chief returning officer

information officer

credit manager

office worker

finance officer

Elections-Canada

Elections Saskatchewan was an AWESOME organization! I was initially  nervous about what to expect as I had just entered the workforce after graduating university, but this was an AMAZING starter job, and I really wished that my position had become permanent, as I genuinely enjoyed the organizational culture, my colleagues, and my role. 

The work environment was always fun, even during hard times. Everybody readily supported one another, fostered a "We're In This Together" mentality rather than a "Every Person for Themselves" mindset like many organizations tend to do. Additionally, all of my  coworkers were kind and helpful; I did not dislike a single individual. Management was great as well!! My managers were all nice, respectful, and actually  cared about employee feedback. I was pleasantly surprised when my suggestion for specialization (over all workers all-terraining every task) to utilize each person's strength and subsequently, increase efficiency, was eventually implemented.

Duties for a Vote by Mail Applications processing clerk typically included: reviewing Vote by Mail applications for approval or disapproval, answering voters' inquiries via email and the in-house call centre, and miscellaneous tasks assigned by managers (ex. Data entry, training new hires, creating small reports, etc.)

I only offer two real negative aspects about this job. Because this was a seasonal job for the election period, my contract was only for three months. So, if you are seeking permanent occupation, please reconsider. Also, the overtime required to meet the workload demand a couple of weeks before the election date was rough. During that time, there were no days off, and workdays were 12-13 hours long. I also often worked through lunch to keep up with the workload. So, consider these factors if you plan on applying for a term, full-time position with Elections Saskatchewan. 

Otherwise, I highly recommend working with Elections Saskatchewan, particularly the Vote by Mail team if it ever is revived for a future election. :) It was a wonderful time, and to this day, I still miss working there. 

I have woked at Elections Canada on several occasions, first as an Electoral administator in Calgary, preparing and delivering 3 gereral elections. When I moved from Calgary to Ottawa, 

I started to work with the Electoral Event Coordination Directorate, then several months after I worked with the Electoral Financial Directorate as Supervisor for the Call Center (Payment Inquiry Line) The i was proposed a new mandate and went to work with the Recruitment and Evaluation Directorate, as Data & System Analyst. 

Elections Canada has a fast-paced working environmen, specially during Election year. During normal time, the working force at Elections Canada is about 350 employees and during the months preceding the General Election the number of employees can reach easily 1000 individuals. 

Most of my working experience is coming from the private sector and I can tell without any hesitation that working within the public administration or with any Federal government agency necessitate some adjustements for anyone coming from a different environment like the private sector. 

In terms of execution and delivery of the day-to-day tasks, you need to change your expectations, the work will not be necessary completed on deadlines, So many things can happen. 

Therefore I have learned to adapt gradually to my working environment and developed new ways to communicate to others. I also developed different ways to peform my duties and change my expectations in regard of the work that has to be done by colleagues. 

The most exciting part of the job working at Elections Canada was the opportunity to work on different projects and with people from different disciplines and experience and that was very exciting and challenging, specially during the peak period.    

The hardest part, was the difficulty to secure a full time position after the peak time, a large portion of the employes hired during the elections year were there on a contractual basis or on short term contract After this period you have to start again with new people that do not understand the duties they have to perform.

I worked as a Registration officer for all four days of the advance polls and as a Poll Clerk on Election Day.

While our advance poll wasn't too busy compared to others, the days were long and the Elections Canada office put me in an advance poll on the other side of the electoral district than what I requested.  This meant for an even longer day that required me to be on a bus an hour earlier  and an hour later making my day more like a 15 hour day rather than a 13 hour day.

On election day, that was compensated by the fact that the poll in which I worked was located in the building in which I lived.  No travel time at all outside of an elevator ride to the basement of the building.

