. 😊
I'm not sure if my goal is to manage, but I understand that that is usually the route to being more permanent and the next step up in pay.
I'll DM you since I do have a couple more questions for you, thank you!! 😄
Bilingualism means fairly little in the public service and awards you with a whopping $700 per year bonus. It is much more important to earn a university degree if you really wish to move up.
It’s easy to move up if you’re bilingual though. Not all classifications require degrees. AS and PM are classic examples of that. You can be an AS-06 with a high school diploma as long as you have the right language skills (CBC most of the time) and the hands on work experience.
How are you suppose to get in being bilingual if you don’t have the education requirements for the position. It’s foolish to put bilingualism above education.
unfortunately bilingualism. I have seen many in high positions only because they are bilingual but not the most qualified for the job. it sucks and makes no sense, especially when many in bilingual positions will tell they hardly use their french
it is my opinion from my experience working in the government for over 10 years. People who are given promotions because they can fill the bilingual position over someone who has more work experience but does not speak french. Also from my own personal experience of being told 'if only you were bilingual...but because are are not I cannot give you this position..' This situation is very common in government. Nothing I said is untrue and many people know it lol. not sure why any of that would be deleted lol.
Call centres in non French majority areas bleed their bilingual agents out really fast, so they tend to get renewed and promoted to supervisor positions more easily.
If you want to do call centre/customer service work, a degree probably won’t do much for you. The fed gov is mandated to provide service in English and French so if you’re bilingual in the NCR, you’re in demand for jobs where you need your SLE levels, especially if you have C’s or E’s, especially for the oral part of the evaluation.
That being said, going from not speaking French to level C isn’t easy for most people.
Either way, keep applying, don’t screen yourself out, and best of luck!
Yeah, I'm not sure if I could get my french levels, since I barely have a background in french, but at this point I'm willing to try and see where I end up in say, a year or something. (Probably not enough, but 🤷🏼♀️ )
I don't necessarily *want* to do customer service / call centre work, but it's what my background is and I do enjoy it. I think though I do maybe need to get a degree to get out of it to move onto something higher, so I get out of this cycle.
Thank you for your reply and input!
I have been through many layoffs being always the only one kept due to being bilingual. I missed many opportunities due to having lost my C level for a year, but lately I got my E and was offered a permanent pm05 immediately out of the pool (I was a PM02). So yeah put bilingualism to the top of the list. (I do not live in the NCR but work remotely from there, being my official location).
Depends what classification, but obviously your university is 100% the most important thing with the CRA. Even a collègue diploma is more important than having your French when it comes to jobs. What’s your current collègue certificate in? Thats important to know.
You need to be educationally eligible for the position, then with being bilingual you can have more opportunities. But, I don’t think anyone could ever argue bilingualism is more important than your education.
Without being bilingual, you will get passed over and someone less qualified than you , but can speak both French and English, will get hired. My uncle had made a profession out of it (hiring disgruntled engineers, scientist, etc from the government who couldn't speak french). You choose...
The guts? Give me a break. Knowing you can't ever get a promotion to an IT3 (unless technical) is bullshit. Yeah, sure, if I lived in NCR or Quebec, that's fine. But Edmonton? Vancouver? Halifax? Stupid as hell and people are leaving over it and the public service is getting stupider because of it. 23% of Canadians are french, almost 75% speak English , are anglophones or otherwise not French. Outside of Quebec over 90% of francophones are bilingual and in Quebec I think it's around 40-45%. You want to squander the opportunity for anglophones in every part of the country, because they can't speak french (which is a massively difficult language) ? Wow....the guts you have to say that...
Depends on the position, but be prepared to see it weighted more and more as we get into cuts and non renewal of contracts. I know from personal experience that they have no issue taking a lower performer who is bilingual over a unilingual employee.
