Think Canada's the Place to Be? Think Again (A Canadian expat explains)

The Seattle Times ^ | December 12, 2003 | Jennifer Meeks

[quidnunc]

It has been said that Seattle mirrors Canada in its tolerant attitudes, but there is a dark side to this utopia across the border.

My husband and I left Canada six years ago to start a new life in the United States. Tens of thousands of university-educated, middle-class Canadians leave Canada for the U.S. every year. The Canadian government even has a name for us — "The Brain Drain."

Why do we leave?

Taxes – Ever wonder why you see so many rusty cars up north? It's not just because they salt the roads in the wintertime. People can't afford new ones.

Fifty percent of the Canadian paycheck goes to taxes. And, in Ontario, for example, there's a 15-percent tax at the cash register. Think about paying that every time you buy a car, a fridge or clothes. The Canadian middle class has almost been taxed out of existence.

Official bilingualism – This is what most of the taxes pay for.

Learning and speaking another language may seem like fun to most Americans. Forget about that textbook Parisian you learned in high school. My husband speaks French fluently but not by Canadian government standards. He'd be passed over in employment by someone who speaks a government-approved level of French.

Canada is officially bilingual and that means everything must be in French and English. Everything. It's the law.

If you or your company do not comply with regulations then the official language "police" will be at your door. If you want to pursue a career in retail, the police, the post office, government, business and even the military, you must be bilingual.

The U.S. has its issues with African Americans and Canada has its issues with French Canadians. Affirmative action in the name of official bilingualism has resulted in a great deal of conflict.

Employment – If you are English-speaking in Canada, it's difficult to find a job.

Salaries are much lower than in the U.S. When we moved to the U.S., my husband almost tripled his salary.

Our standard of living is beyond what we could have ever achieved in a lifetime living in Canada. Our relatives can't believe how well average, middle-class Americans live. Our son, who has a learning disability, is getting the best education ever in an American public school.

-snip-

[Timesink]

No one I know even speaks French.

This is one of the Canadian liberal sneering canards I love most: That all Canadians are bilingual and speak both French and English fluently because they're just so darn loving and inclusive. Bullcrap.

[Alberta's Child]

I'll tell you something -- the perspective you get out west is so different than what you get in eastern Canada. In Alberta, it seems like there is so much money pouring out of people's ears that they don't give a sh!t about how much Ottawa takes from them -- it's simply written into their cost of doing business.

And I say this as an American . . . There's nothing better in this world than a place where the incumbent candidate for provincial premier can go out and have too much to drink, make an unscheduled "campaign stop" at a homeless shelter, and end up berating the shelter's occupants for being unemployed and living in a shelter at a time when the province is facing a serious labor shortage --- and see his approval ratings go through the roof as a result.

LOL!

[Allan]

I'd prefer not to identify my institution.
I'll just say it often is in the news.
(There once even was a FR thread about it
after a tumultuous visit by Daniel Pipes).
If you wish to investigate further
I'll let you know that in the main office
of the Political Science department
there still hangs a large portrait of Lenin.

[Dunedain]

Believe it or not I’ve talked to people working on Bay Street – the heart of Canadian capitalism – who would die to protect our social welfare systems! These are businessmen. They should know better. I think people in the East actually think politicians are good people. They deify Trudeau. Most people out there voted Tory or Whig because grand-daddy voted for them. They wouldn’t even consider a third party.
They believe in the system the way it is and actually like it.

In the West we have a sense of betrayal, but out East they don’t get it.

I don’t read the Globe and Mail. I read the National Post – the only conservative national paper in Canada – our last hope.

[Timesink]

My husband waited 7 months here to see a neurologist while fighting the insurance co here - my canadian friend waited 2 days.

Keep in mind that your husband didn't wait seven months because of a lack of neurologists in the US; he waited because his insurance company is run by scumbags. Your Canadian friend was lucky enough to need a medical service that was in ready supply wherever he/she happened to be living. If it had been a service that was in short supply, no amount of insurance, Canadian government largesse or money would have allowed him/her to get the necessary treatment in time, even if it were a life-or-death situation.

Well, okay, money would have worked, if they'd had enough to drive into the US and pay full price out of pocket for US medical care.

Put most succinctly (and greatly oversimplifying, I admit), Canadian health care tends to be very good at taking care of run-of-the-mill, day to day medical needs - colds, broken bones, stuff that can be fixed with an office visit and a prescription or a couple hours in an emergency room - and anywhere from scattershot to horrific at dealing with the really serious stuff that can kill you.

My Canadian friends are anything but poor - huge new homes.

There's no such thing as a poor Canadian?

[hosepipe]

[ There's a lot I don't like about Canada and the way it's run but this article is innacurate, exaggerated and often plain wrong. Enjoy this person...I doubt you've heard the last of her. ]<p.
So, if I get you're drift.. Canada sucks good!, right..

[Timesink]

I don’t read the Globe and Mail. I read the National Post – the only conservative national paper in Canada – our last hope.

Hasn't the National Post just been gutted and turned into a shadow of its former self?

[americanSoul]

Just try putting up a statue of Hitler like that. But for the left, the 100M murdered by communism last century, we're talking democide on a scale never before seen in history, this is willfully ignored.

[Fudd]

As for healthcare, I have always found the Canadian system adequate to my needs. I was diagnosed with bladder cancer (superficial T1G1 tumour)last year and I had a complete CT scan and TUR surgery within the same month as my diagnosis. And it didn't cost me a dime.

According to post #46, that bladder operation cost you, and every other Canadian, about $3000 CDN. Just because you didn't pay out-of-pocket for it doesn't mean it didn't cost you (or somebody else).

[Publius]

Why on earth would you laugh away at the mess that these ex-pat Canucks have made of Western Washington?

The "ex-pat Canucks" did not make a mess of Western Washington. The local inhabitants did.

[Dunedain]

With the scandal it may be the end of the Post ...

[Publius]

Are these the same that voted for having a giant statue of Lenin put up in the city?

Nobody voted to put up a giant statue of Lenin in the city.

The Fremont district of Seattle is the bohemian area of the city, known for its ethnic restaurants, brewpubs and statuary. One well known statue is "Waiting for the Interurban", which unfortunately is not on the street upon which the interurban ran from 1911-40. The Lenin statue was purchased by the Fremont Chamber of Commerce when the Soviet Union had its going-out-of-business sale. The Chamber bought it as a conversation piece.

I suggested to the Chamber that they buy a statue of Saddam Hussein from Iraq and put it next to Lenin as a matched set.

[quidnunc]

Michael Medved is talking about this article during the first hour of his program today.

Medved said that Canada is the "living laboratory of loony liberalism".

[Rummyfan]

As the saying goes - if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's 'free'!

[kever]

Yeh, but Canada doesn't have the social problems that americans have. We don't breed hatred for one another like americans do. We don't bomb people or shoot them just because things aren't "our way".....

[headsonpikes]

Canada, as almost every poster affirms, is hell-bent to become as socialist as the Europeans.

How unlike the U.S., whose Welfare State has been dismantled and whose public sector employees provide good service for modest salaries, unlike those insane Frenchman shivering in hospital line-ups up North!

Yes, Canada's deluded citizens actually take pride in our psychotic Medicare monopoly, whereas Americans see through the Ponzi-like charade of Social Security with a Thatcherite eye.

Definitely no socialism in the U.S.

No siree Bob!

[Snowyman]

Definitely no socialism in the U.S. No siree Bob!

No way , Those aren't socialist programs . Those are government programs.........

[kaktuskid]

Maybe Canada needs to dump Quebec...it may solve a lot of its problems.