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Wanting to move out of the US?
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Moved to Canada a year and a half ago. They made the process pretty smooth and easy all told. With that said, I haven't had a good time here and I regret moving. There's a lot of "grass is greener" rhetoric in the US right now, especially from the left. Be warned that a lot of that is misguided. I was underprepared for the host of unique issues that Canada itself has. Leaving the US will not fix all your political problems. It'll just reveal new ones that you aren't familiar with. But, after saying all of that, I certainly would never discourage anyone from trying to move. Seeing the world and opening your mind to new cultures are never bad things. For all my misery here, I have learned a lot about myself. Just make sure you go into it with open eyes. Have realistic expectations. Visit the places you want to move before you move to them.
One thing I'd note about Canada in particular is that the current Liberal Party administration under Trudeau has gotten deeply, deeply unpopular - Conservatives have opened up a 10-point lead in opinion polling - and while their next election isn't until 2025, it's entirely possible that after that they end up with their right wing in charge.
(that being said, the current Conservative leader is both pro-abortion-rights and pro-gay-marriage, so maybe not that horrible a possibility compared to what we're dealing with in the US)
The Canadian Conservative party is not yet anywhere close to the republican party.
Pollievre called Trudeau a marxist the other day. It's the same empty rhetorical bullshit that Republicans in the US love to throw around. The CPC is headed on the same exact path that US Republicans were on a decade ago or so.
Not at this time, but they are using the same playbook (albeit a 15 year old copy)
Not for lack of trying.
Oh honey. You haven’t met an albertan.
I've been in the process of migrating to Alberta, but this definitely gives me pause. Just how bleak are things over there?
They try to live their life to every country song. Small towns in Alberta have a small town attitude and judgment. They have a very ‘capitalist is the only way to survive’ attitude. If you are looking for a bit more liberal but still want a western small town to save on money to avoid the housing crisis maybe towards the east is better.
Aaah, I'd been looking at Edmonton, hoping that the dense population would cause it to lean more progressively. The housing prices there are pretty mind-blowing, hadn't seen many places with that low of monthly cost. I'll dig East - any places you might recommend? I know Toronto's pretty spendy right now \
Also, thank you so much for your response, this is helping me immensely, it's a big move to make, and I want to make sure I'm as informed as I can be :)
Oh yeah Edmonton is a bunch of guys with pickup trucks and ball caps. If you’re looking for progressive attitudes probably far more west or Toronto might be more your jam but if you can get someone living out there to give you the run down you’d be better informed. I’ve lived in Montreal which is cheap to live and very progressive in certain things like minority rights but not in others (they don’t let you live there unless you’re french). And then Vancouver is super expensive but it’s progressive. I get why people avoid Vancouver though, it’s ridiculously expensive.
Phew! Good to know, thank you so much! I'll keep looking, then :)
That bar is effing low though.
I am not one to choose “red” or “blue” based on the party only. I actually care enough to see what the potential candidates have to offer, and both sides here have nothing to offer me besides empty promises and or stripping of what a normal person would call human rights. One side is telling sweet lies, and the other is just blatantly attacking anything they don’t like with enough vitriol to supply a country. I’m tired of being in a country where kids getting to eat, at the place they are required to be, is even something we are talking about politically.
Im interested to hear what new challenges you faced in Canada. I’ve heard their cost of living issues are a lot worse than the US, particularly with affordable housing. I’m not sure if that would be the main issue with moving there or not.
Housing has been one of the top issues for me. That mixed with comparitvely low incomes. I have a bachelors in a STEM field and I struggle to find places offering more than $60k/yr CAD. In US dollars that's like $40kish/yr. Whereas I'm looking at close to a million dollars CAD for a house in some parts of Ontario. It's absurd.
The other big thing has been the healthcare system. It was the big draw for me. But it's severely underfunded and bursting at the seams. My wife called 32 family doctor's offices the other day and couldn't find one that would take us as patients. ER waits are a nightmare and walk in clinics are crowded and overworked.
There are also issues with government corruption and poor candidate choices in the major parties. I went into that in another comment so I won't right here.