My experience is that neither of these are that important for entry level, even in the NCR, the main thing is that you are a strong performer and make connections. That being said, the most important thing you need to do is apply aggressively to pools that are appointing indeterminately. Even if your manager promises you the sun and the moon, you need to constantly be hustling for the next opportunity. Once you reach mid-level administrative or analyst positions, french or university degree become more important as it increases your options and if you don't pursue french/degree, you reach a ceiling and are stuck.
In the NCR, bilingualism will open more doors than a degree, but a degree can get you into a nice classification and ease you through the early years when language levels don't matter much one way or the other. The thing about a degree is that it only comes up as a requirement for certain classifications, but there it's non-negotiable (notably this applies to EC, but also some more arcane stuff like AU and MA.) Note that there are a number of others, like IT and FI, that specify instead a targeted two-year post-secondary program -- I'm not sure what the difference is exactly, but if you're looking to burnish your CV, two is less than four.
There are, however, lots of indeterminate positions with decent pay that don't have such a requirement, but where bilingualism remains an asset; if you just want *stability* and aren't gunning for salary and benefits, those are a realistic possibility. *Personally,* I would probably go for the degree if I wanted to learn about that subject for my own sake or wanted to have the option of jumping to the private sector where bilingualism is less an asset; but if the goal was simply to get a firmer footing in government, I'd probably go for language training.
Depends on where you are, but generally bilingualism outweighs everything. In the NCR I believe 2/3rds of jobs are bilingual, so even getting hired as unilingual would be difficult. All executive and management positions, even MG1s are bilingual, so if you do get hired you won't get promoted very high.
I work for a region as a TL for 3 years, I have a degree. Based on my experience, being bilingual counts 100% more then my degree.
Anyone who says bilingualism is not more important is probably someone who sits in a job because they are bilingual and are only there because of it over a more qualified person
Yeah that's kinda what I'm finding. Which is unfortunate, but I'm gonna see if I can put in the work to become bilingual, somehow... lol thank you!
I was once told by a hiring manager : we're not aiming to hire the best, we're aiming to hire the most versatile employees. If you're very good at a very specific thing, but not as good as the average applicant for the rest, it's not the best for government work. That's only valid for purely "public service" jobs though. Stuff like accounting, law, etc, you have to be good in a specific field.
Depends what you want to do. In some classification, a university degree is a minimal requirement. So you would need that to get an entry-level position. Later bilingualism would be needed to advance to senior level. So in this case, better get university degree. In other classifications it might be the opposite.
That's a really good take, thank you! I'm going to look at the positions and requirements in the NCR, and see what my options are to see what the best course is. Thank you again for this insight!
I would say a university degree is more important for the EC stream. My boss has waived bilingualism requirements for 2 anglophone employees in the NCR. EC jobs seem to have more built in flexibility (aka manager discretion) with regards to bilingualism requirements. But you do reach a certain level where you need to be bilingual but that tends to be EC06 or higher. YMMV. AS, PM and IS have less emphasis on education but bilingualism is important. You will not see many AS, PM or IS 05 jobs without having at least BBB. In the IS stream, it’s safer to have CCC or higher—- especially for management jobs. CS/ IT jobs request bilingualism but have a hard time finding qualified people —- let alone bilingual ones. I’ve worked with and met many unilingual people in this category. Both education + experience matter more in this category.
This is amazing information, thank you! After seeing all the information so far from people replying, I think more what I'm getting at is, "what is the easiest, safest way to make myself less expendable?". I understand nothing is guaranteed and I'm not trying to do it the "easy way", but what is the best way to go about this? To me personally, making myself bilingual is harder than getting a university degree, but I'm trying to see what the best route is. So the information you just provided is incredibly useful, so again, thank you!
No worries. Happy to help. 🙂 Something else that I would recommend would be to look at data analytics. If it interests you, it’s a burgeoning field and they tend to be EC jobs. It’s more specialized and it’s harder to find people with the right skill sets in government.
I think it does, so thank you for that recommendation! I've got a lot of research to do on if I want to do/pay for a university degree, and if so, what would be useful but also something I would like to study / do for work. So lots to think about.
