Canada Moves to Keep Skilled Workers

ashitaka writes "Just in time for all those who have vowed to leave the United States in response to government policies and mainstream cultural malaise, the Canadian government is announcing a C$700 million initiative to help skilled workers stay in Canada and become citizens. If you had the choice, would you really uproot to a new country especially one where the lifestyle isn't that much different than your own?"

Oh, Canada!

[Hiro Antagonist]

Given that I travel up to B.C. about twice a year, and that I'm going to be looking for employment up north after I graduate (two years down the road), I say 'Hell, yes!'

No worries about healthcare, low crime, fantastic local beers, hockey in the winter, Tim Hortons...er, what am I not supposed to like, again?

Empty promise

[uncleO]

For those unaware of Canadian politics, the government faces a non-confidence vote Monday or Tuesday. It is expected to fall and call a December election.

For campaign reasons, the government has announced a flurry of new spending over the last week, most of which is expected to never materialise, whether the governing party wins again or not.

Healthcare is great if you don't get sick

[Stone316]

and I don't mean catching a cold or pulling a muscle in your back and having to take a trip to the family doctor. I mean 'sick' and require the attention of specialists.... You can get your dog in for an MRI same day but you'll be waiting months for yours. I believe the average wait for a specialist is about 3 months now... I know I had to wait 6 months (at least, can't remember) to see a specialist last year.

Well respected? Maybe but I keep sensing that other countries find us about as annoying as a nat flying around your head.

Saying that, I love this country and would never move.

Look at who this applies to...

[KJE]

From TFA:
"Ottawa will spend $700 million over the coming years in a two-pronged initiative to make it easier for skilled immigrants to stay in the country while at the same tackling a big backlog of people waiting to get into Canada."

Also:
"Immigration Minister Joe Volpe will join the flurry of pre-election promises with his announcement today."

The minority government in Canada is about to fall, this is just one of the many, many promises the Liberal Party is making before they lose a no confidence vote next week, think of all these spending promises as the beginning of their campaign and react accordingly.

Warm weather

[phorm]

Pick a season then. In the summer it's about 25-30c (77-86f), in the winter I've been as low as -40c/f, but generally we're in the -10 to -20 (14 to -4) range or milder. Right now it's about 4c (39.2f)

Policy Changes

[JohnWiney]

Please note that these changes are directed at people already in Canada - foreign students, for example. Canada already has the highest levels of immigration in the world from outside the country (at least on a per-capita basis).

Re:Yes.

[EvilMagnus]

Have you looked at Canada's criteria for admitting skilled professionals? It's remarkably egalitarian and open - much better than the US. You basically fill out a checklist based on things like degrees held, languages spoken ... the higher you score, the easier/faster it is to get in. Canada has a form of 'open' visa, where if you qualify (say, if you have a degree and know a bit of French) you can enter Canada to look for work without actually having a job offer.

Compare that to the US and the H1-B system, where if you're outside the US you must have an offer letter and apply for the visa from outside the country (3-6 month wait for the visa to be granted, if you're lucky) and your degree has to be directly related to the job you've got the offer for.

So yeah, the basic criteria to be able to go to Canada and look for a job 'on spec' are; hold an Advanced Degree, speak either English or French fluently, and have a passing familiarity with the other.

Shaddup! Sick of the MRI story.

[Anonymous Coward]

The MRI thing is a myth. I work at University Health Network. At the Princess Margaret Hospital, the MRI staff works in two 10-hour shifts. The delay is for people who do not want to go in before 9am or after 6pm. My mother had to have one and she was booked for 8pm appointment merely four days later! Yes, convenience is great, but sometimes is not an option.

But then again, outside Toronto it may be a different story.

Re:It's a cop-out

[Anonymous Coward]

"In case you haven't been paying attention - the two last US elections have been very close, and their outcomes (especially in 2000) have had a tremendous impact on the rest of human history.

You sound like a decent enough person but for god's sake put down the koolaid. Even the most cursory examination of recent history provides a dozen examples of coutries which have suffered far greater catastrophe and they too will leave as much impact as the fall of Pitcairn's society. The WTC towers didn't mean spit on a global scale, and your attacks on two Islamic nations will ultimately mean more to your history than the world's.