The best thing about Canada has been the lack of a police state and the lack of a gun culture.
Depends which province, but you will most likely have a corrupt, inept premier. Health care and education are neglected to a dangerous point. The federal government is a contest of who can be the biggest bozo and still get elected as prime minister.
The ideology in Canada is to pay as much money as possible for everything and try not to complain. Prices for goods and services are out of control. Housing is so unreasonably priced that there is no realistic way of affording to rent as an individual or to buy a house without inheritance.
Taxes are on everything and can be quite significant. Most people don't realize how much tax is included in the costs of most things we buy.
We are also bringing in so many new immigrants so there is a constant labour pool to churn through and wages only ever increase nominally.
If you're coming to Canada with a chunk of money, you'll probably be ok until it's taxed out of you. If you're hoping to move to Canada, get a job and rent or buy a place, then life will be tough.
I would disagree with a big part of this characterization. Specifically that prices are out of control beyond housing (which is completely fucked), but outside of that Canada has done better than most comparable countries when it comes to inflation over the last few years.
Taxes are not that crazy unless your only comparison is the US, which is a bad comparison.
As an Ontarian I also gotta say the bit about the premiers is also spot on.
I guess what I’m trying to do is find an area to settle in that ultimately has the goals of progress as their forefront policies. We’re over here “debating” wether children should have provided meals, at the place they are legally required to be at. The government is ran by children in suits, on both sides. I am just tired of being in the middle of it.
I hear you. I am hoping our issues are temporary up here. Honestly, our biggest issue is that housing is astronomically expensive and no one has tried to even fix it in earnest. Rising rates are having an impact. Houses are going up for sale and sitting there. At some point it will break and prices may drop.
I too hope your issues are temporary. I’d have that same hope for the US, but 20 years later and they’re just going full force to regression.
I fail to see how this is fundamentally different than the US, with the exception of minimum wages and the corresponding cost of living prices that they bring. Housing here in unreasonably priced and prices for goods and services are out of control.
What bummed you out? Just curious.
I answered most of this in other comments, but long story short:
Housing prices and cost of living are insane compared to incomes here. And I work in STEM. Think California COL and housing prices with a midwestern salary.
The healthcare system is underfunded and struggling. You can spend a day on the phone calling every family doctor in an area and not find a single one accepting new patients. We did exactly that. Called 32 offices and nothing. The ER has nightmare wait times and walk-in clinics are not able to provide the care people need because they have such a large volume to work through.
No major political figures are offering good solutions to these problems. In fact, they're using wedge issues from the US to stir up their respective bases instead of even looking inwards at Canada. Conservative leader, Pierre Pollievre, recently called Trudeau a marxist! I've heard comservatives ranting and raving about trans people instead of caring about doing anything productive. Meanwhile, Trudeau's admin was focused on a toothless gun ban when guns aren't a major problem here like they are in the US. The lack of a gun culture is actually one of my big positives here, so I don't know why Trudeau is focusing on things like that when there are major crises at hand here related to the costs of living.
There's a lot of corruption too. Trudeau is in the pocket of big businesses including the telecom triopoly (Rogers, Bell Canada, and Telus). Trudeau placed a former telecom big wig in charge of the CRTC, the Canadian equivalent of the US FCC. They have refused to allow MVNOs into Canada. Those are those third party cell companies like Mint Mobile that allow cheaper phone plans in the US. This refusal is despite Canada famously having overexpensive internet and cell phone plans due to the tripoloy. The insanity creeps into everything related to cell phones and the internet here. As an example, I am allowed only 3 voice mail messages in my inbox unless I pay more. I also have to pay long distance for calls to the US, something that isn't true with US telecoms for calls to Canada. As someone who works in telecom, I can tell you that these kinds of fees are bullshit and cooked up given how modern cell networks work. I have had to pay $50 for an accidental one hour call to the US.
Anyways, that's all not even to mention Trudeau's scandals. Namely the SNC-Lavalin Affair and the Aga Khan Affair.
