Moving to Canada?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not gay, but I’ve decided I want a plan in case that “definition of marriage” ammendment somehow goes through some day. I don’t think I can live in a country with such a clearly religious and bigoted doctrine as part of its Constitution.

So, a few questions.

  1. Does Canada’s Constitution have anything remotely similar that I might find offensive? Basically, I’m a strong believer in separation of church and state, and find intolerance repugnant.

  2. Where (in Canada) should I move? All I really need is a high speed internet connection (I work from home, and some of my “coworkers” are in North Carolina and Montana while I’m in Texas, so location really doesn’t matter). I’d prefer somewhere with as mild of weather as Canada gets, and a pretty good sized metropolis.

That should be enough to get some sort of discussion going…

2

  1. There’s no “Definition of marriage” in the Canadian constitution, if you mean that. So I would not think so, but maybe you’d get pissed off by Catholic school boards being constitutionally entrenched in some places (which they are.) Canada’s Constitution is a patchworked, practical-solution sort of thing. There’s a lot of funny little things in it.

  2. Depends what you do for a living. The mildest weather is either on the B.C. Pacific coast, or southwestern Ontario. It just about never snows in Vancouver, which is a large city, roughly the size of Pittsburgh. Toronto and Montreal aren’t too cold and are very big, more or less the size of Atlanta or Seattle, to use another comparison.

There are few other REALLY large cities; Ottawa, Edmonton, and Calgary are all pushing a million, I’d guess. How big a city are you looking for? 1 million? Half a million? What is your profession?

3

I’m an instructional designer. In my case, that means I write and edit scripts for science animations (mostly for textbook CDROMs). I can keep my exact same job and move anywhere in the world (one of the writers I edit for is going to be working from Germany for a while). All I need is high-speed internet (which I know can be a problem outside of the US, so I just wanted to check on that) :slight_smile:

According to the Austin Business Journal, the Austin area’s population was 1.3 million in 2002, so I guess that’s about what I want… but that’s counting a rather large area surrounding the city itself. I’m sure I’d be perfectly happy with half a million, as long as it was concentrated enough that I didn’t have to drive forever to find interesting things to do.

I moved from Michigan 6 years ago, and really would prefer somewhere without snow (I went to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and we had something like 30 feet of snow my junior year; I don’t ever want to experience that again) :slight_smile:

4

Canada has, for many years, had the best internet and telecommunications infrastructure in the world. Everyone lives so damned far apart its become a pretty necessary technology up here.

5

Vancouver is one of the coolest cities on the planet.

6

Just to clarify… is that “coolest” as in “the nightlife is great and the people are laid back and friendly,” or as in “you have to plug your car in at night so the battery doesn’t freeze”? :slight_smile:

7

Actually, Vancouver has one of the warmest winters in Canada. I can’t comment on the nightlife as I am on the other side of the country (various places in Ontario).

8

This site: http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca provides excellent information for those thinking about moving to Canada…community profiles, the law, healthcare, you name it.

At well over 5 million, you may find Toronto too large. Here’s my own entirely arbitrary summary of Canadian cities close to your 1 million population target:

Vancouver
Pros: Beautiful, lots of ocean, mountains, and a very liberal politics, generally
Cons: Vancouver traffic can be awful in the city itself, lots of rain in the winter, and very liberal politics, generally
Other: Think Seattle without Boeing or Microsoft
Population: ~2M

Calgary
Pros: Close to mountains, very fit and outdoors-oriented culture, healthy economy, conservative politics, generally
Cons: Some find it too dry in the summer, and/or too cold in the winter
Other: Feels sort of like Denver to me
Population: ~1M

Winnipeg
Pros: Friendly, relatively slow-paced lifestyle
Cons: Unbelievably cold in winter, mosquitos can be oppressive in summer
Other: Good arts culture
Population: ~700K

Toronto
Pros: Big, Diverse, on a great lake (Ontario)
Cons: Big, Diverse, lots of snow in winter
Other: A truly big city, even by US standards
Population: ~5M