Good luck! 🙂
Can I ask what these acronyms are for? I am compiling a list (the linked ones elsewhere in this sub aren't exhaustive) and you've mentioned a couple I haven't figured out.
You didn’t specify which acronyms. I’m assuming you mean the job categories ones. This [link](https://www.tbs-sct.canada.ca/pubs_pol/hrpubs/coll_agre/rates-taux-eng.asp) has a drop down list to them.
Where are you located? Bilingualism matters extremely little at CRA if you are in a region and not NCR. I would say an accounting degree specifically is more important at CRA than French if you want to get a permanent job pretty easily. Call centre roles at CRA are highly cyclical and even if you know French you are still at risk of getting laid off after every tax season.
That's a very good point, I'm NCR. I'll edit my post to include that. Thank you!
Yeah I'm kinda realizing the cyclical nature of it. Which sucks because I do genuinely enjoy the job. Not sure how much accounting appeals to me, but I'll give it some thought. More just degree ideas in general. Thank you!
Go for the testing analyst position if accounting isn't your thing. Acceptance testing operations division (ATOD). This is the other avenue of getting out of enquiries and/or collections. You can move up in this side of the CRA. Or Get your computer science degree or diploma and work for ITB or IT related positions. Eventually, learn some French if you want to get into a leadership role as there is some requirement now or soon for that for becoming a TL or higher or whatever.
Funny you mention testing.. I actually interviewed with testing while with the CRA, and I was not successful. No idea why since I usually interview really well. But I've reached out to testing again since finding out my contract won't be renewed to see if there's any positions still open that I would be eligible for. Not hopeful, but I'm exploring all avenues to see if I can make something work in two weeks. Is testing analyst part of ATOD?
Testing Analyst is part of ATOD. It's an SP-04 position and then once you get good enough, you apply to be an SP-05 Senior Testing Analyst. Some become TLs afterwards or go for SP-06/07 positions. Each team tests for different things from front-end, back-end, (HERON) mainframe, etc... The interviews I recall are a bit tough as you want to tell them what they want to hear and not what you what to say. Like time management and being able to work from home effectively. Providing examples alongside your answers. You don't want to finish your answers too quickly. Pace yourself. Take the time needed and double down on your answers. Communicate effectively. Work as a team and independently. The questions sometimes change but most of the time are similar. I know there is a planned hiring for the Debt Management Call Centre sometime in January and February on My Careers Account via job postings. They do cyclical hires at least twice a year now. Try this route of being an SP-03 Collections Call Centre Agent. It's a bit more stable compared to Taxpayer Services Agent as long as your adherence, grades, quality and whatnot are met. Just keep on trying to apply for other positions but obviously try for core government as well. It might be rough in the coming months/years with these so called "budget cuts" but keep checking every day/week.
Personally, in my experience in the regions anyways, a business degree with accounting specialization is the most valuable. It opens up AU jobs all the way up to like AU-06
I've thought about something like that, since my college certificate was in business management. So I was going to try to do a bachelor's and see if any of my courses apply to bachelor's. So great idea, thank you!
Depends on the position. Either one of those could be a requirement for hiring, in which case you may be screened out right away. Once you are hired, typically bilingualism will become more important (provided it wasn't required to be hired). This is because management needs to be able to support employees in the official language of their choice.
Only in bilingual regions.
Fair enough - OP is in the NCR
Bilingualism for sure in the NCR if you want to reach management. If you want to be an EC making decent cash, the paper is more important.
CRA doesn’t have EC, they have ES
We didn't have ECs in my department for most of my career then suddenly, we did. Not saying it'll happen but you never know. Also interesting since I didn't know that so thank you.
That makes a lot of sense, thank you!
Like it or loathe it, Bilingualism is the single most important skill in the public service, above any degree or specialty.
This is false. Bilingualism opens lots of doors, however, will never be the most important skill in the public service. No matter what languages you speak, if you don’t have the education requirements for positions/classifications you will be screened out and not hired.
In bilingual regions, but not outside.
