Rishta in Ottawa

How to read an Ottawa profile properly

The classification is the salary, and you can look it up

Here is something true in Ottawa and almost nowhere else: you do not have to take anybody’s word about what they earn. Federal public service jobs are organised into classifications with letter codes and levels — EC for economics and policy, AS for administrative services, IT for computer systems, PM for programme administration, EN for engineering, FI for finance, and so on — and every one of those levels has a pay range set out in a published collective agreement. The ranges are public documents. If a profile says EC-05 or IT-03, a family can find the exact salary band in a few minutes.

So ask for the classification and the level rather than the job title, because job titles in government are vague by design and the classification is precise. Then understand the three things that sit around it.

The first is the kind of appointment. Indeterminate means permanent, with full job security and the pension. Term means a fixed contract with an end date, which may be renewed and may not. Casual means short engagements with no security at all. And a great many people working in government buildings are not public servants at all but contractors placed through staffing agencies — they do the same work at the next desk, they are paid by the hour through a company, and they have no pension, no job security and no sick leave. A man who says he works for the government may be any one of these four, and the difference between the first and the last is enormous.

The second is acting. Government staff frequently work at a higher level temporarily, which is called acting, and the pay goes up while it lasts. Somebody may describe themselves by the acting level in good faith. Ask what the substantive level is — the one they return to — because that is the real position.

The third is the pension, which is the most valuable and least mentioned part of the package. An indeterminate public servant accrues a defined benefit pension that pays a guaranteed income for life. As our Edmonton page explains, that is worth more over a lifetime than a considerably larger private salary with nothing behind it, and it never appears on a biodata. A family comparing an IT-02 in a department with a software developer in Kanata earning more should understand they are comparing two different things.

French is a career ceiling here, not a courtesy

Our Montreal page deals with French as a matter of law and schooling. In Ottawa it is a matter of promotion, and it quietly shapes the earning trajectory of a very large number of Pakistani-Canadian households in this city.

Many federal positions are designated bilingual, and the designation comes with required proficiency levels in reading, writing and speaking. Positions where a candidate must already meet the standard are the ones that matter, because an applicant who does not meet it cannot be appointed. Crucially, most management and executive positions are designated bilingual at a high level. The practical effect is that a unilingual English speaker can have a long and well-paid career in the federal public service as a specialist, and will find the route into management largely closed until the French is there.

None of this is a barrier so much as a known cost. The government provides language training and many people do it in their thirties while working. But it takes real time and effort, and it is an entirely reasonable thing for a family to ask about: is the position bilingual or English essential, has he met the levels, and if not, is he doing the training. A man who has passed his levels has a materially better outlook than one who has not, and both of them should be able to say which they are without embarrassment.

One point for an arriving spouse. A woman coming from Pakistan with good English will find plenty of work in this city, but the federal service — the best-paying and most secure employer here — will be partly closed to her without French, and in most cases without Canadian citizenship as well. If she intends to build a career here, French classes in the first year are not an optional extra; they are the single highest-return thing she can do with her time.

Ottawa or Gatineau: one city, two provinces, two different households

The river running through this city is a provincial boundary, and crossing it changes more about a household than any other fifteen-minute drive in Canada. A great many federal employees live on one side and work on the other, so this is a live decision for most couples here, and it is almost never discussed during a rishta.

Income tax is levied by the province where you live on the last day of the year, not where you work. Quebec’s rates are the highest in the country and Ontario’s are lower, so the same salary leaves a different amount in the hand depending on which side of the bridge the family sleeps. Set against that, housing in Gatineau is markedly cheaper than in Ottawa, and Quebec’s subsidised childcare — described on our Montreal page — costs a fraction of Ontario’s. For a two-income couple with small children the Quebec side often wins; for a single earner with no children it usually does not.

But the differences do not stop at money, and the others matter more for a marriage. Health cards, driving licences and family law all follow the province of residence. A couple living in Gatineau falls under Quebec’s Civil Code, which as our Montreal page sets out treats unmarried couples completely differently from Ontario and makes the registered civil marriage essential. And the children’s schooling follows Quebec’s language law on that side of the river, which means a family in Gatineau is generally choosing a French education for its children whether or not it intended to.

So the question to settle during the rishta is simply which side the couple will live on, and to settle it knowing what follows. A family that moves across the bridge for a cheaper house without understanding the rest of it has made a decision much larger than the one it thought it was making.

She is thirty-two, and they tell her the pool has closed

This belongs on an Ottawa page because of what this city is. A small, highly educated community where women routinely finish a master’s or a doctorate, enter the public service or the technology sector, and arrive at thirty or thirty-two unmarried — not because anything went wrong, but because they did exactly what their parents raised them to do. And then the proposals thin out, the aunties start speaking more gently, and a capable woman is made to feel she has failed at something.

Let us be direct about it, because this site is read by families on both sides. A woman of thirty-two with a career is not a problem to be solved. The idea that she should have married at twenty-three and that something is now wrong with her is a prejudice, not a religious position, and it has no basis in the practice of our own Prophet’s household. Families who hold out for a bride under twenty-five while expecting her to be educated, professional and able to contribute to the household income are asking for two things that cannot both be true.

What does change with age is the arithmetic, and that is worth facing squarely rather than pretending otherwise. The pool of never-married men in the same age range in a community this size is small. So three practical things. First, widen geographically and early — this is the most important advice on this page and it applies with double force here. Second, be open to the categories a family may have ruled out without thinking: a divorced man without children, a widower, a man a few years younger, a man whose profession is less prestigious than hers. Every one of those is listed identically on this site and filtered on rather than hidden, and several of them make excellent husbands. Third, and this is for the parents: a daughter who is financially independent is negotiating from strength, not weakness, and she does not have to accept a proposal that is worse than her own life.

And the same points apply to a man of thirty-five who built a career first. He is not past anything either, and he should be prepared for families to ask him directly why he waited — which is a fair question with an easy answer.

A small community between two big ones

Ottawa’s great advantage is where it sits. Montreal is two hours east by road and the natural first extension of any search here — close enough for two families to meet on a Saturday, and a city with which Ottawa already shares a workforce. The Greater Toronto Area is four and a half to five hours west by road, five by train, or an hour by air, and Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton and Hamilton between them hold most of the Pakistani families in Canada. Kingston sits between Ottawa and Toronto with a university and a small community of its own.

Given the size of the local pool, treat all of that as your search area from the first week rather than the third month. A family in Barrhaven that searches only Ottawa is looking at a very small number of profiles; the same family searching the Montreal to Toronto corridor is looking at the largest Pakistani population outside Pakistan. Distance is a real cost and it is a smaller one than most families assume: a five-hour drive each way is a long day, not an obstacle, and plenty of good marriages in this country started with exactly that drive.

Further afield, Calgary and Vancouver are four and five hours by air and both are well-travelled routes. The United States border is an hour south, but the nearest substantial Pakistani communities there are a long way further — New York is six hours by road and Boston about seven. For Pakistan itself, Ottawa has no direct service and journeys route through Toronto or Montreal, which adds a connection but little else.