Re:Income tax misnomer

[renehollan]

I'll have to followup later, but, having been born in Canada, and lived in Texas, I can assure you that it is much cheaper in Texas, tax-wise. Property is dirt cheap, though property taxes and insurance can be high (the property taxes generally pay for great schools, at least they did in Allen). There is not state income tax.

At just about any income level, a family with a single income, filing jointly, and owning their home will be much better off just about anywhere in the U.S. compared to Canada: there is no deduction for morgtage interest for non-investment property in Canada, and couples with a single income can't file jointly (and the spousal credit is mediocre, about CA$7-8k at the *lowest* marginal tax rate taken off your gross tax burden).

I once figured out that for marrieds, taxes in the U.S., in a no-income tax state, are generally lower once income goes above $US15k.

It's the main reason we left Canada for the U.S. -- we could not afford to live in Canada anymore with the high taxes, and mediocre health care (free, perhaps, but non-existent for the most part).

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same situation in the UK. We have an immigration rate of at least 500,000 people a year (for a population of 65 million). The good news is they all want to live in the South of England. The bad news is that the middle classes are moving out and pushing up the prices everywhere else, especially houses in farming villages as holiday homes. The only places where house prices aren't going up are those small towns which have lost major manufacturing employers and the population now depends on handouts. If this doesn't happen then the places become retirement colonies or executive home estates. And as the goverment wants 50% of the school-leaving population to go to university, so starter family flats get bought up by the buy-to-rent property market. As students are exempt from paying property tax, the tax burden shifts more onto retired home-owners, who can't afford to move anywhere else.

So, there are people who want to move into the country, and people who want to move out.

Re:Lifestyle

[billy reuben]

That statement is misleading. It would be more accurate to say that the southernmost parts of Ontario bear the same latitude as *Oregon*. I will grant you that the southernmost borders of Ontario share the same latitude as the extreme northern end of California, but so do Chicago and Cleveland -- which, incidentally, appear to be very close to the areas of Ontario you're talking about.

Re:How about giving up the Socialism, eh?

[larry_larry]

Canada is not a socialist country and it has a pretty damn good economy. Here is a graph of the Toronto Stock Exchange vs. the S&P500 [yahoo.com]. By your metric, if Canada is Socialist then almost every western country other than the US must be too. Checkout The Economist's factsheet for Canada [economist.com]. Also, Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world. [infoplease.com]

Re:Canada vs. USA

[udowish]

"In general, everything that you buy in a store is cheaper in the USA. Canada has insane sales taxes on top of high prices. This is the big issue for most people deciding USA vs. Canada. Big income taxes too. However the money collected in taxes mostly gets back to the Canadian people in some form, whereas in the US taxes paid go mostly to giant corporations with fat government contracts." BS, the only thing lavishly higher is booze and smokes in my experience almost everything else is CHEAPER in Canada and I have travelled all over the US. That goes for food, insurance, housing etc etc.

Canada isn't all that it's cracked up to be

[StandardCell]

As a Canadian who has worked for years both in Canada and the United States, and having taken the plunge 18 months ago to come back to Canada to work, I can say that it has been an unpleasant experience.

Healthcare up here is abysmal. Trying to find a family doctor is nearly impossible, and there are long wait times for elective procedures and medical imaging. One of our family friends died of a heart attack after waiting nearly a year for bypass surgery. I'm paying more for health care up here than I ever did in the US due to my premiums.

Education is a joke up here too. Ontario, for example, passes ALL children unless they basically hand in nothing or choose to do nothing throughout the year. My neighbor's son got straight "R" grades ("F" is no longer politically correct), yet somehow passed to Grade 5 last year. That'll keep happening until he graduates high school, even though this kid still can't read a basic "See Jane Run" type book.

Daily life is ok, but there are some things you have to be aware of. Although the overall murder rate is lower in Canada, per-capita rates of rape and property crime are all higher than in the United States. I feel less safe here than I did in the San Francisco Bay area and much less safe than in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Try rolling through Toronto and see what it's like these days. Forget about the unbelievably bitter cold, excessive snow if you live in Eastern Canada, and generally longer winters. Weather counts for a lot.