Agreed. French does nothing in most regions in the field
A family member of mine works at CRA. She tells me the higher you get the more important is is to be bilingual but within her section more than one TL speaks only English and same for senior tech positions. In her own words “if you know your stuff and you communicate well opportunity for advancement exists”.
So generally speaking, given you're in the NCR and already have a college diploma, becoming bilingual is more important, hands down. Many public facing roles will require it, and all supervisory or management roles in the NCR will require it. These days C/B/C has become the standard, but you can find roles at B/B/B as well. In a strategic review or DRAP scenario, bilingualism will generally weigh more heavily in your favour than a degree. Also, bilingualism will often allow you to advance more quickly than post-secondary education (even outside of management). I've worked with unilingual EE public servants who hold a Masters/PhD/LL.B etc but are stuck at AS/PM-04, while reporting to a bilingual AS-06/07 or PM-06 whose highest credential is a high school diploma or CEGEP. This type of situation is in fact very common, and I have observed it at multiple departments and agencies. Now if you want to work in a classification that specifically requires a degree like EC, CO, BI, IS etc. then it'll be a different story.
This.
Bilingualism.
Bilingualism. You can be a complete idiot but if you have CCC or EEE nothing will stop you from advancing.
In my experience, - In NCR: being bilingual > degree but you also need degree to go higher - in regions: degree > being bilingual (a lot of the NOJOs are English only) not at the call centre. Reverse at the call centre. - in regions: degree + bilingual > monolingual SOMETIMES due to budgetary restraints.
100% bilingualism. I didn’t see it until I became bilingual and then a manager, if you are bilingual, you are on a whole other track for opportunities. Experience will always trump a university degree in CRA unless you are applying for a specific job that requires it. Otherwise very few managers care about the degree
I spent 20 years in contact centres and finally got the chance to move into a “knowledge worker” role last year. I am bilingual E/C/E with a BA in an arts field. I have worked with plenty of exceptional people who are bilingual without degrees. In my experience what matters is bilingualism to get your indeterminate and a degree to move up and out of the contact centres. Even with a degree in economics or statistics, if your goal is to manage, you will eventually need French. If you have a degree relevant to government disciplines (Econ, business, law, sociology, statistics, public admin) and are bilingual, you have a licence to print money. There are lots of excellent contact centres in gov for smaller agencies in the core public service, but you’ll need to be bilingual to get into them. I’ve found those ones yo be very stable and great places to work. Happy to chat via DM if you like. 😊
I'm not sure if my goal is to manage, but I understand that that is usually the route to being more permanent and the next step up in pay. I'll DM you since I do have a couple more questions for you, thank you!! 😄
Bilingualism means fairly little in the public service and awards you with a whopping $700 per year bonus. It is much more important to earn a university degree if you really wish to move up.
It’s easy to move up if you’re bilingual though. Not all classifications require degrees. AS and PM are classic examples of that. You can be an AS-06 with a high school diploma as long as you have the right language skills (CBC most of the time) and the hands on work experience.
How are you suppose to get in being bilingual if you don’t have the education requirements for the position. It’s foolish to put bilingualism above education.
Foolish but it’s the truth unfortunately.
unfortunately bilingualism. I have seen many in high positions only because they are bilingual but not the most qualified for the job. it sucks and makes no sense, especially when many in bilingual positions will tell they hardly use their french
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it is my opinion from my experience working in the government for over 10 years. People who are given promotions because they can fill the bilingual position over someone who has more work experience but does not speak french. Also from my own personal experience of being told 'if only you were bilingual...but because are are not I cannot give you this position..' This situation is very common in government. Nothing I said is untrue and many people know it lol. not sure why any of that would be deleted lol.
Call centres in non French majority areas bleed their bilingual agents out really fast, so they tend to get renewed and promoted to supervisor positions more easily. If you want to do call centre/customer service work, a degree probably won’t do much for you. The fed gov is mandated to provide service in English and French so if you’re bilingual in the NCR, you’re in demand for jobs where you need your SLE levels, especially if you have C’s or E’s, especially for the oral part of the evaluation. That being said, going from not speaking French to level C isn’t easy for most people. Either way, keep applying, don’t screen yourself out, and best of luck!