Kitchener/Waterloo
Pros: Vibrant hi-tech sector, university town
Cons: May be smaller than you like, rapid growth is stressing infrastructure
Other: Nice place for families, but not much in the way of nightlife, etc.
Population: ~500K (only included this one because you’re occupation is tech-sector, and thus K/W may be worth a look)

Ottawa
Pros: Loads of culture, very outdoors-oriented, pretty
Cons: Really cold in winter, real estate is pricey in places
Other: Canada’s capital, lots of government and high-tech

Montreal
Pros: Big, Lots to do, near good skiing
Cons: Ugly in places, economy is only so-so, similar winter to
Toronto
Other: Real estate is relatively affordable, french is primary language here, but english is also very common
Population: ~3.5M

Quebec
Pros: Beautiful, near great skiing and cottage life
Cons: Very cold in winter
Other: french is primary language here, and its much harder to get by with english here than in Montreal

Halifax
Pros: Great night life, pretty, on the ocean, low cost of living
Cons: Foggy and wet in winter, summers are mild
Other: The slower pace in eastern Canada can take some getting used to
Population: ~500K

As for high-speed internet, it’s pretty much ubiquitous…in all major centres (and most small towns) you have your choice of DSL or Cable, and the wireless infrastructure is coming along nicely…1XRTT is rolling out very quickly.

You will find Canadians to be very friendly and welcoming if you do move here, but please don’t think you can escape politics by moving north.

Canada is struggling with many of the same big issues as the US (healthcare, taxes, retiring baby boomers, free trade, energy costs, our role abroad, and on it goes), and while we have made a few different choices on these issues, ultimately Canada is the most similar country to the US you will find (maybe a tie with Australia, I guess).

Separation of church and state is something you mentioned…yes, we have the same stated goal, but like the US we also struggle with the details, especially when tradition, culture, and religion have been intertwined for a long time (e.g. marriage).

Hope this helps.

9

Capt Canuck, small-L liberal politics in Vancouver is a “con”? :slight_smile:

BTW, Montreal’s winter is significantly colder than Toronto’s, because it’s away from the moderating influence of the Great Lakes. It’s much more similar to that of Ottawa. In Ottawa you get much less of that that hideous November one-degree-above-freezing and it’s raining crap.

Many urban places have a third high-speed-internet choice of “wireless cable”, which is basically cable sent over a microwave link: you put a small dish on your roof and aim it at the transmitter. In the Toronto area it’s sold by Look. Though they seem to be selling DSL as well.

10

'Nother American here who is thinking about heading north. I’ve been looking at the immigration points test for skilled workers and I had a few questions about it:

  1. What constitutes “moderate” and “basic” language proficiency? Would three to four semesters of college-level French generally be enough to put one in the “moderate” category?

  2. If a person has, say, several years of part-time work experience, how do they go about figuring out what the equivalent would be in full-time work? Or, in practice, is part-time work unlikely to count?

  3. If a person doesn’t have enough points to immigrate without a job offer in Canada, but a job offer would definitely put them over the pass mark, how difficult would it be to convince an employer to hire them?

11

To be fair, he listed it as a pro, too. He only listed the conservative politics in Calgary as a con, though. Mebbe a little bias slipping through? :stuck_out_tongue:

I would like to dispute the claim that Winnipeg is unbelievably cold in winter. Anyone who’s lived there has no trouble whatsoever believing that it’s absofreakinglutely ridiculously cold in winter. :smiley: Though, I must add, it has nothing on Saskatoon in that department. In fact, I’d say Saskatoon winters are actually colder, though there’s less snow and they’re usually a couple weeks shorter. Anyways. I’d also like to agree with Sunspace that -10C and snowing is infinitely preferable to +/-1C and raining. Ugh.

Edmonton should probably also be on the list if we’re naming all the cities with populations in the ballpark. Given that it’s another cold prairie city, though, I think it can probably be ruled out on weather grounds, same as Winnipeg.

