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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?"
The US is a large country. The "lifestyle of the US" does differ from region to region. To travel to "most places in the US" and get a good appreciation of each would take years. I'm sure Canada is similar.
I moved from 1 state to another and life is very different for me. Turns out I like where I live now, I don't ever want to move back. And if I travel to different parts of my state, life is quite different.
As a Canadian living and working in the States, I wish the Canadian government would have done more to keep skilled citizens rather than attracting skilled immigrants. Unfortunately it is really just too easy to max out in the Canadian market place and the only option is to move south.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Just as I am researching what it takes to immigrate to Canada, job opportunities, quality of life, housing prices, etc.
I come from Europe and, no offense to our American friends, find Canada a much more appealing choice than the USA - exactly because I perceive Canada and Canadian mentality to be much closer to a European mindset.
I admit this may just be a whim, but coming from a country where everybody under 40 years of age is suffering from financial rape from the older generation, Canada sure does look appealing.
I can see this initiative as targeting the citizenry of the United States. It makes perfect sense to target them, and here's why:
US citizens already speak english, work with dollars and cents, drive cars on the right, etc. At the core, they're basically the same (less some cultural differences) as Canadians. Less government money spent on teaching them english or how to drive.
Right now the Canadian dollar is at $0.85USD. The minimum wage in Ontario is at $7.45CDN/hour for an adult (slightly less for people who serve food/beverages and are subject to gratuities), which is more than $6.25USD/hour. Bear in mind too, that minimum wage is typically only paid to entry level jobs, and most other jobs pay more. I've heard horror stories of US Wal-Mart workers making maybe $5/hour - come up here and get a pay raise!
Come on up boys, We've got plenty of room!
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
For those who are curious, the above is not an exaggeration, as shown by this film.
As partially summarized by a Canadian blogger, "When you have finished watching this film several images will remain with you for some time to come. A woman who spent two years waiting for knee surgery and innocently asks the American filmmakers whether the waiting lists are as long there as they are here. The moment when she begins to grasp that a health care waiting list is a concept alien to most sick Americans, though sadly not health care compelled bankruptcy, is something that cannot be explained. More stories follow of addiction to pain killers brought on by wait times, of the suffering families go through, of men and women calmly contemplating death for ailments which medical science long ago conquered, but which government control has placed out of reach."
An explanation of my choices for friends
Some parts of Ontario are on the same latitude as northern California ... in fact they have several wineries in that area.
The Ezine Directory
It takes time to see specialists here in America too. Three months would be rare, but it happens. A lot of it just has to do with the supply and demand for people with specialized medical knowledge. Canada is a little bit worse off because lower wages for doctors->lower # of people willing to be doctors.
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Crudely Drawn Games
The question of living in Canada vs USA depends a lot on your skill set (job qualifications), home language, tolerance of bad weather, politics, and intoxicational preference.
Let's say you have a good job skill set and can get a job more or less either north or south of the 49th parallel. If you speak French as a native language, you'll most likely feel more comfortable in Quebec. If you speak Spanish as a home language, Miami, Los Angeles, or New York would be more confortable. This issue is neutral for native English or other language speakers, eh?
If you don't really like the cold, but don't mind dark gloomy rainy days (say you're a goth programmer or gamer), Vancouver BC would definitely beat the rest of Canada, New England, California, or Florida (too much sunshine).
Fascists, either Christian or racial, will definitely feel more at home in the USA. It's your kind of place.
Cannibus lovers, ('Stoners' to everyone else) will be more comfortable in British Columbia than anywhere in the USA, except possibly Maui. Not even the Humboldt Thunderbolt beats the BC bud. And you're less likely to have a Hummerload of psycho Iraqi vets kicking in your door and sticking machine guns or tasers in your kid's faces at 3am if you smoke in British Columbia instead of the USA. That's important to some people, less to others.
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.
However if you're gonna get sick, try to get sick in Canada instead. With the new bankruptcy laws in the USA, along with a corrupt and insanely expensive health care system there, you'll be in debt forever if you need medical care in the USA. Like if you get shot. The US has more guns than people, Canada doesn't.
America is just as socialist as Canada or any European country.
...). In Canada and most European countries, the socialism is more towards things like a health care system, welfare state, etc ...
