Don't Move to Canada Unless You Hate Money
The Money Pit
No Exit
On days like today, when the sky is blue and it’s reasonably warm but not too warm, I don’t totally hate this place. The cherry blossoms are out. You can see the mountains in the distance covered ever so slightly with snow. I can hear the seagulls calling from the beach which is falling distance from my place and the sounds of ships in the harbor. I love the beach, I used to go to it more, but not so much now. Maybe that’s enough, these moments to make it through one more day.
And making it through one more day isn’t always easy because every day is a slog. My life in the United States wasn’t perfect, far from it, but at least I thought I was moving forward. Now, it’s just enough to stand still. Something in the house breaks, someone takes a dislike to me, and it can upend my whole month, or even year. At best I break even, at worst I run a deficit so large I would need DOGE to clean it up. It’s so enraging. Here I am, two degrees, ten times the skills and now decades of experience - and I still can’t catch up to the life I had before I came here. Like Joe Exotic, I realized that I would never financially recover from this. Sometimes a voice whispers to me,
“Fuck this. Take your keys, toss them in the hallway and walk down to the nearest train station. You can rebuild somewhere else, anywhere else, and it would still be easier than here. People would respect you without you having to punch them in the face every time. It’s got to be better than this!”
But I can’t now, at least, not yet. And the older I get, the more fragile, the harder it will be to finally say goodbye to a country that seems to say to me every day, “good riddance.” My child even knows this. Commenting on a novel they have been ordered to read at school they go, “It’s not totally about racism in America, but it has some aspects and I’m just waiting for the assignment that’s going to be something like, ‘How does this book illustrate how terrible America is?’ or something like that.”
I said to them, “You don’t have to defend my honor, you know. Just say you are from [their father’s home country which is not Canada]. Everyone loves [citizens of country].” But they look at me with that face that tells me I have taught them a little too well. Death before dishonor. Other than that, they are happy here and so I am stuck until they are capable adults. But I do think that graduation limo might be a uHaul.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, and I’m not supposed to be here. Of all the places I could have gone, this was probably the worst one at the worst time in the worst possible way. Even my other immigrant friends know it. They tell me, “You should be somewhere warmer.” They are right. Like Siberia or maybe somewhere in Scandinavia, Finland or Denmark. I’ve heard the Danes have a sense of humor at least. Well, until you joke about annexing Greenland. I can claim some ancestors as a family name is common in that part of the world. But here, I am an alien. Maybe that’s why I like aliens. Maybe that’s why I told an acquaintance I wanted to go to Mars. She responded, “What’s Mars have that [Canadian city] does not have?” And I replied, “It doesn’t have a damn thing. It’s Mars.”
There is nothing about this place that appeals to me as a person. I don’t like plants. I’m allergic to all of them. In the spring I have to lock myself in the house and run air filters 24 hours a day if I want to be able to breath. I can barely ski. I might go once or twice down the bunny slope but then I want to go to lodge and wait until everyone is done so we can go sit in the hot tub and drink and ignore the snow. Snowboarding hurts my knees and just looking at ice skates makes my ankles ache. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a hockey game on my own behest. I have no plans to change that.
I don’t care about fishing or sitting in blinds waiting for some hapless deer I could not shoot if I wanted to. Hiking makes my back and hips hurt, but if there are birds it’s kind of okay, I guess. The locals ruin this by insisting on doing it up the side of a mountain, calling it “The Grind.” I am not doing that. The water at the beach or the lake is so cold it feels like ice even in the dead of summer. Sometimes I use it to bring the swelling down on my feet, but good luck taking a swim in that thing. Most of the beaches are rocky and hurt to walk on. It’s never warm enough or cold enough to be interesting or comfortable. Oh, and all the “fitness”. God help me, what the fuck are you running from? The police? Did you miss the bus or something?
Have you even tried the lemonade from a Chick-fil-A? I would probably not only ban gay marriage, but I would also ban straight marriage for one of those things. Why are the roads so narrow? Why are the parking spots so narrow? Where the fuck am I even going? Is it some sort of federal crime to put up road signs? Jesus, is that a goddam *traffic circle*? WHY IS EVERYTHING SO OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE??? I never imagined I'd be personally offended by the price of cheese.
