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Any Canadian still willingly going there deserves all the smoke 💨 and shamed

Congratulations for all the hard work and research you 've done to compile so many data and provide a comprehensive explanation of the current situation. I'm an immigrant looking to get my PR, I have qualifications from one of the top universities in the world, experience as an international consultant and most important I do respect the Canadian culture and follow the rules. However, even for me it is uncertain what is going to happen? and/or if the government will make more changes and kick us out hahaha. I do believe that immigration has poured a lot of money into Canadian's pockets and most of them are not considering that, some of that money is going to go to another country who is willing to manage immigration with a better approach and provide a more certain perspective to new immigrants. The government allowed many bad actors (locals and foreigners) to take advantage of the system and those who are going to pay the bill are new immigrants due to political elections, and that is just sad. We will see who are they going to blame for mismanagement of public resources and the possible crash of several industries, that are currently relaying on foreign money, once there are no new immigrants to blame. I agree with most of the new rules regarding immigration, but I strongly disagree with the political approach of how the government is blaming immigrants for their lack of proper management. I still believe Canada is a great country no matter the outcome of my personal immigration process, wish you all the best of luck!

I am a born and raised Canadian and have seen my country go downhill for at least the last couple of decades.\nHealth Care: doctors and nurses are moving Stateside in droves. No, the US doesn’t have universal health care but there are insurance plans and the care is enormously better. My girlfriend had 4th stage throat cancer. In Calgary the doctors at some point told her there was nothing more they could do for her and to get her affairs in order. Her father sent her to the Anderson Clinic in Houston - yes it was expensive but they treated her, saved her life and that was 24 years ago. \nIt’s common in our emergency rooms to wait up to 12 hours to be seen. \nOur system isn’t progressive and doctors and nurses don’t get paid near as well as in the States. That being said, I am happy that I don’t have to pay to see the doctor or have a stay in the hospital. \nCost of Living: Once upon a time it was good - housing was cheap and many companies had the full range of benefits and salaries were equal to the cost of living. Now these same companies have stripped the benefits by hiring people under contract so they don’t have to give them benefits. \nRents are through the roof and in Calgary there are no rent caps. Buying a decent house in a decent neighbourhood is impossible unless you inherit or make a six figure income. This, in no small part, has created a homelessness crisis that never had been seen in such numbers before. Crime also is getting worse by the day. Canada was once known as a safe country. This is no longer the case.\nEverything is very expensive and the tax very high. Plus, we have to suffer winter! Where I live, the joke is that we have two seasons - July and winter!\nI still like my city (not love) but I am retired and own two houses - one inherited and the other bought when it was affordable (32 years ago). Calgary would not be a place I would live if I was a newcomer. Vancouver is beautiful but you really pay for it. \nTrudeau has helped make a big mess of things with immigration and lax criminal laws. My beef is not with immigrants I must state - it is with the lack of jobs for them when they come, thereby forcing bad living conditions and an over reliance on the social systems. I add that the immigration population is much more willing to work in jobs they have to take (despite a high education) than our natural and bloated citizens.\nSo yes, Canada has increasingly gone downhill. On a positive note, hand guns at least are not legal and our country has beautiful natural land.

I’m a Canadian nurse and I lived in the US for 10 years during my career. I did it when I was young to gain work experience and travel with friends. It gave me a lot of insight in how it feels to live in both countries. I’ve been a nurse and patient in both counties so I also know how it feels to work, live and be a resident in both. \n\nI cannot articulate enough how it has confirmed to me how fortunate I am to be Canadian. The perks to living in the US were very superficial and frivolous things that matter very little in the broad scheme of things,….which I see as more restaurant chains, cheaper restaurant food, more shopping options, etc. As a young person when I lived there,…those things seemed amazing but matter far less as I get older. \n\nWhen I lived there, I paid a fraction of the income taxes that I paid in Canada but it’s only short term gain for long term pain. The cost of health care, the amounts of gov funded benefits (disability, EI, pension, etc) in the US makes it well worth paying taxes to offset these things as in Canada. I have had cancer 3 times in 5 years and I’ve not paid a cent for treatment, scans, surgery, etc in Canada. My employer held my job for 2 years and I received long term disability of 70% of my yearly wages and my employer paid my full pension and benefits as I was off of work. After 2 years, my cancer returned and was deemed incurable so I will continue to receive this pay and benefits until I’m 65 and can retire as I can no longer work. I have no financial worries as I battle cancer. \n\nTo contrast,…my US employer was a world reknowned hospital that had excellent pay and benefits. Had I been working there when I was diagnosed with cancer, I would only have gotten full pay for 6 weeks until my sick time and vacation time was used up. Then I was eligible for a fraction of my income for 3 months, which would not be enough to live on. I would not have had my pension paid. After that, I’d receive no more pay and my employer would hold my job without pay for 6 months and then I’d be let go. My cancer required nearly 2 years off of work so after 5 months of this minimal pay, I’d have no income, no job and no benefits with a new pre existing condition to ensure that I’d have a snowballs chance in hell of getting future coverage. Meanwhile during that 5 months of some pay, I’d still need to pay huge costs of treatment despite having insurance but that would disappear after I was let go from my job. I’d have to return to work during my treatment just to afford to continue it. I have many US friends that had a similar cancer that worked throughout to cover basic cancer care while I was able to recuperate without working or fearing being unable to pay. There is nothing comparable to this when you are sick. It is everything!\n\nSadly, many of my American friends are very ill informed on how health care works in other countries and don’t see the shortcomings in their own. Ironically though, they are willing to argue it without proper information so I often find that bizarre. While lived there I felt as though I was in a bubble where the only news that I saw was US news. I saw no info or minimal about Canada in my whole time there,…aside from falsehoods about health care to scare people away from seeking change. “Canadians are all dying while waiting”, “they are all coming to the US for care”, “they pay 80% income tax” etc. All propaganda,…some from politicians or those that should know better. It was truthfully mind boggling to me how educated people could know so little about the world. It almost felt as though they heard so much propaganda about how terrible other places were while only having knowledge of the US, that it ensured that things would stay the same without anyone wanting beneficial changes to dysfunctional policies (like health care, cost of meds, lack of gun regulations, etc). It’s very bizarre.