Then there's the financial aspect of it. Sure, people don't get bankrupted here, but if you're not chronically or seriously ill you are better off in the US. I've paid more for health care here since my employer doesn't cover my premiums (yes, we pay premiums, $60/month/person). Auto insurance is 50% more expensive than what I paid for in California, plus I can't remove tickets from my record with traffic school. House prices are insane; I can't buy a fully-detached house with two car garage for under $400k, and I can't deduct my mortgage interest or property taxes from my federal taxes. I get paid less in equivalent dollars than any job in the US, and all of my Canadian friends who have worked both places want to go back south unless they have significant family obligations north of the 49th. I pay more in taxes, especially at the till (15% sales tax on a car is insane!). The government's overly-liberal immigration policies make unemployment consistently 2% higher at a minimum than in the United States so I'm always looking over my shoulder thinking when my time might be next.

Finally, there's the government. Lots of /.ers think that Canada is some magical place of freedom. It's not. Freedom of speech is curtailed as we have laws against "hate speech" that the US would consider violations of the First Amendment. Freedom of the press is a joke, since several times reporters were spied on, wiretapped or just simply had their personal files confiscated without a warrant by corrupt police who feel that due process is an inconvenience. Our Senate isn't elected nor provides regional representation, but is an expensive rubber stamp with no real power. Heck, we didn't even have our full independence from the United Kingdom until April 19, 1982! We have sexist and racist government departments that purposely exclude white males from positions supposedly in the name of diversity. There are 36,000 deportation orders on illegal immigrants that can't be executed because the government doesn't know where they are. They let the families of Somali warlords and Sikh terrorists stay in this country. And, in general, the majority of people here have been lulled into utter stupidity by the clever social engineering of Pierre Trudeau's liberal party over the last 35 years that has their party about to be voted back into power that has stolen billions of dollars from taxpayers (Adscam, HRDC et al). Not to mention that Canada is the only major industrialized nation in the world to

Re:You can be a thief, too!

[justins]

Actually, ten times $700 million, 7 billion, is roughly what we spend in Iraq in roughly a month and a half. Sad but true.

Some numbers to compare Canada and USA

[EMB Numbers]

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de [worldfactsandfigures.com] sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h [readersdigest.ca] tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ [statcan.ca] lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 [statcan.ca] a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com] [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

[This may be a duplicate of a previous Anonymous Coward posting that I did not intend.]

Re:Healthcare is great if you don't get sick

[plopez]

though sadly not health care compelled bankruptcy

No longer true. In the US it has been replaced by health care compelled indentured servitude. The bankruptcy laws have been tightened up so that now it is almost impossible for an individual to write off debts. Despite the fact that approx. 70% of bankruptcy in the US was due to health care bills. In addition, you are forced into counsummer credit counseling, often for profit organizations. Sometimes these counseling services are fraudulent driving the vicitm further into debt.

You don't know how good you have it up north...

Re:It's a cop-out

[GooseKirk]

You're right, it is a cop-out... and I do feel bad that I'm not there, fighting the good fight, trying to make things better.

On the other hand, I feel better about myself, just not being there. I feel better that I never have to see Fox News ever again. I feel better knowing that even as Dubya spirals the country into the ground and half the people cheer as they go down, I don't have to ride along with them. Hell, I don't even have to pay attention.

Sorry for the cop-out... but I know I'm much happier. Life's too short to tilt at windmills forever.

Re:Canada vs. USA

[saitoh]

I'll add a fundimental difference of defining objectives/principles in a sociological sense to consider:

US: "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness"
Canada: "Peace, order, and good government"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order_and_good _government [wikipedia.org]

Re:Income tax misnomer

[Jetson]

there is no deduction for morgtage interest for non-investment property in Canada

There's also no taxes owing for capital gains when you sell that non-investment property. My house in Vancouver, BC has gone up in value by more than $125,000 in the last 3 years. Given a choice between a 17% deduction on the interest portion of my mortgage versus $125,000 in tax-free cash I think I'll take the latter....

Re:Canada vs. USA

[farrellj]

I spent 2 and a half years in North Carolina, having been recruited from Canada. I had accepted because finding a tech job is very, very hard there...and still is.

Although I found housing to be cheaper, and many consumer goods...food was the same price, which meant everything was 20-30% more expensive. The tax rate was chaper, but there were more types of taxes. for example, I had to paid a tax to the city for the car, which I had never done in Canada, and the cost of health care insurance was huge. Drugs were very expensive, even with the co-pay. The antihistamine I use, Zirtec in the US, cost me a $30 (USD) co-pay. In Canada, Reactin, (same medication, different name) is half that in CDN dollars...which means I am paying about $13 USD for it.

Another example...Coca-Cola, which in Canada you can buy in slabs of 24 cans, usually for $7.99 CDN were absent in NC, and the 12 packs were $4.99 USD. As well, after I moved back, I am finding that computer equipment, with the exception of complete systems, are cheaper.

But things are not all rosy in Canada, either. We have one big problem here...the Human Resources people.

Since the meltdown of Nortel, there has been a glut of highly qualified techies. Between Notrel's layoffs, and the trickle-down effect, some estimate over 20,000 techies were released into the Canadian tech job market. Because of of this, the HR people have been able to get very specific in what they are looking for, and used to be able to find it. But now, most people have either left the tech field, or Canada, and still the HR people are very specific in what they are looking for, and are not willing to look at equivelent qualifications. For example, if you know AIX, Linux of many flavours, SCO, Solaris and Tru-64, chances are you could pick up HP-UX in a couple of weeks of on the job experience.

I spent an hour chatting with a former Federal Government HR person, and she said that the burnout rate in the HR field is very high, on the order of 2 to 3 years, so even if an HR person learns that someone who knows MS Word 2000 could probably do OK with Word 2003, they don't forward the resume to the manager who needs the talent to run his business.

That is why there is a tech shortage, not a lack of techies!

ttyl
          Farrell McGovern

Re:Income tax misnomer

[Maxo-Texas]

You get a tax free sale once per 2 years of your personal residence in the U.S. My house has doubled in 5 years, could double again, and double again and I still wouldn't owe any taxes when I sold it.

The mortgage deduction really doesn't kick in unless your mortgage is about $100k (so say a $120k house with 24k down)and up because of the "standard" deduction.

The mortgage deduction is really a subsidy for rich people who are buying million dollar houses and getting 2 grand a month off their taxes. The "fair tax" people are trying to lower that to the average house price in a given market- so about $200k Texas and $450k Calif and New York.

As far as unlimited nationalized health care, I think it is unsustainable. However, I would strongly support a national health care that was about 1,000 times the minimum wage (about $5k). This would cover about 95% of what could go wrong to most people (since auto wrecks are covered by auto insurance and so on for other ways you get injured). It would -not- cover cancer, rare diseases, etc. I think catastropic health care should be covered like it is now. It sounds heartless but we just can't afford to heal everyone- I look at Oregon as a model. And I say that as a cancer survivor who had some heavy bills.

Re:Canada v. US = Generals v. Globetrotters

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, are you insane?

I don't vote for the Liberal or Conservative party (Or NDP or Green, or Bloc Quebecois). I vote for the MPP for my riding. If the Liberal MPP for my riding wins in my riding, the Liberal's get a seat in Parliament. The party with the most seats (and a majority) forms the government, and the leader of that party, becomes Prime Minister. If no party has a majority, the previous party is given the first opportunity to attempt to form a coalition minority government (as we had until recently between the Liberal and NDP Parties).

Re:Income tax misnomer

[Chemical Serenity]

I wonder, then, why more doctors are coming back to Canada than going south.

Or perhaps you havn't been paying attention [www.ctv.ca]?

A quote:

Dr. Andrew Johnson, an infectious diseases specialist, said he left Canada six years ago to pursue his career in the U.S.

"At the time it was really just the opportunity to perform research," he told CTV News.

Now with two children of his own, Johnson has returned to live in Calgary.

"Canada is a great place to raise children and has a good education system," he said. "We don't have quite the same problems like violence and hand guns."

Which brings us full circle to the point of the article. Obviously, Canada has attractions that money can't buy. A general sense of safety, for instance, as exemplified by the people coming home. Thus it's wise (election posturing or no) to give additional incentives to people worthy of being here. Combine that with higher median per-houshold income, not having to worry about declaring bankruptcy if you happen to get sick (oh yes, did you know that half of the bankruptcies in the US are medically related, and that 75% of those bankrupts HAD INSURANCE? [washingtonpost.com] Some great coverage, there!), a socially liberal atmosphere and not being in a country that has a leader threatening to veto anti-torture legislation.... well, Canada's lookin' pretty good these days.

Not that it'd matter much to you "Hate Canada First" types.