Now I said I would get to the reasons for saying that our lives would not significantly improve and the decision to can our application. Canada is a beautiful country, fantastic wealth and the Govt is ploughing huge sums improving the infrastucture, roads rail hospitals, everywhere they are building, but this costs money. In BC, on top of the already very expensive everyday food and clothing items, there is another hidden 12% HST, it appears on your invoice for payment, when you buy that burger meal for $10, you pay $11.20. This tax is on everything, trust me when i say things are expensive, they are really expensive, the only thing I could see that was cheaper was fuel, but you drive more miles in cars that drink fuel, total false economy. Housing in good areas is expensive, sure you can buy a stinking pit for less, but we don't want to do that. Now the driving is absolutely atrocious, when it is dry and sunny they drive too fast and too agressively, when it rains, and it rains pretty heavy in BC, they don't change their driving speed - result - in front of us on Vancouver island when drivng to Nanaimo - 3 dead and 5 seriously injured. Every day on the road, we saw accidents and so many near misses, I don't know if this was because of the drugs they smoke or they just think they are in big 4 x 4 and are not likely to get hurt, the driving truely shocked us..
Ok, I am an accountant in UK, quite well paid. Jo is a nurse and is also quite well paid. We live in York and York is a very nice city with history, culture and everything except mountains! Though my CIMA quals are pretty much accepted everywhere around the world, guess what, not in Canada! My wife trained as a nurse in York, one of the best universities in UK, her qualification is not recognised and has to take the CRNE and has just done SEC at Kwantlan and perhaps will have to train further, what a load of old tosh! If you are professionals, expect the same and even then, do not expect to get a job doing your chosen profession, they will always employ a Canadian born over you everytime, in the meantime, you can expect to drive taxi's (see my last post on the driving) or servicing hotel rooms, this I saw with my own eyes, managers are white, professionals are white or chinese, the poor jobs are for immigrants, the best you can hope to get, is a job in the airports. Now we also have two teenage girls, neither wish to leave their friends behind, so neither wish to go to Canada. If I insist on it, it is likely they will rebel. Anything that goes wrong in their lives will be my fault for taking them to Canada, the fact that at sometime they are going to be travelling on those roads with all those terrible drivers makes me shudder.
We earn about £75k, which is about $120k, I can tell you without reservation that £75k will buy you more in UK and will give you a much better standard of living than $120k in canada. So please be aware that the pavements are not covered in Gold in canada, it will be extremely difficult. If you have a choice as to where you can immigrate, think about the options, we have decided on UK to live out our lives and we may holiday in canada, though for completeness and to give ourselves the option, we will continue with the PR application, we shall land and then we will have 3 years to make it permanent or remain in the UK. We shall confirm the PR and land as part of a holiday to the states, see Niagra and then fly down to disney during my 6 weeks holiday we currently get a year. I wonder how much holiday I would get in Canada?
I wish you all well and I will keep you informed as to our progress of our application, but I think we know that our dream ended earlier this week when we actually visited the place. Trevor
!!!! With the Grace of shree Waheguru Ji...