I’ve been in Canada for over 24 years and I have never seen it like this in my life!\nThe main cause of the majority of issues is the housing crisis.\n\nWhat a lot of you might not be aware of is that we have not been building homes to keep up with the demand for over two decades. That’s why the price for housing has increased astronomically. And then our government decided to basically allow unfettered immigration in order to take advantage of the new immigrants’ money so they can use it to fund the Canadian Pension Plan.\n\nJust an FYI, the way CPP is funded is that the current group of working people are paying for the current group of retired seniors. And due to the lack of childbirths and people living longer, the CPP can no longer afford to take care of all the seniors in its system. Thus, the government devised a plan to have more people coming here so as to milk the money they have. Actually, they’ve even gone to the extent to basically allow seniors to be willingly euthanized… it’s absolutely bonkers.\n\nBut anyway, I digress… so then with housing at astronomical prices, you’re now pushing out the poor people onto the streets, causing homelessness. \n\nAnd when people are homeless, the average person will do drugs to escape reality and commit crimes to survive. Which is why it’s now increasingly dangerous in public spaces. \n\nThen, the transportation also never accounted for such a massive increase in population. At least not in Toronto. Which is also causing major inconvenience to go anywhere. \n\nIt used to be that if you lived in the suburbs, you could drive into Toronto pretty quickly but now, it takes like an hour and a half to two hours, making it extremely difficult to get around. And also, hard to take advantage of the “lower” housing prices in the suburbs.\n\nBut that’s not all. Part of the issue is that the Trudeau government wants to no longer have Canada use our oil and gas overnight, which is causing the increase in gas prices. Many Canadians still rely on gas because electric cars are not efficient in Canadian weather and are simply too expensive for your average person. And yet they cut off our supply of oil and gas which causes the price inflation of transport and anything that requires to be moved such as groceries and supplies.\n\nAnd don’t get me started on how our healthcare system is falling apart… even though we pay some of the highest taxes in the world…

We don't need more Uber, Skip or cab drivers or pretengineers with Master's degrees from U of Deli or some other unknown school who don't know s**t. Presently we have an unending supply of cheap labor entering the country under the falsehood of 'student' meanwhile wages remain stagnant and the lifestyle quality has dropped. Pay workers higher wages and you will get them. McD's is a sh*t job so it's for school kids to get a taste of where you don't want to be in 10 years. Stop your BS that the cost of McF-u meals will go up. Corporations have no interest other than to shareholders because they are legally obligated to have their interests in mind and will just pass the costs on. Rents increased for a number of reasons (idiots willing to overpay for something and then pass that on) and one being the market will bear it especially when you have an audience willing to split rent 25 ways. Most real Canadians cannot fathom the idea of 24 roommates...in other parts of the world, this is luxury living, running hot water, foodbanks...you can still afford the tweaked Honda ala stovepipe muffler, tinted windows that make it harder to see people on the inside...yeah safe idea fellas. Then there are the sword fights in Brampton? What f*** ing country is this??