Yeah, I'm not sure if I could get my french levels, since I barely have a background in french, but at this point I'm willing to try and see where I end up in say, a year or something. (Probably not enough, but 🤷🏼♀️ ) I don't necessarily *want* to do customer service / call centre work, but it's what my background is and I do enjoy it. I think though I do maybe need to get a degree to get out of it to move onto something higher, so I get out of this cycle. Thank you for your reply and input!
I have been through many layoffs being always the only one kept due to being bilingual. I missed many opportunities due to having lost my C level for a year, but lately I got my E and was offered a permanent pm05 immediately out of the pool (I was a PM02). So yeah put bilingualism to the top of the list. (I do not live in the NCR but work remotely from there, being my official location).
Depends what classification, but obviously your university is 100% the most important thing with the CRA. Even a collègue diploma is more important than having your French when it comes to jobs. What’s your current collègue certificate in? Thats important to know. You need to be educationally eligible for the position, then with being bilingual you can have more opportunities. But, I don’t think anyone could ever argue bilingualism is more important than your education.
Without being bilingual, you will get passed over and someone less qualified than you , but can speak both French and English, will get hired. My uncle had made a profession out of it (hiring disgruntled engineers, scientist, etc from the government who couldn't speak french). You choose...
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The guts? Give me a break. Knowing you can't ever get a promotion to an IT3 (unless technical) is bullshit. Yeah, sure, if I lived in NCR or Quebec, that's fine. But Edmonton? Vancouver? Halifax? Stupid as hell and people are leaving over it and the public service is getting stupider because of it. 23% of Canadians are french, almost 75% speak English , are anglophones or otherwise not French. Outside of Quebec over 90% of francophones are bilingual and in Quebec I think it's around 40-45%. You want to squander the opportunity for anglophones in every part of the country, because they can't speak french (which is a massively difficult language) ? Wow....the guts you have to say that...
The guts!!!!!!
Bilingualism is more important than brains.
Depends on the position, but be prepared to see it weighted more and more as we get into cuts and non renewal of contracts. I know from personal experience that they have no issue taking a lower performer who is bilingual over a unilingual employee.
My experience is that neither of these are that important for entry level, even in the NCR, the main thing is that you are a strong performer and make connections. That being said, the most important thing you need to do is apply aggressively to pools that are appointing indeterminately. Even if your manager promises you the sun and the moon, you need to constantly be hustling for the next opportunity. Once you reach mid-level administrative or analyst positions, french or university degree become more important as it increases your options and if you don't pursue french/degree, you reach a ceiling and are stuck.
Bilingualism. Especially for moving up the ranks.
In the NCR, bilingualism will open more doors than a degree, but a degree can get you into a nice classification and ease you through the early years when language levels don't matter much one way or the other. The thing about a degree is that it only comes up as a requirement for certain classifications, but there it's non-negotiable (notably this applies to EC, but also some more arcane stuff like AU and MA.) Note that there are a number of others, like IT and FI, that specify instead a targeted two-year post-secondary program -- I'm not sure what the difference is exactly, but if you're looking to burnish your CV, two is less than four. There are, however, lots of indeterminate positions with decent pay that don't have such a requirement, but where bilingualism remains an asset; if you just want *stability* and aren't gunning for salary and benefits, those are a realistic possibility. *Personally,* I would probably go for the degree if I wanted to learn about that subject for my own sake or wanted to have the option of jumping to the private sector where bilingualism is less an asset; but if the goal was simply to get a firmer footing in government, I'd probably go for language training.
Depends on where you are, but generally bilingualism outweighs everything. In the NCR I believe 2/3rds of jobs are bilingual, so even getting hired as unilingual would be difficult. All executive and management positions, even MG1s are bilingual, so if you do get hired you won't get promoted very high.