And all of that is just the liberals. The conservatives are no better. Particularly in Ontario, the premier (governor equivalent) here, Doug Ford, has been inundated with scandals. These include his scheme to give away preserved lands through under-the-table deals, his decision to put his unqualified nephew into a ministerial position in government, and an attempt to use an exception in the Constitution to freeze people's rights to strike.
These scandals are all so frustrating, but what makes them unbearable is that there just isn't the political willpower here to scrutinize these politicians and bring them to justice. Both Doug Ford and Trudeau were reelected despite their scandals. Parties aren't offering good alternatives and the candidate selection process for parties in Canada is far less transparent than it is in the US, so political activism is that much harder.
Unless Canada gets its shit together soon, you're going to be hearing negative big item stories coming from here not too long from now. Right now the conservatives are winning federal approval polls and there looks to be a good chance that their leader, Pierre Pollievre, could be PM come 2025. As much as I am not a fan of Trudeau, Pollievre would be even worse. Canada really needs there to be a political movement that realigns the current toxic party dynamics. People here just seem so disengaged from politics that I don't foresee anything changing anytime soon.
Yeah I’d say maybe Australia could be an option too but there are caveats there as well. Like they are struggling possibly worse when it comes to housing vs salary. But that said their health system is in a way better shape as they’ve adopted two tier health system to have a private option. Yes, ok soo rich people get looked after. But think of it this way: they aren’t plugging up the spots for vulnerable people on need like they are in Canada making it impossible to get needed surgery in time. Canada is totally spineless when it comes to health care decisions. That’s the only selling point in Australia: the health care. The rife sexism makes it depressingly unbearable.
Healthcare is one of those things I really hope you guys improve. My bf (canadian) is worried that they are going to deliberately sabotage the Healthcare system in favor of private (read: shitty) Healthcare that swiftly becomes as bad or worse than the US system.
My own worries seem to be coming to fruition- that our own conservative parasitic ideas are slowly infecting many different countries, not just our own. Canada, Italy, Germany, the UK etc. Some have their own takes on it. Some may have even started it. But the American conservative party is great at spreading it, perhaps due to religious networks that operate like organized crime, or perhaps due to Murdoch's chokehold on world news. Either way, having the dumbest fucking people drag us back down is infuriating. I'd rather focus on problem optimization such as a high speed rail projects, anti corruption and anti monopoly efforts, and above all, climate restoration ASAP. That, and making sure Russia doesn't start WW3 at the worst possible moment in history to do so.
100% agreed on all your points. I think a lot about government structure and what structures lead to the most efficient and ethical governments. To some degree there isn't a "perfect system" that will keep the fascists out and prevent the suppression of minorities. At least not a system that allows for healthy change. People will always be persuaded by those ideas unfortunately. Our biggest job is to fight these issues at the ballot box.
With that said, there are some major thinngs we can do systemically to prevent people like Trump from making it to the head of government. The biggest one would be ranked choice voting or one of the other alternative voting methods. Those systems tend to make fringe candidates unlikely to win.
The other big and interesting question I've had specifically in my move to Canada is deciphering whether a parliamentary system is fundamentally better or worse than a presidential system in these regards. On the one hand, a presidential system can turn a presidential election into a cult of personality. On the other hand, parliamentary systems by design always hand executive power to the majority party in their legislature. That means split government isn't an option in a parliamentary system (unless the majority is formed by two or more parties). I thought moving to Canada that I would find the parliamentary system better, but I've honestly started to change my mind on it. I think not directly electing the executive here just means people do it through their single vote for a representative. As a result, the representitive as a concept is valued less. Beyond that, people have less direct control over the executive and people like Trudeau have less incentive to represent the nation as a whole. I think I prefer America's system with a separate election for each position of government. If a country is divided then maybe it's not bad for its government to also be divided. I appreciated having a Democratic house when Trump was president. It felt safer to have more views represented. This is in contrast to say, Ontario, where once the conservatives won, they had full control of both the provincial legislature and the premiership together, allowing them to get involved in all sorts of nasty business. If the government had been divided, Ford would not have been able to do things like invoke the Notwithstanding Clause.
I think the gist of it really comes down to who we vote in, regardless of goverment structure. The same way the lines on the road don't actually mean anything. The reason why it works is because everyone believes in it, and chooses to observe what the painted lines mean. That's why I always chuckle when people hail communism as the second coming of christ. Humans are humans, yo.