My first visit to Canada (the so called Province of Quebec) was in 1972. If you've had asked me at that time where was paradise, I'd have answered to you that it was right here in Quebec and particularly in Montreal. I spent two years and went back home in 1974. I came back five years later in 1979 with the intent of staying and I did. I've spent decades of wonderful years here, and although I will leave next year, I will still remember with nostalgia the lost best decades (70s, 80s and 90s) I'd have spent in Montreal. I will remember the most beautiful city of the world and what it has become in the years 2000 amd counting. I remember how clean and well maintained that city was; how its people were among the most polite and civilized in the World; how life was so easy and affordable; how tolerant as a society the French Canadian one was and so on. Today, all that is gone, and when I take a look at the pile of trashes and garbages on the Ste-Catherine street and Saint Laurent Boulevard, it makes feel sick. In fact, Montreal has become a huge Third World city, and it is not better on a social point of view : you can't walk one block or two without being dragged by a homosexual or a lesbian. Speaking of lesbian and homosexual, you can't keep your work if you don't support the LGBT and or willing to date your boss. I am leaving next year to go back to my country where there is still a seemingly willingness to normalcy, but since the LGBT has managed to sneak its power everywhere, I am not holding my breath of a bright future overthere, but it's my home and I prefer to be there and deal with it.

Hmm I wonder why difficult technical jobs are relatively low paying in Canada. Oh right because you're in competition with the entire world, not just other Canadian citizens born and raised in Canada. Canada is effective subsidized the whole world and artificially lowering their own employment standards. As sad as it sounds, there will always be someone talented from a developing nation willing to do your very difficult job which you studied years to be able to do, for barely above the cost of living, because this is still better than their career and life trajectory in their own nation. How many big tech firms in the US have fired thousands of US employees in austerity moves, only then to apply for H1B visa a week later. Why educate, train, employ, and pay fairly American workers, when you can find an immigrant willing to do it for half the price. I'm pro immigration and even pro high special immigration, but the cutoff for H1B visa salaries should be 50% higher than prevailing wages in similar roles. If this position is so specialized and in demand that there simply aren't enough native populations available to do it and schools simply aren't training it, then supply and demand homie, go pay for it. Oil, gas, and petroleum engineering is a great example of this - the US barely teaches this anymore despite there being demand, so we have to hire foreign nationals. Engineering and medicine are examples of oligarchs finding ways to extract the most capital by exploiting people as much as possible. Why pay a reasonable wage for really difficult jobs, when you can find a foreigner willing to do it for barely enough to cover groceries and rent.

1. While McDonald's was originally created in the US there is a 2nd version and its 100% Canadian. After the u.s. McDonald's began franchising one of the brothers became so disgusted with the lack of regulation in the US on what is considered 'food' he moved to Canada and relaunched the chain. While the restaurant named remains the same and a handful of the main burgers the two companies are completely separate and have nothing to do with one another.\n\n2. Gov work, nurses, doctors, teachers, etc have a regulated minimum wage of 7.25 are you ....... kidding me??? 3. The US has no paid maternity leave u have the baby take 2 weeks off unpaid and back work 4. Server's make 2.13 + tips an hour ...... 5. The federal and state government recommend homes in the city have sewage plumbing BUT it is not required. There are literally houses in the southern states with the toilets flushing right into the front or backyard. 6. Perfectly fine to pay a man more than a woman in the US because a woman isnt a man. 7. And if a woman literally becomes a man by changing 'her' name + physically in appearance via surgery/hormones/whatever she still won't get paid the same as a man because she still not viewed as a man: no gender rights. 8. Where's the healthcare when the US has the highest taxes in the world??? 9. Classist. 10. No regulated education. Literally there is no rules on teaching the students these days are learning absolutely nothing. There's no such thing as regulating education in the US anymore 11. The country is over 33 trillion dollars in debt..... It's never going to fix that.\n\nI could go on and on for another hundred reasons before I'd have to Google something else to add to the list but these are only a few of the reasons why any Canadian who knows anything about the US, would never willfully move south of the boarder. American people themselves, aside from a personality trait here or there are fine. Its the demon structure of the country that make America deplorable. Sorry.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I live in El Salvador, but I've been thinking about moving somewhere in North America. The US is cool but, I don't want to run across all of the salvadorans who are already there LOL, I want something new. Also, I'd like to still live in, or at least not very far away, from the Americas. I'm too lazy to go to Europe, and have to learn the language there, sorry, I already speak Spanish and English well enough. Only Japan, or Brazil may change my mind, language wise (my Portuguese is enough so I could get by, and I'm also a Japanese music aficionado).\n\nOn the other hand, I love dressing very flamboyant, and, seeing how Canadians wear in the winter, with those huge sweaters and winter clothing, I wonder if it's the place for me ? (I know, that's a very ridiculous concern), also, I don't know if I'd get used to long winters. I've always said I don't like Salvadoran heat, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to trade that for Canadian winters.