In the 2015 election, I was paid 18 days after the election.  This time the Returning Office for the electoral district in a speech to workers at a training session suggested that it was his aim to pay everyone who filled out their forms correctly within 10 days of the election and certainly within the same time frame as the last election.  It is now 25 days since the election and I have yet to see a cent posted to my bank account.  This is what concerns me the most -- the fact that they cannot pay people within a reasonable time frame.  (Having worked on payroll systems in previous jobs, it isn't rocket science to pay someone within 2 to 3 weeks, regardless of the numbers of people involved.  If they localize the input of pay information, it would take no time at all, but if they send everything to Ottawa for processing -- well that is just nuts.)

Because of the long hours, the pay should be higher and all jobs should receive hourly pay.  The day is long enough that no one is actually going to pad their hours just to take home an extra hour's pay.  In my district,the rate was flat on election day based on us being in place an hour before the opening of polls.  However, the Returning Officer for the district wanted us at our polling stations a half-hour before that.  We should be paid for that alteration in time.  As I haven't been paid yet, I won't know if an alteration was made to account for that earlier start to the day.

I was a poll clerk for one day and realized this is something I would not participate in again. 

Reasons are following: 
1) Elections Canada should have organized into 2 groups for daytime and night time workers. As there is no such, people had to work from 8 am until 10:40 pm and I ran out of that place as soon as we finished. 

2) No certain breaks given, you also have to eat at the polling station desk. I thought at least we will be go to certain break room to eat, but no. 
For washroom, just find the idea slow time to go. 

3) Poll clerks' pay was decided as $247.50 as one whole day.
I don't know if the 3hrs of training will be paid.. if yes then great but still it means it's not hourly paid so longer the work hour the worse it gets. We worked for like 12hours of work so it becomes like $17 per hour which could become higher than this by working shorter hours. 

4) The reason of #3) was resulted by short help staff like supervisors. 
If there were 7 voting stations in one location there should be 7 supervisors to help the workers wrap up the station and put voting materials in right bag/envelope. However, we had only 2 supervisors and it was really confusing and hectic. The fastest team told people they did it fast because one of the worker has done election work lots of time. The supervisors were not helpful at all to make it as fast as it could be. 

I participated in election work as poll clerk (I had no choice as I was hired over the phone and it seemed like if the location where I'm appointed to needed more poll clerk.) and this would probably the last time work unless these problems don't change.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Dynamic work locations that provided suitable infrastructure and atmosphere. making otherwise mundane work much more invigorating. Also, the fact that my job ‘s prime objective was to manage flow of electors (customers) through the process of exercising their Charter rights.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Most stressful part was during peak times there can be 10 - 15 persons in line hoping to complete the voter’s registration process enabling them to cast ballots in an election. There are approximately 11 variations of the requirements, restrictions and redundancies to address plethora of issues or challenges that a would potential voter may encounter when registering.
 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
To my mind it was a collaborative effort, working in tactical units of 5 or 6 persons.  After intensive and rigorous training and familiarization of the applicable laws, statutes and regulations for elections, individuals are trusted and given latitude to use initiative and creativity to better serve the consumer.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
With 4 main workstations (administrative office, training/event location, polling stations and corporate locations -onsite services; there are few typical days at work and a high likelihood of each day allowing totally different experiences from you faced the previous work day.

The DRO is the one who really maintains the organization of voting regardless of the other clerk positions. You are required to check ID, fill out and sign required forms, most likely help your PC find the name on the list and if your PC crosses off a name they shouldn't or misses one, it will ruin your entire balancing by the end of the night. The training session was AWFUL and I cannot believe someone was paid to do this training. They were confusing, vague, gave very little information regarding what would happen and jumped between subjects in between short videos which clearly described exactly what to do. We were then told just to read the guidebook. The trainer had plenty of attitude regarding people paying attention or having their phones off only to have their own phone ring in the middle of training. My supervisor regularly sat and watched the information officer go through the growing line despite being able to also direct individuals to polling stations. Our registration officer dealt with maybe 30 people the entire day. The DRO is the most important with the highest amount of responsibility. I have no idea when I will be paid for the 11 hours of work I did (plus training and travel) so unless you are really hard up for cash or just want to be apart of the election process, I wouldnt expect this to be something worth the stress or hassle.