What am I supposed to do with this view? Take a picture? You mean like every other picture anyone has ever taken since the beginning of photography? Who do you think I am? Ansel Adams? I assure you I can eat a rare hamburger and not die. I’ve lived for almost thirty years eating them and I’m not dead yet. And why am I so drunk immediately? I’ve had two drinks! Now I have to go home early. Do you even understand the sublime pleasure of drinking alone at the bar? Do you know that having an incredible conversation with a perfect stranger is one of life’s great joys? Here no one talks to anyone. They call it “The Chill.” Is this shit really worth it?
But wait! I know you are thinking, WHAT ABOUT FREE HEALTHCARE?? Give me a minute and I will get to that. First, let me tell you about the law of immigration and its perils. Now I can’t say what it’s like to immigrate to the USA. My understanding is that it is harder, but I think I can come close.
The Little Mermaid
There are two parts to immigration. The first part is the process: what paperwork you have to fill out and assemble, the category you qualify for, like for marriage or a job. There are the boxes you have to check like you aren’t bankrupt, or an ex-felon, or have tuberculosis. This is the tedious part, but it’s generally not hard to do if you know how to write and are a little organized.
You need a reason, or grounds, to immigrate to Canada; you can’t just decide to come because you want to. The first, possibly most well-known ground, is as a refugee. Refugee status can be claimed if you find yourself on Canadian soil and you present yourself (or find yourself dragged to) the Canadian border services. Once there, you can claim that if sent home you will suffer some sort of lethal harassment. Usually this only works if you are coming from an active war zone. Just being from the third world or being gay doesn’t cut it. Being an American liberal starlet may be more difficult than I imagine, but silly Americans have tried to make this claim only to predictably fail. I do not know of a single case where an American has been successful since the end of Vietnam.
And it’s not just Americans that have issues. Canada has a “Safe country” agreement with the USA so if you are trying to enter Canada through the United States, you will be turned away. Despite constant scolding of the USA about its violence and guns, Canadians are perfectly happy to send hapless Haitians and Nigerians packing back to the hellscape that is America if they try to come up through Roxborough Road. However, if you manage to run and succeed at that gauntlet, there are dozens of NGOs and other kinds of support to get you settled. If you come any other way, you are on your own.
The second way is to come is to be an applicant that will bring something valuable to the table. Having certain skills, speaking English or being bilingual, and being educated will help you qualify for an “invitation” to come to Canada. You need a certain number of points, which you get for things like work experience, age, English test results, and qualities that will supposedly help you to integrate better into Canadian society. The number of these points generally fluctuates but if you come as a couple, you have a much better chance of being allowed to apply. Often, even very skilled people will need to have that spouse in tow to give them the required “bump up” in points they need.
There are also various degrees of this type of entry if you come to fulfil a particular need or go to a specific province. There was some consternation a few years ago as Quebec, which had looser criteria, was letting in immigrants under its provincial sponsorship. These immigrants were picking up as soon as they could and moving to better cities, most notably Vancouver and Toronto, and ostensively causing the price of houses to rise. This angered the locals, but there was nothing much they could do about it.
It used to be you had to have a job offer in hand before you were allowed to apply, but since it is very hard to get employers to actually hire you and keep you hired, the government decided to do away with that requirement and simply flood the market with skilled workers. Predictably, this has aggravated the housing situation as well as the population and now the government is desperately trying to roll back these plans.
The other way in as a "skilled worker" is to have plans to start a start-up business that Canada needs. You do need to partner with Canadian investors, you can’t just do it on your own. It used to be you could just buy your way in with $400,000. If you had it in cash, you could just say you were going to start up your own business and you would get a special visa that allowed you to enter. Considering how much I’ve spent, $400,000 would have been the much cheaper option.
