Great minds thinking alike, I see Czarcasm has just posted a very similar threat wrt New Zealand.
I’m wondering about the possibility of buying a modest summer home in a rural area somewhere near the northern shore of Huron or Superior, and maybe after several years retiring to live there full time. We don’t need citizenship or work permits, just legal permanent resident status. Would this be reasonably attainable? Would it matter how much time passes between buying the property and making it a full time residence? If we bought the property now, how much time per year could we legally spend in Canada on tourist visas?
Edit: the bit about border guard discretion is true. My husband was initially given 12 months rather than 6, based on my status, our intention to remain permanently, and the paperwork we’d filed to date.
I mentioned to my (step) neices and nephews that they were Canadian citizens by birth, and any of their children born before 2007 - since their grandmother and mothers were Canadian citizens before they moved to the USA in the 1960’s. (After 2007 apparently the succeeding generations had stricter requirements). However, they would have to figure out their spouses’ status…
The other problem is health insurance. Canadian citizens and landed immigrants qualify, but visitors should have travel health insuance. (Canadians over 65 are covered by health insurance the moment they arrive, under 65 they may have to wait depending on how long they have lived abroad.)
Last year, Parliament passed a law called Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act. It’s meant to prevent people who are neither citizens nor permanent residents of Canada from buying “residential property” in Canada. Foreigners can still buy vacant land (even if zoned residential) and build a house, but they can’t buy an existing house or condo. That’s my understanding of the situation, but I could be wrong. There’s nothing to prevent foreigners from renting property, so far as I am aware.
With the above links and some google fu, it appears that Canada simply has no provision for retiree immigrants; if you have no family there and don’t have either some highly sought-after job skills (which of course defeats the whole purpose of “retirement”) or a couple million bucks to “invest”, you’re just SOL. OTOH you can hang out six months a year with no problem, so maybe just go with the summer home plan (as renters, apparently).
I suspect that’s because of our proximity to a certain much larger country with radically different financial structures for healthcare for senior citizens. Whatever you think about the merits of either one, even a modest set of American retirees coming north could tank the system.
This is by design and almost every country that is (or was up until recently) a civilized country has similar requirements.
Said another way, they all saw the USAian refugees coming and have wisely raised their drawbridges and filled their moats with laser beam-equipped piranhas.
That was the same logic as with ANZ - they don’t want older immigrants unless they have the wherewithal to cover health care, which generally is mostly spent on the elderly. (IIRC when I looked into NZ there was a cut-off of 50 or 55 for regular immigrants. Canada does (or did?) have good provisions for reuniting families - I recall many snide and racist comments about the elderly parents joining their immigrant children here.
I recall some similar item about British people travelling in Europe, thanks to Brexit - not only are extended stays far more difficult, they need to provide proof of medical insurance coverage. Soon, non Europeans will need an electronic preclearance to visit Europe, same as the USA does outside of NAFTA.