Made trips to the returning office to sign paper work then to take an oath, then to pick up election material, then to go again since material was not ready the first time or the lines were too long. No enough material to guide voters how to mark the vote. No Lunch or washroom breaks, worked continuously for more than 15 hours as there was no body there to take over or release me, not enough training...not all the procedures are documented in the handbook or in the training videos. After three hours of training, my partner and I were on our own from setting up the polling station to closing and counting the polls. We have to personally requests volunteers from our family and friends to come down at the polling station and witness the counting as it is required by law. We  paid  for the phone calls made and received from  the election commission on our cell phones. No mileage was given for driving back and forth to the Returning office. Yelled at by the staff at the returning office at end of the 15+ hours day for not doing procedure that was not mentioned any where in the training documents or videos.  If you are doing it for the pay, it is not worth it AT ALL. As for training, do not rely on the Election Commission trainers. Find someone who has worked previously in an election and pick his or her brains.

What is the best part of working at the company?
I work at the polling station for the election Federal and provincial and I was a supervisor. The people that I worked with were unbelievable and to me that's the way it's supposed to be. Supervisors are to be able to have fun enjoy the time they're working with the people and treat everybody with respect.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The only dress that I had was when the internet went down but we figured it all out and got the job done.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Awesome everybody got along and everybody enjoyed themselves. When I finished the election all the people wanted to come back and work with me because we had fun doing the job properly.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Set up all the polling stations make sure everything's in order the day before making sure that we have enough ballots. And when we were ready to get the voters to come in to cast their votes everybody knew what job they had to do. My job was to make sure at the end of the day that everybody was logged off their computer brought all of their extra ballot and call in my total balance for the night. Then deliver everything back to the polling station where they collected all our laptops and anything else that had to be returned.

Working as an information officer for Elections Canada was a rewarding and insightful experience. The role involved greeting voters, answering their questions about the voting process, and ensuring that everyone was directed to the correct voting station. It was fast-paced, especially during peak voting times, but very well organized.

One of the highlights was being part of a team that helped facilitate a smooth and fair election process. It felt good to contribute to something important for the community and the country. The training provided ahead of time was thorough and prepared me well for different situations, from helping first-time voters to addressing inquiries about identification requirements.

The position required strong communication skills, patience, and attention to detail. Some challenges included managing long lines and occasionally dealing with frustrated voters, but the supervisors were supportive, and teamwork made it manageable.

Overall, I would recommend this role to anyone interested in public service, community involvement, or looking for a temporary but meaningful job. It was a great opportunity to learn more about how elections run behind the scenes and to meet people from all walks of life.

I decided to work the 2019 election as a poll clerk because I wanted to learn more about the election process and to serve my community.

I expected to work a long day with few breaks. I actually worked from 6:00am to 10:00pm, a total of 16 hours with about 25 minutes of total breaks. It was excessively long. In my opinion, there should be two shifts.

Elections Canada does not issue pay in a timely manner, you wait 6-8 weeks (I called in to find out.)

I am curious how Elections Canada is exempt from labor laws? 

In other ways, it was an enjoyable experience. The people I worked with were committed and engaged in their job. All employees treated voters with respect and patience. Everyone took their job seriously. The process of counting votes at the end of the day is extremely ethical. If felt good to serve my community and learn about politics from a different angle. 

With that being said, I think the people who worked the poll should be treated a little more fairly as employees. For how ethical the voting process was, the employees were not treated with the same ethics in terms of labor laws.

I would not work another election as I simply will not work a 16 hour day without proper breaks, on principal.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Chief returning officer 3 salaries reported	$19.33 per hour
Information officer 3 salaries reported	$20.17 per hour
Credit manager 5 salaries reported	$34.45 per hour
Office worker 2 salaries reported	$25.95 per hour
Finance officer 2 salaries reported	$27.36 per hour

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