Lastly, you can be a family sponsor. This means you either have a first degree relative in Canada or are “married” to a Canadian. I use quotes because you don’t actually have to get married with the license or anything. All you have to do is have a “marriage-like” relationship with your paramour for one year. That’s it. After that point, your lover can be your sponsor and you can apply to become a permanent resident, the first step in becoming Canadian. This “sponsor” is now responsible for your food, shelter and other needs, and if they refuse to provide them, the sponsor has to reimburse the government for your welfare. Should you become separated in that time, or even after obtaining the residency, the sponsor is still responsible for their now immigrated spouse for a set point of time. How long of a time depends on the immigrant. For a young, educated person, it can be as little as three years. For an older person, or someone permanently disabled, the time can be infinite.
It doesn’t always have to be voluntary. You can, and I have in my professional capacity, force a Canadian to sponsor their “spouse”. It must be real; sometimes foreigners will pay uninvolved Canadians to claim them as “spouses,” but that is what is known as "marriage fraud.” Often Canadians assume that it’s “fraud” if their relationship doesn’t work out and they try to cancel the sponsorship or refuse to sponsor at all. Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t work. Once the relationship is established, either by admission or in a court of law, the sponsor is committed, like it or not. This is doubly true if there are children involved. That can come of a bit of shock when you realize you are now responsible for someone for decades, whether they love you for it or not.
No matter what path you choose, while you wait, your life waits in abeyance. Sometimes the wait can be extensive. In some cases, it has taken decades. In the meantime, you either need to wait outside of the country, or, if you have some reason - a job, spouse, or school - you can wait inside the country. Once you get a visa you can only do what that visa allows so if you have a job you need to keep it or if you go to school, you need to stay in it. If you lose your job, you are now on a clock. If you can’t find work or some other kind of sponsorship in a matter of weeks, you may need to leave the country, and if you don’t do that promptly, you could be banned from ever coming back. Under no circumstances, can you commit any kind of crime. Sadly, that includes punching someone saying something stupid in their stupid face.
These visas give you some rights, like to be able to use the healthcare system. They also often extend to the family that you have brought. However, if their visa is attached to yours, and yours expires or is invalidated, so too does the one belonging to your spouse and/or your children. Now the whole family can be deported, barring a compelling reason. Since employers in Canada can be unreasonably capricious it is a very fraught business. Frankly, I think the practice of bringing spouses and children by visa holders should be banned. Had it been, I would never be writing this essay. In any case, I would not recommend this path to anyone.
While the foreign temporary worker may have a “closed visa” connected to the job they hold, the spouse typically has an open one. That means they can work for any employer that will have them. Usually, spouses have some valuable skills as well, as that is one of the things Canadian employers look for when they are recruiting overseas. However, it can be incredibly difficult to get work in Canada as a foreigner. If you have a certification in some skill, you will need to be recertified in that skill before you can be hired in some cases. But that’s not even the hardest part.
You will meet with plenty of outgroup prejudice by being turned down for not having “Canadian experience.” If you are American, you will have to overcome “the thing” where you claim fidelity to a country that you know will turn on you the first chance it gets. And if you get a job, even a good job, the pay will be so much lower and the cost of living so much higher, that you’ll question every decision that you ever made that led you to this point. You have to get good at lying, “Oh yes, my life in Canada is **so** much better than back at home.” I was terrible at it.
Management is horrible. If I can say there’s one silver lining to American-style, business Darwinism, it’s that it makes for better managers. Make a dumb mistake in Canada it’s an inconvenience; make a mistake in America and you are out of business and have no health insurance. Americans are far less likely to care about culture and fit and your personal aptitudes if you show them the money. To that end, I aspire to become the Salvador Dali of my business: someone who can paint ridiculous images because they are so skilled every single painting is a masterpiece. It never seems to matter. Whether it’s because of me, or simply there is not enough money to pay me, the cause and the result is the same. That makes Canadian workers profoundly unproductive compared to their peers, and now GDP growth is flirting with becoming negative, which can't be good if it wants to avoid becoming a failed state. Regardless, it doesn’t matter, I still don’t have a job.
