I understand it is clearly government but for someone, that english is not first language it created confusion when IRCC mentioned judge, police service, financial security service and we were under the impression civil servant is a special job in the government sector. based on the answer was "no".Yes, it was elswhere.
That said: the form is EXTREMELY clear in this respect. "Have you ever held any government positions?" (and later "such as civil servant") is not at all ambiguous. "Department manager" for a federal ministry is clearly a government position, and clearly a civil servant.
I can understand some who are not certain when they have jobs that are for some agencies and the like that are at arm's length, or work for municipalities or somesuch, and a teacher's job is one that doesn't make sense to me in the same way, or a nurse at a hospital ...
... but some are not. And yours was not.
I am not sure if this is going to create a problem even though we mentioned employed in the ministry under personal history on the same Schedule A form. considering all this do we still have to send a new form?