...
Only difference is that most of the American style "socialism" is more towards the military and defense sector (ie. Halliburton, Bechtel, etc
America has all kinds of socialistic institutions like:
The Federal Reserve Bank,
Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac,
Social Security,
The US Postal Service,
Pension Benefit Guarnaty Corporation,
Medicare,
Medicaid,
Amtrak,
etc
We're doing fine at keeping skilled doctors etc. in, working the NHS etc., the problem is the non-workers. I was waiting at a bus stand a few months back and i started talking to this guy there. He told me he was a South African and that he was only here to get his family transported over so his son could have an operation free on the NHS. I don't exactly call that a good reason to be over here, given that the goverment are already EXTREMELY generous to immigrants, what with giving them a house and car for free, more than pensioners or disabled people get.
~HTP~ Hug that tux
Also as an American currently living in Canada, I must disagree. Canadian healthcare is FAR superior.
Canadian healthcare does the job -- everyone has a basic level of care. For specialized services that are not life threatening, you wait. In the US, if you are fortunate enough to have good insurance, you can fight your way through the system and get care...once. After that, you're hosed unless you manage to keep insurance through your work, because you'll never get insurance personally again.
My wife waited 3 months for a gynecological procedure in Bellingham, WA before we moved. She's been waiting for 5 months or more here in Vancouver for a possible knee procedure.
Emergency medicine is exactly the same here except that you don't get a multithousand dollar bill at the end of the experience.
Our last complete year in the US, we paid over $14,000 US for medical insurance. In BC, we pay about $1300 CDN. The $5K CDN or so in extra taxes we paid saved us a bunch of money.
And BTW, only 2% or so of Canadians ever avail themselves of US healthcare, despite claims that Canadians flock to the US to get care they can't get on time in Canada. Just ain't so.
It's more about not staying where you are not wanted. Bush sr said that atheists are not real americans and should be allowed to vote for example. The exact quote was " I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
This is the president of the USA telling atheist citizens that they don't belong in the country. Other members of this administration have made similar remarks about atheists, collage professors, environmentalists, femminists, homosexuals and other people they hate.
Why stay in a country that you are not wanted in? Why not move to a place where people don't hate you?
evil is as evil does
You know, I keep hearing about this, but none of my Canadian friends have ever mentioned it; I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't ever happen, but I don't think it's the big problem that a bunch of Americans make it out to be. Hell, last time my friend Sarah got sick with a nasty cold (!), the local hospital offered to send out an AMBULANCE to pick her up.
On the flip side, if you're a student in the US, you can shell out $100 a month for CRAP healthcare -- as in, if the Student Heath Center is open and you don't go there first, you can pay your own bills, and unless it's an emergency (life-threatening), you had better not even think of going to see a doctor, because the student insurance won't cover it. Oh, and it won't cover anything out-of-network, so I owe my dentist $150 because the student insurance I forked out about won't cover cleanings with my regular dentist.
At least I have healthcare; half of the people I go to school with don't, because $100 a month is more than they can afford.
Now that I'm working 'full time' again, things are better (back to real healthcare), but having experienced 'cheap healthcare' for a year, I'd rather see us Americans with a better system.
I hate to say it, but I think the Japanese have something going with the way they run things -- even without being on the 'National Insurance', I was able to go to a Japanese clinic and have my cough diagnosed as a really nasty case of pneumonia -- and was out the door after a total of an hour, with a small bag filled with about five different kinds of medication, and all for about $200 (IIRC). I shudder to think of what two sets of chest X-rays and about two weeks of meds would have cost in the U.S. without insurance.
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Funny you should say that health care is non-existent in Canada. Because Canadians pay less per capita for health care then the people in the US. Americans pay 14% of GDP and don't cover everyone. Just the rich and those with corporate health plans can afford it. While in Canada we pay 12% GDP and everyone is covered on our health plan. Regardless of who you are and what you do for a living.
Non-Existent is an exageration. Thats what the ultra right wing fasists will have you believe so that they can consider installing a two tierd health care system.