Sometimes, as if to give me permission, kind Canadians would say to me, “Just lie. Say you are from Saskatchewan or Hamilton. No one will know. You left as a baby. It still counts.” But I can’t and I say no and then they ask, “Why does it even matter?” I don’t know. It just does.
The time waiting, the time not working or half working, the fees and expenses, this all costs a lot of money. There are, as well, the moving costs. Hopefully your Canadian employer will pay for that, but you might want to save some money. You may need it, if you need an exit strategy, especially if you need one fast. In fact, I would suggest something in the range of $50,000-$100,000 as a rainy-day fund. Most American employers do not pay moving expenses so even if you get a job back home, you are getting there on your own dime. If an American is away long enough they lose claim to the state residency which means they can’t come back broke and collect welfare, or any other government money, to get back on their feet.
You have to find a place to live in Canada which is a difficult and expensive endeavor for everyone, Canadian or not. If you have a family or a spouse, you can live with them, maybe, but here in British Columbia, a tenant risks losing their lease if the tenant allows just anyone to move in. Your landlord can’t prevent you from bringing in a “married” spouse, but you must prove it, and they can still make your life miserable while you fight an eviction. Since you are making less money than you would make in the USA, and paying more for everything, groceries, gas, cable, cellphone, this can handicap you in any battle with the landlord.
The timelines for the Residential Tenancy Tribunal are tight, and the rules are unforgiving. I consider the whole thing a travesty of justice but if you are expecting a jury like you would get in California, you can forget it. You can be evicted over the phone and have to move out immediately. The process is merciless. Buying may save you this horror, but it’s very expensive, and if you aren’t ultimately allowed to stay, you may be forced to sell your property at a loss.
These temporary visas give you the ability to remain in the country for up to three years, but when they expire you either need to leave, or you can renew them. Whether or not you can renew one depends on several things: if you still have a job, if you are still with your spouse, or if you have changed to a different form of sponsorship.
If you have separated from your spouse, you may have to plead some kind of abuse or unfairness to get another temporary form of residency. This is new. It wasn’t until 2019 that the law was targeted specifically to help abused spouses, but that probably had to do with the finding, a few years earlier, that almost 10% of the women in shelters were women who had lost their status and were fleeing abuse. These visas don’t allow you to work, but you can get another visa that will at the same time. If you don’t, you will still have to find a way to pay your own way if you want to or need to stay.
If you are American, you can renew your visa easily (maybe) by going across the border to the USA and re-entering Canada. At a checkpoint, Canadian Border Services may reissue your visa so you can continue to wait out the rest of the time. This is known as “flagpoleing” and up until recently was fairly common. The risk you run is that when you come back across, you are dealing with border guards who have absolute power. They can detain you, send you back or even ban you from the country for years. It is completely up to their discretion so every time you cross that border you run the risk of never being able to come back again.
The Tempest
If someone had sat me down and explained to me the risk I was taking, I never would have come to Canada. Of course no one did, not the employer that recruited us, not the government with its matter-of-fact website. No one told me, “Your skills will be useless, or worse, resented.” No one showed us a flyer from the local grocery and said, “These are the sale prices.” No one told me I wouldn’t be able to open a bank account or get a cellphone in my own name. No one said to me, “Honestly, the healthcare you get here is okay, but you probably would get the same thing from a free clinic in a bad part of San Francisco. You’ll still have to pay for glasses and dentistry and psychotherapy to deal with all the stress you’ll be under.”
No one warned me, “You’ll hemorrhage money for decades. It’ll get so bad, and you’ll lose so much weight, you’ll scrounge for clothing in a dumpster one time." Nor did they tell me, "A scam artist will try to run a check-kiting scam on you, realize you have no money, and wind giving you money out of pity." Or "You’ll have to make dishes at the community center pottery studio to have something eat off.”
No one told me, “Bless your heart. You’ll make friends but you’ll never be able to tell them how bad it really is. When you do, or when they find out, they’ll feel so guilty they’ll all abandon you. Men will be cruel to you for no apparent reason. Women will want nothing to do with you at all, or worse, do everything they can to sabotage you. You can never, ever, be authentic to anyone. Do so at your peril.”
And that was before even mentioning I moved to Canada right after the start of the Iraq war.
No, no one told me anything. Not Canada, not my husband’s employers, and certainly not my husband. When the marriage fell apart, I found myself stranded in a foreign country, with nothing but the clothes on my back and my little dog. I was stranded. Like Dorthey, I was lost in Oz and all I wanted to do was go home. I didn’t have any money, I was running out of time as my visa was set to expire, and I was completely alone. No one informed me, “Everyone will take your abusive husband’s side because he checks all the right cultural and political boxes.”
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Getting stuck at the border was partially my own fault. I had lost my paper visa (or actually, I suspect, it was stolen) I was simply guessing when I had to leave the country. Now, to be fair to me, I did not think it was such a big deal. Americans do not need visas to be in Canada, we can come as visitors. My understanding of the visa was so I could work, not simply exist and set my money on fire, which was what I had now been doing for almost a year. I had, by then, a war chest of $30,000 and my ex-husband was paying $2500 a month in support because I could not work. This was an excessive amount, but it was only supposed to be temporary. Once he agreed to the divorce, and whatever money came with that, I was out. In the meantime, to hire the lawyers and make a few friends, I made the rain.
In fact, I couldn’t find a job cleaning toilets in Canada, even if I had wanted to work. Technically, I was still married to my husband, who as far as I knew, still had a valid visa, hence I had a valid visa. I did have a new boyfriend; he had moved in subtly, shirt by shirt, but he didn't have a job either. I didn’t mind. He earned his keep by irritating everyone that got in my way. All they had to do was say “no” to me and ten minutes later they’d be loudly arguing with him, eventually throwing up their hands and giving me what I wanted in the first place. Usually, it was to honor whatever contract they had struck with me that now they were trying to weasel out of, thinking me too dumb to understand what was happening.
My boyfriend would have none of it, and start arguing on my behalf in his way that would immediately get under people's skin. He would be blandly smiling the whole time. I thought it was hilarious and him charming for it. Anyway, I paid the rent on the place, for all the beer he could drink, and was needy in way he loved. He found me my lawyers and got my bank accounts working. Like Holly Golightly, I was a person in need of rescuing, and he was the rescuer. He adored my little dog. Despite my misgivings at the speed our relationship was progressing, we became inseparable.
The problem was the snow. Apparently, if it snows on route 5 in the mountain pass between Seattle and the Canadian border, it’s not the most important road to plow. I should have stopped. I had family in Seattle at the time and I could have stayed with them until the snow passed. Below Seattle, the weather had been remarkable, sunny and warm for November. I had stopped on my way to go shopping in Portland. Concerned about where I was parked, I took my important documents and threw them in the trunk where they wouldn’t be seen.
My immigration lawyer thought I had the education and skills to apply outright, without my husband, for immigration and anyway, I just needed a visitor visa to tie everything up. I had been told to go “flagpole” and since I was already going down there to begin with, I drove all the way down the coast to be with my family for Thanksgiving. I didn’t have a car, so I had rented one. The whole trip took two weeks. My lawyer assured me that people did this all the time with no problem, and I could just come back. I would leave when I got a divorce or ran out of money. Maybe things would work out with the boyfriend. Who knew?
After three days, and $6000 later, I was allowed back into Canada. I had placed at least $1000 of frantic phone calls to everyone trying to sort out how, at the very least, to get my little dog back. Leaving my passport in the trunk had been a mistake, and by the time I realized it, I was talking to a suspicious border guard at the turnstile. This led to another suspicious border guard at immigration, which led to another, annoyingly condescending American border guard at the turnstile on to the way back into the USA.
For whatever reason, and with no evidence at all, this second suspicious border guard had become convinced I was working. She decided to “turn me around.” I think she just didn’t like me, which I’d come to expect from most of the women I met. It made no sense, but despite my absolute black rage at my ex-husband, who I blamed completely for this, and who had said to me, “I will cut you off of all the money and you will get kicked out of Canada” I remained as calm as I could. Hysterics would not help me now. When faced with stupid people with absolute power, never underestimate how much damage you can do to yourself by losing your cool. I rolled into a dark and snowy Blaine, Washington, and broke down in tears.