Thank you for your input. Canada was number one on the list since it’s close and “within grasp” so to speak. I know each area will have their own challenges and hurdles, but the hurdles I am wanting to avoid is the stripping of rights from other humans like myself and unadulterated corruption from county to federal. Is that something you have had to worry about since moving?
If you're worried about the stripping of rights from other humans and unadulterated corruption, then I would caution you about Canada.
Quick history lesson: Canada only created their constitution in the 80's after centuries of British rule, both direct and indirect. When creating their constitution they ran into some major issues with provinces needing to get on board, just like the drama that the US faced with their Articles of Confederation and getting the states to get on board. As a result, some exemptions to the constitution were put in place to strengthen provincial power and weaken federal power. Specifically relevant right now is something called the "Notwithstanding Clause". This clause allows provincial premiers (akin to governors in the US) to freeze certain rights in the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" (akin to the US Bill of Rights) at will until the next election. The current premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, has openly thrown this ability around to attempt to suppress strikes. That's right, to end strikes that he didn't like, he attempted to remove the literal right of the workers to strike. And this was a constitutionally enshrined power. So be wary, democratic backsliding is a problem everywhere and Canada is no safe haven from it.
Right now, Trudeau is exceedingly unpopular in Canada because housing prices and the cost of living is absolutely spiraling out of control. The conservative party is offering a horrible and corrupt man, Pollievre, as an alternative. He will only be worse for Canada. The third party, the NDP, has not been being taken seriously here (though they have my support). The NDP has been part of the currently formed government, which has caused them to take a hit to their approval. As it stands now, polls are favoring conservatives.
In terms of provincial politics, most of it is a shitshow here with the possible exception of British Columbia. Ontario has been especially terrible with our premier, Doug Ford, getting caught up in scandal after scandal. His administration was recently caught up in a corruption scandal of trying to use underhanded deals to sell off parts of the Greenbelt, a giant preserved belt of natural lands snaking throughout the province.
The only thing Canada has been noticeably better on for me has been the lack of guns (I don't fear for my life walking around my city at night) and the greatly reduced police state. Even the healthcare system that's so renowned in the US has been going through its own shitshow lately, with it being majorly defunded by conservative parties. It's been put through a major stress test and it's ready to snap. My wife called 32 family doctor's offices the other day and we couldn't get in to see even one of them. There are nightmare stories of 45 minute waits for ambulancea or several nights spent in the ER waiting to be seen. The walk in clinics are the best thing I've found, but those doctors always seem stressed out and very quick to get you in and out the door.
Corruption here (Canada) still happens federally and especially at the provincial level (like Doug Ford, which has many blatant examples and faces no consequences). Municipally (county level) I have not noticed as much, and my municipality seems to have a great local government that functions well... I've even spoken up and had a small issue resolved with little effort.
However I think you'll find if that kinda stuff grinds your gears you'll still have a better time in Canada than the US, despite the problems (and we do have problems).
Source: Canadian (Ontario) but lived in the USA for four years (Oregon)
I'm an Oregonian currently working on migrating to Alberta, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what pro's and con's I'd be running into. Seeing housing prices in Edmonton while my in-laws' mobile home is selling for over half a million really has me thinking...
Edmonton is probably one of the cheaper places in Canada too.
That's honestly why I was looking at it, the prices kinda blew my mind over there, that I could afford nearly 3 apartments in Edmonton for the price of one in Oregon, and the apartments were generally much newer and fancier for that price range.
Honestly, I can't give you the info you need as I haven't lived in Alberta... But it does have a reputation for being the most right wing Christian part of Canada, so compared to Oregon I'd say it might be a downgrade
Oh wow, I had no idea, I was assuming it was mostly in Quebec for some reason and saw the low housing prices in Edmonton. Thanks a ton for the heads up!
Did you have a particular province or area of Canada in mind? Pacific or Atlantic side? It's a broad country with varying cultures. Our province's are run by parties that share names with the federal ones but can be separate in they're stances