Porcupine, I am not a Immigrations official, but I can point out that your link links to a page describing what is meant by “moderate” and “basic” proficiency. And the link also implies part-time work counts - “or the equivalent in part-time work” - one assumes that equivalence in this case is determined in a sort of 2 years at half-time = 1 year full time fashion. As for jobs, the past year the job market has been booming here, though in the past couple months it’s gone soft - between SARS and BSE, the economy’s taking a bit of a hit.

12

I’ve never heard anyone refer to Montreal as “ugly” before. That’s got to be a first…

13

If you’re so worried about amendments and outrage of exclusion, why not stay in the US and fight for the Equal Rights Amendment - the only one that was forced to be ratified under a time limit, and failed for that reason alone.

14

Vancouver is one of the few places on earth you can swim to work in from about Sept to April.

But I love it and would never live elsewhere.

I love this quote. Is it an oxymoron?

15

My rose-colored glasses are developing cracks, and what I’m seeing is… troublesome.

I think America is becoming a country where this silly definition of marriage thing could pass, while the ERA might pass (and, frankly, I don’t think such things should have to be spelled out in the Constitution). I’ll probably stick around to see what happens in fall 2004, though… but that could very well be the deciding factor.

In any case, I don’t see how having an ERA would cancel out having a Constitutional definition of marriage. I look at this definition of marriage thing as one step (a small step, but still a step) toward making America a theocracy, and that is completely reprehensible to me.

Yeah yeah, I was going to flesh it out, but frankly I liked the ring of it as written, and I figured people would know what I meant :slight_smile:

I find most types of intolerance (racism, homophobia, religious intolerance) repugnant. Being intolerant of intolerance is ok in my book :slight_smile:

16

D’oh! Sorry. And your guess on the part-time work thing is what I assumed as well, but governments don’t necessarily think about these things in the same way us normal folks do…

Looks like I will just squeak by in a couple of years with 76 points, even without a job offer. Not too bad.

17

Two of my Canadian relatives (both gay by the way) are in your flexible position, and choose to live together in Texas, primarily for much better tax treatment. They both lived together in Vancouver, the most beautiful and temperate large city in Canada and gave that up several years ago for 100[sup]0[/sup] F. temperatures.

18

I cannot imagine by what reasonable standard of measurement Toronto has five million people. The city itself is 2.3 million; a very, very liberal definition of “metropolitan area” might include four million.

Of course, beyond a certain size it doesn’t matter; the issue becomes whether you want to live IN the city, in the 'burbs, or in a satellite town.

I would also point out that like the United States, taxes vary a lot from province to province. You will pay substantially less in tax in Alberta than anywhere else, and you’ll pay less in Ontario than you do in Quebec or B.C.

19

Of course, also like in the States, cost of living varies a good deal from place to place, meaning that a lower COL/higher tax province might make a given income go further than a higher COL/lower tax province. Other things being equal, lower taxes make places more attractive to live, increasing housing demand, etc, and hence cost of living. Insofar as economic factors play a role in a decision such as this, one needs to do a fair bit of research to get things right. I, myself, don’t have a clue which of the candidate cities would come out ahead in such an analysis.

20

Sunspace,

BC politics’ liberal bent looks very upper case L to me at times, but in my own defence it was both a pro and con (the ideal idealogy remaining the stuff of dreams, at least up here). Don’t know how Calgary’s conservative lean only made a con - absolutely a mistake.

Oops - I stand corrected - thanks. Of the cities listed, Montreal is the only one I haven’t lived in for at least a few months.

Alexnbink:

To this beholder’s eye, much of Montreal is truly ugly, a view shared by a scientifically random sampling of my household today.

Rickjay:

Umm…the standard of cardinality, I suppose. The Greater Toronto Area (“GTA”) is indeed over 5M (see:
Data, Research & Maps – City of Toronto )
While it’s true that the GTA is “metropolitan area”, as you say, it is entirely contiguous, high-density city from border to border.

If you prefer to think of Toronto as being much smaller, that’s great too. Just avoid the 25 cents a minute binoculars on the CN Tower’s observation deck :slight_smile: