Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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?
It seems to me that a lifestyle that includes warm weather would be reason enough.
Having done alot of travel to the US, both for business and pleasure, let me assure you Canada's lifestyle is far different. We live in a much more secure, comfortable and friendly environment than most places in the United States. We have very little crime (Toronto, our largest city, has about 70 murders a year), we have the best health care system in the world, we have tonnes of green land, and are well respected by most of the World.
Psst... I think the similarity is part of the atraction....
If the US is such a hell hole, why does it have to go to such lengths to keep people out?
If American citizens are frustrated and annoyed with their government's behavior, can someone please explain how expatriating will do anything but make the problem worse?
If they have any interest in achieving their goal, shouldn't they be sending a loud message to the rest of the world, inviting like-minded individuals to come live there instead? Or perhaps convince their neighbors to read a newspaper?
Oh, wait. That would involve effort. Never mind - I forgot who I was talking about.
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As an American I am in a better position to fix the problems than anyone. If I move to Canada (and even if I become a Canadian subject, or whatever) I have given up on influencing the course of events because I don't want to deal with some sort of guilt over my failure to do so recently?
We don't know how much worse things might have been, either. We say, and it's true, that the domestic opposition didn't prevent the administration from invading Iraq. Well, that was a failure. There is literally no way of knowing what else they might have done if given free reign - Miers on the SCOTUS is only the start of it.
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. In spite of those election results, public opinion here in the US still plays a big role in determining what the administration can and cannot get away with. If you're really concerned with human civilization, and not with melodrama, you move to a purple state, not to Canada.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
The upper class seem to do well with the people currently in control in the govt. The lower class does fairly well with the hand-outs. This leaves the middle class to support all three. Immigration is mainly by people in the lower class, where they stand to benefit by moving to the USA. Meanwhile, the middle class that are already IN the usa find their situation going downhill. So you see people that want in, and people that want out.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I've already uprooted and left the US for another country.
Japan in this case.
I just couldn't get past America re-electing the failed
ideologues in the White House. Pity the people have seen the err of
their ways all too late. (ref: Bush's declining approval rating)
Barring stumbling into marriage over here, I can't see myself
staying forever though. A place like Canada is *extremely* attractive
to me on a number of levels - it's similarity to America being just one.
Having spent a bit of time in Toronto and Vancouver, they're both places
I can easily see myself living in. They're not New York or Tokyo, mind
you... but they do seem to be everything America believes itself to be -
with Jesus wonderfully absent.
The only problem I can see being an issue is that I don't particularly
care for hockey... Is that a deal-breaker on naturalization?
Better economy?? The Toronto Stock Exchange index is up 20% so far this year - the Dow Jones is down. The past few years have had similar results - and that is without taking into account the changes in the currencies. The Canadian federal government has posted a surplus each of the past seven years. The US government, uh, has not. Canadian unemployment levels are nearing record low levels....
What's your feeling about people immigrating TO the United States? If one applies your position equally to all countries of the world, nobody should ever leave their native land. Are you advocating that? This country is largely populated by immigrants and those descended from immigrants. I don't know the details of your family background, but chances are they were immigrants at some point. Should they have stayed in their home country? Should you have instead been born and grown up there instead of here?
Mod parent up. There is a reason weathly Europeans and Canadians often have private doctors (despite the "free" healthcare system) - and flying to Boston is not unheard of for exceptionaly dangerous procedures. While we can argue the merits of applying Capatilism to the health care system - skilled US workers (which would include everyone reading this site in the US) have the best health care. Period.
I prefer california, actually. Better beers, crime's a bit of a problem but getting better, My employer has a great healthcare plan, and if they didn't, it's only $30/month for heath care to cover true emergencies, oh, and I'm 1/2 mile from a major hockey venue, and a mile from an amateur venue. What's there to love about having to wait 5 minutes for your car to warm up in the winter, or generally higher taxes?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
The attracting of skilled workers to Canada is a bit of a scam. It turns out the only credentials which "count" in practice are ones mainly of Canadian and/or American sources. Sometimes credentials of British, Australian or Western European sources may get by. Otherwise you're shit out of luck. Many folks with credentials from other places, are relegated to working at McDonalds or other minimum wage type jobs. Some are willing to tough it out by going back to school to get Canadian approved credentials.
Main reason why immigration to Canada isn't very popular for "skilled workers" is because it's harder to find work in comparison to the United States. If you don't have Canadian and/or American experience and credentials, most employers will just delete your resume.
I highly discourage any skilled workers from immigrating to Canada, unless you're willing to work blue collar jobs and/or are willing to go back to school to get Canadian approved credentials.
Attracting "skilled" foreign workers and then relegating them to blue collar or minimum wage jobs is largely a waste of resources and time.
Hey I have all of that in the rural United States only we are not deluded that a several-month waiting list to see a doctor is the 'best healthcare'.
How about giving up the Socialism, eh?
People leave Canada for a country with a better economy, and the government's solution is to spend more tax money! Brilliant move, eh?
I presume you're talking about the US - one of the most socialist countries on the planet (or have you opted out of the endless socialist pork projects, massive socialist war machine, and corporate welfare? Is that a checkbox on your income tax return?). Of course it isn't to benefit the poor, so Americans lift their chins up and talk about their great "capitalism" versus the evil "socialism" (of the REST OF THE 1ST WORLD), strangely imagining some moral high road.
Absolutely amazing that any American, with the enormous pork and tax-grabbing bloat of its government, can bleat the word socialist in any manner other than humor or self-deprecation.
What's even more remarkable is the fact that the all-in tax load in the US is, in many cases, similar to or greater than a comparable person in Canada. Don't tell Americans this, though - it might upset their imaginary world.
That said, most of the Quebecois that make it out west are really cool. They're almost as much fun to hang around as the Newfies.
I left Arizona for Vancouver BC in Jan 2003. I've been telecommuting with the little web services outfit (still in AZ) ever since. I married a local last June, and she's sponsoring me for Perm Residency soon.
It was a great relief. My first coherent thought after 9/11 was "This is how tyrants are made". I seem to have been right.
I have absolutely no regrets. Answer your question?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Also if you are gay or a muslim you are much more likely to be accepted in Canada then the US.
evil is as evil does
(Actually, in America, you might get turfed out in critical situations anyway. Many hospitals don't have an emergency room, as they cost more than they make and US hospitals are there for profit not care. Those ER rooms that do exist are hopelessly overcrowded, overworked and are considered by the CDC to be extremely high risk areas in the event of an outbreak of a contageous disease. If bird flu ever goes critical, it will likely do so in a US emergency room.)
The American situation, unlike the British and Canadian counterparts, is not fixable. Because hospitals in the US are profit ventures, not health-care centers, they have no interest in doing anything that will cost more than it will earn. Proper emergency care is expensive and earns little, as most accident and crime victims are uninsured and/or flat broke. They have no interest in lowering prices, because the bulk of "paying" customers have health insurance and so never see the real price tag and therefore have no reason to care what it is.
Insurance companies in the US are also money-grubbers and they know how to rake the money in. By charging the companies a "reduced rate" for bulk purchases, they can absolutely guarantee that customers never see the real cost to their paychecks. The victim - errr, employee - only sees a given deduction for their deduction. What they don't see is what the company is really paying and therefore what the company is really calculating payscales on. In the end, you pay the full cost but you only see a fraction of it on the pay stub.
By these accounting tricks and other fraud, the US employees are bilked billions of dollars and somehow consider themselves better off because they don't have the wait. Trust me, if you threw billions of dollars out the window in England, you'd get prompt healthcare too. Well, just as soon as anyone realized that was real money and not something from a Monopoly game.
(For that matter, there's always BUPA, if you insist on the insurance thing in more civilized lands.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
wait, you recognise the problem, but you still want to move to "almost as socialist as europe" Canada?
This dude is drunk. I moved from Calgary to Dallas 5 years ago and pay way less in taxes now than I did in Canada.
You know, its not illegal to cross the border to the south and get your health care there. You have both options in Canada, wait and get it for free or pay for a US specialist.
The aboriginal people are self governed, and they are not by any means underfunded. Their problems are entirely self-inflicted, and the productive natives should be up in arms over the disgusting behaviour of their bretheren.
Billions are already spent on providing what SHOULD be excellent living conditions for a virtual handful of people. Instead, their corrupt self-government combines with the pitiful behaviour of people on reserves, leaving taxpayers with the cheque -- The Prime Minister just allocated 5 billion dollars to prevent suicides in native communities, which have pitifully reached epidemic levels.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Until the native populations in canada grow up and start actually taking some responsibility for their actions(And some of them are atrocities -- My mother lived in the North, in a small mining community past Thompson Manitoba, and she has told me stories of natives feeding their kids drano to send them to the hospital because they don't want to get a babysitter while they went out drinking for the night) and their own self-government, they have absolutely no business blaming anyone but themselves for their situation. Rational natives should be extremely vocal in critisizing the unfortunate majority which is enforcing stereotypes and in so doing causing even natives who want to be productive in society untold grief.
It's been a long time.
"there is no deduction for morgtage interest for non-investment property in Canada"
The Republican necons in our Congress are trying to remove the mortgage interest deduction as we speak. Now how does the US look if that's gone?
They've (the wealthy, like the Waltons ) been spending their no-tax windfall by buying other companies, and buying back their own company's stock to privatize their corporations. What they aren't doing with the money is spending it on new jobs, which is what the putative purpose of the cuts are for; no less authority than the American Enterprise Institute states that, to their surprise, the newly released wealth is not returning to the economy at large, but is "going into the matresses".
When the economy tanks in the next year or so, all that hoarded wealth will be released to purchase stock and real estate at greatly deflated prices. They'll make a bundle on our economic disaster, eventually, when the US climbs out of its debt hole (by raising taxes and cutting public spending) and the value of the holdings they will purchase at fire-sale prices go back up.
Supply side economics, as Reagan's budget director David Stockman admitted, is a con to lower taxes on the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. He should know, as he was Reagan's salesman to congress.
Supply side cuts have failed. Jobs are gone, poverty is up, aid to the poor is going, we're trillions in the hole in debt to China, the wealthy are insanely wealthy and poised to become mega-wealthy after the crash caused by the tax cuts and borrowing. Bush believes in his supply side cuts. But, as we've seen, his beliefs are gut-based, not fact-based, and his gut is unbelieveably incorrect about reality. He simply didn't believe in his own college education, and certainly had his own ideas about economics, his Harvard professor says. Faith-based economics, welfare is communism, government is evil, all that.
Economic booms are based on the price of oil, not tax cuts. Reagan cut taxes and increased spending, sending us into a spiral that mirrors today's death swirl, but he was saved by one thing: OPEC's pricing discipline collapsed in the early Eighties. So much wealth, which had been hemorraging to the middle eastern princes since 1973, suddenly flooded into the American economy. We sang with power and money and grew, even as the debt ballooned. Reagan was a lucky bugger: his supply side con would have ruined him had OPEC not collapsed.
Bush the senior had to raise taxes to stop the disaster that supply side created. He paid for it by losing a chance at a second term.
Bush the junior came into office believing, as all the other conservatives did, in the Reagan Miracle. He was wrong: the miracle was the OPEC collapse that saved the old fool from the folly of believing the pack of thieves that sold him on the supply-side con.
So, Bush slammed straight into OPEC and the oil companies ascendant, believing that tax cuts were the solution to all, that government was the problem, and that debt would eventually force the death of the New Deal programs the wealthy hated so. It's five years later, and the International Monetary Fund is telling us we can crash hard or crash soft -- but we will crash, when the Chinese and all the others lending us money cut us off. They will dictates terms to US. And Bush will probably react by screaming at his aides and locking himself away from the public, which is pretty much his reponse to every challenge.
After the crash, the very people who keep selling the supply side con will be flush with offshore cash. They will swoop in and buy cheap, while taxes for the lesser mortals go up 20% to try to stop the bleeding. And oh yep -- they will be the ones who'll be lending us money to shore up the tax base, so they'll make a trillion bucks in interest alone in the next couple of decades -- paid for by tax payers.
Yup, the money is in the mattress - for now.
Ah, we got a Republican in the woodpile. In the good ole days they called that trickle down economics or as we at the bottom liked to call it piss down economics. The rich don't benevolently sprinkle their money down like fairy dust they horde it. The average person can't aford to save the bulk of their income so if you want to improve the economy let the average person have more and stop giving all the advantages to the rich. The big tax give back was a joke because the average person saw little of it and most of that went to pay bills. The tax cuts were a scam because they came snaeking back in the form of stealth taxes. All those cuts in deductions you're starting to see are part of that. No we won't raise your taxes but we'll take away your deductions thus raising your taxes without officially raising them. Services are being cut and fees are going up in an effort to balance the books. There's no free lunch and if the rich want to feast the rest of us have to pay for it. Thinking that we are better off with the corporations getting the tax money than the people only makes sense if you are a major corporation. If you claim it creates jobs apparently you aren't paying attention. There's been a blood bath of job cuts for many years now. Most of it so they can send the jobs overseas. Yes the money creates jobs, in China.
Maybe in your district. This month in Toronto I found one in about 20 minutes using the Physicians directory. (Despite the dribble of objections from the middle class who have captured the notion that privatisation solves everything, some level of public health service is necessary in a socially just state. That's one big point in Canada's favour...)
(What does "excessive snow" actually mean? How is snow "excessive"? It's snow, for goodness' sake. If you have such a problem with it, sure, you probably want to live somewhere else, at least for those couple of months (Dec/Jan/Feb in Toronto). Frankly, I find the Toronto Summer much harder to cope with than the Winter...)
I can't buy a fully-detached house with two car garage for under $400k,
Have you priced that in any other first world country lately? Then try pricing one in Europe. Canada's real estate prices are quite reasonable compared to comparable New World cities of my acquaintance.
As for education, I cannot comment on the elementary levels, since I'm personally done with that phase. I'm sorry if it's not working out with your kids. However, should I choose tertiary, I know that the cities I'm familiar with - Toronto, Montreal - boast many world class institutions. So presumably you weren't talking about university level "education".
On the subject of city life: The infrastructure Just Works(TM); there is clean and efficient public transport (Montreal's Metro can hold its own with any city's); the streets of Toronto are (still) much safer than US cities; Canadians are incredibly, touchingly polite and civil; they read books; they are informed and interested in things outside their own borders; etc.
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.
I can't think of a "democracy" where that hasn't happened from time to time. Ditto for the corruption/kickback/etc things that I'm sorry to say are not uniquely Canadian. Put that one down to human nature: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," n'est-ce pas? We can still hope that something less than armed revolution is necessary to keep a Canadian government (relatively) honest...
There are 36,000 deportation orders on illegal immigrants that can't be executed because the government doesn't know where they are.
I don't think this situation is unique to Canada by any means. It is effectively impossible to locate every alien who doesn't want to be found and deported, especially given Canada's geography. Sure, with a few hundred million thrown at the problem, you could find maybe 70% of them (volunteering your tax dollars?) That last few percent just won't ever be found... could just be they really want to live here! (Duh.)
If you think you're going to...satisfy your ideological cravings by coming up to Canada, you are gravely mistaken
Au contraire. I moved here largely for ideological reasons. Canada did not support the Iraq occupation nor the Vietnam adventure, unlike my previous country of residence. I believe in voting with one's passport and Canada's values as a nation do not make me sick to my heart. The arrogance is at least partly justified; and a healthy and judicious distaste for today's America puts Canadians who feel that way in very good company worldwide.
Canada is able to lay claim to more than its fair share of progressive thinkers. Heck, I hear it's one of only 4 countries in the world that countenances gay marriage, and won't give you a life sentence for a couple of grams of dope. Which reminds me. We're METRIC! If that's not enough to make you want to live here, then nothing will...
you had me at #!
Except this is unlikely to be the case in the situation the parent described. The employers are doing their darnest to get out of paying these "benefits" and change work designations to "part-time" or "temporary" or "contract" work to avoid paying them on ever expanding basis. Most people employed in the only area of job expansion in the US - the burger flipping. Wal-Mart and other "service" industries do not have any such benefits. Even many well to do places, such as Microsoft do that. It is a very common scenario amongst IT workers, who are treated as "consultants". Add to this the fact that if forced to, the employers will opt for cheapest insurance with the lowest coverage and highest deductible possible. To compare this situation to Canada and claim that taxation in the US is "lesser" is ridiculous, even if one does not take into account the miriad of other programs offered by the Canadian and Provincial Governments. It is comparing apples to oranges. The US "take home" pay is "greater" simply because the people who take it home are expected to pay much more dearly for these, largely unaffordable to them, services. The fact that there is 40 million of completely medically uninsured US citizens speaks for itself far louder then any self-centered, greedy shill on Slashdot can. What bothers me about the parent is that I fully expect him to crawl back here as soon as he gets into any medical trouble over there. For the likes of him, all of his profits are "private" and exclusively of his own making and all of the losses and help to him are, naturally, an obligation of the Canadian society. I know that kind of a cockroach all to well.
In other words both systems are third-party pay, but in Canada its the government through higher taxes and in the US it is mostly the employers.
That is untrue. Some industries, mostly old-style and going away manufacturing ones, used to provide generous benefits. Such benefits are today restricted mostly to the CEO class. In this "comparison" the Canadian system is the only one which is "third-party" as in the US the coverage is abysmal and it could be more accurately described "third-party for CEOs and the wealthy, everyone-for-himself-party former middle class and no-party for the poor" system.
The economist Milton Friedman wrote an excellent paper on how to fix the healthcare system in America and he considers many other systems alongside our own including the Canadian and European systems.
That man is a total loon. In his scenario, the coverage for the many Americans would be restricted to the "catastrophic" insurance only, which in the long term is much more expensive as the low income (most populous group and increasing) would avoid using high-deductible medical services until their situation got so desperate as to qualify for "catastrophic" coverage. Such a system promotes use of the "catastrophic", emergency services by discouraging the pre-emptive, lower cost ones. It would result in continuation mad profit taking and little change amongst the insurance leeches who would benefit enormously from the fact that they no longer have to worry about the most expensive and money loosing procedures, for which the taxpayer would pay instead. In other words, it is socialism for the insurance companies. All the profits remain private and in place for regular medical service coverage and the greatest potential losses are socialized. I would expect such as system to prove far more expensive as a whole then the current one (but far more profitable for the insurance companies), even though it would provide at least the catastrophic insurance to all citizens. A typical plan by the kind of a "thinker" Freedman is. An economist my ass.
I've had a real job before; left it to go back and finish up my degrees. Given what the government charges me in taxes, and what they spend on pork-barrel programs for defense contractors, I think they can afford to spend some money to give the lower-class citizens some basic healthcare, and let us higher-ups pay for better care if we want to.
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
The reason that they are cheap here is because otherwise the 20 year patent protections which Canadian government granted to them under the condition of price controls would be removed. Followed by Canada's generic drug makers becoming the suppliers of drugs to 90% of USA. But you knew that, didn't you?
Funny. Doctors weren't scare in Canada until there was universal health care coverage and their fees were fixed by the government. We know not of this "scarce resources" problem, at least when applied to doctors, in the U.S. If you'd stop taxing your "scarce resources" away, perhaps they'd not be so scarce.
Let me explain to you how this works: some doctors (and many other professionals) are supremely greedy sons of bitches. Luckily for them, there is one place on Earth that is insane enough to allow them to control access to medical care for all of its citizens. In that place, called the USA, they can make fortunes completely out of proportion with their services to society. The result of such a thing is that many US citizens have no medical care, most only partial and the doctors get supremely rich. Not to mention other middle-men such as the insurance companies. That is chiefly because medical care is not an element of a free market and not even of capitalism per se. Patients do not qualify as Adam Smith's "educated consumers" as in many cases they arrive in the hospital unconscious and thus unable to "shop" for medical services. Not to mention the lack of knowledge required to even do such "shopping". So, consequently, by being direct neighbours to complete insanity, it is only natural that some unscrupulous medical professionals would leave to hope to get rich quick in such an environment. Luckily, most are sane and understand their role in society. And they dont leave. Many older doctors are actually coming back, having tasted the way things work in the US. That is the long answer to your "scarcity" of doctors. The short answer is: you are an idiot. Do not let reality interfere with your engaging in the oldest pursuit of man: trying to morally justify your own selfish greed.
It's funny how scarcity is a self-fulfilling prophesy of socialist societies.
Only temporarily, when they are neighbours to insane houses of cards built on pure greed. If they can make it to the next "depression" there is smooth sailing afterwards, at least for a few decades, until the memories wane and the greedmongers overtake the discourse again amidst the affluence. Rinse, repeat.