As for affording to live in Canada. I don't believe its the taxes that are difficult to live with. Its the lack of work. Lets face it there are more opportunities in the US. Canadian companies are pansies and won't take a chance on someone if they have no experience. Have you looked at what the requirements are in Canada for working in the computer science field. I can safeley say that most job postings are unrealistic when it comes to the job requirements. But thats what Free trade got us companies moving down to the US because they don't want to pay into a public health care system even though they pay less.
Free trade is the problem not the high taxes. Since free trade came in Corporate Canada has been completely gutted. Even the Hudsons Bay Company is subject to an American take over bid. A 300 Year old company. Its been around longer then when IBM was selling Cheese Slicers. Yet its subject to a takeover bid. Thats just not right.
I remember when Free trade first came in to Canada. I personally witnessed a 20 year old company go out of business within a few months of an American big box store come in to the market in Vancouver. That big box store was Home Depot. They drove out a smaller company that served the Greater Vancouver area well for more then 20 years. And the list doesn't stop there. Eatons was purchased by Sears, Woodwards went out of business all together, and McMillan Blodel was bought up by Wearhouser. McMillan Blodel was the biggest logging company in Canada and one of the biggest in the world. That gives you an Idea of the negative impact free trade has had on Canada. The taxes are manageable. They'd be manageable if it wasn't for outside presures. Personally I hope our prime minister follows up on his threats and dumps the North American Free Trade Agreement. That would be the best thing that has ever happened to Canada.
I moved from Arizona to Hamburg, Germany just over a year ago. The best move I've ever made. I make a little more money than the US national average for a Unix Admin but the cost of living here is much lower than Phoenix or my other recent home San Diego, CA.
The health care system here is also socialized but with an option for private health care (either exclusive or in addition to) your basic health care.
Naturally there is the language problem. You can live here if you don't speak German but it would be very very difficult. For me, that's not a problem though.
The immigration laws are extremely strict for most nationalities but not nearly as bad for Americans. They do kindof use a Catch22 system though. You can't get residence permission without employment and a registered address here. You can't rent an apartment or get a job without residence permission though. There are loopholes but it's tough.
Of course, if anyone in your family tree, has or had, even the slightest percentage of German blood you can get citizenship pretty easily.
If you're married to a German, you don't have to change your citizenship to live here. Of course you can if you want to but it's not required which is my case.
Crime is extremely low everywhere and the weather is similar to the Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York region.
The IT market is somewhat thin, similar to the US, but there are plenty of jobs out there.
Except this is unlikely to be the case in the situation the parent described.
Nope. 80% of Americans get their health insurance paid for by their employers. It is in fact very likely.
Most people employed in the only area of job expansion in the US - the burger flipping.
Nope. Here are the fastest growing ocupations in the US over the past 10 years:
Health aides 138%
Human service workers 136%
Personal and home care aids 130%
Computer engineers and scientists 112%
Systems analysts 110%
Physical and corrective therapy assistants and aides 93%
Physical therapists 88%
Paralegals 86%
Teachers, special education 74%
Medical assistants 71%
In general the top categories are in health care. It seems to me that a nation with the terrible health care problems you claim would not be adding health care workers at that rate.
Wal-Mart and other "service" industries do not have any such benefits
Wal-Mart does in fact offer health covereage to it's workers. The problem here is that their pay rate is so low that about half of them decline coverage.
Such benefits are today restricted mostly to the CEO class.
Utter nonsense. My insurance coverage, which I pay $25 a month for includes 100% hospital coverage, free prescriptions and $5 a visit copay to the doctor. Two years ago I needed an MRI for an ankle injury and was able to get an appointment in 3 days. Out of pocket cost was $0. I am definitely NOT a CEO class person.
An economist my ass.
A Nobel Prize winning economicist, actually.
It seems to me that you are living in some sort of weird fantasy world not connected in any way to what the reality is.
There are not many people like you there statistically. You are an elite exception. Also a huge, $1200 a month, tax on an employer is supposedly somehow better then personal taxation how again?
and it's for far better care than I can get in Canada -
And that would be how precisely? Blow jobs by nurses? 1400 square feet bed-rooms with French maids? What?
much of what it covers is not covered by provincial health care programs.
Ouija boards or Chinese Astrological Brick To The Head Therapy I presume?
Even then, it's still cheaper
$1200 a month is cheaper? Does it cover whatever that thing is you are smoking right now too?