It took several attempts, but by the time I was standing again in immigration at the Peace Arch, this time with my boyfriend, their ire had turned to him. This time the border guard was a man, and it was clear who was “free riding” on who. And the law, for a price, had come down on my side. Anyway, if my boyfriend wanted me to keep paying the rent, he had to help me out and commit to being my sponsor by way of spousal right. Right there at the Peach Arch was a shotgun marriage, by way of Canadian Border Services. I could not believe it.
I don’t mean to make it sound so transactional. Without going into any details, we were “common law spouses” by even the most conservative definition. It just felt so…premature. It never occurred to me that Canada would force me into a marriage by taking my dog hostage. Even as I write this, it sounds ridiculous. After the residency came in, we stayed together for a few more years. He never had to pay for my welfare as I never needed it, despite the fact I remain so financially handicapped to this day, but he could be a difficult man with his own demons. We remained close until the day he died.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
If you get a visa and have a good reason to start an application, you’ll have to get all the paperwork together. This can be tedious and sometimes expensive, depending on where you lived.
For the application, you need to provide all the credentials you have for your skills including any degrees or certificates that you have. You will pay whatever charges you have to pay to acquire those documents, birth certificates, diplomas, or other anything else. Then unless you are a spouse, regardless of what country you are coming from, you have to take an English test. There are several services for that, but only certain ones are accepted for Canadian immigration. I think at present, that may cost anywhere from $300 to $2000 depending on your needs. You will need to get a national criminal records check, so you will have to be finger printed. Today, you can just go get your fingerprints scanned, and usually you only need an FBI background check, but when I applied, I needed to send my fingerprints to every state I had lived in the previous ten years, plus the feds. Since it was three different states, I had to send multiple sets of fingerprints. Everything must be notarized and in the proper form.
You also need to fill in the application form. That’s probably going to need every name of every first degree relative you have, as well as every address you have lived at in the last ten years and every employer or school you attended in the last ten years. You must, of course, provide your social security number as well as any other information, driver’s license, passport, etc… that validates your identity.
You will have to go through a credit check, a medical exam, and perhaps an interview in person to ascertain if everything you are saying is true. And of course, if you are coming through as a spouse, you will need to “prove” your relationship is real with letters from people who know you as a couple, pictures to show you together and affidavits explaining when you met and how you are living together in a “marriage-like relationship.”
All of this can add up and if you are not working because you can’t work, for whatever reason, you still need to pay the bills on your life. It’s not cheap. By the time it was all said and done, my $30,000 war chest was gone, as well as treble that in gifts from abroad. My ex-husband evaporated a few days after we could have applied for a no-fault divorce, leaving me to pay all the costs and with no support. I never saw him or another penny from him again. All and all, by five years in, I had spent or lost almost half to a quarter million dollars and had precious little to show for it. Oh, and my boyfriend had to finally get a job.
I never actually expected Canada to even accept my application. My sponsor didn’t have any money, nor a steady income. He had defaulted on numerous debts. He couldn’t even get a credit card in his name, but somehow Canada relied on his full faith and credit to support me if things went sideways. Even though we qualified as having a common-law marriage, we cut an odd couple. A much older, larger man, and younger, smaller woman don’t usually pair up unless there’s a lot of money involved, but here there was none.
If anything, the whole thing was bankrupting me as fast as it was possible to go bankrupt. The little jobs I got were shadows of the robust career I had in the United States. I was obviously overqualified for most of them. I thought maybe after I got the residency it would get better. That *then* I would get enough respect to at least make a decent living. Maybe that was it. They said they wanted people with degrees, and job experience. I worked on Wall Street for crying out loud!
I finally managed to get a divorce five years after the marriage had fallen apart but since we had already applied for the sponsorship, I decided to stick around. My boyfriend and I were still living together now, both working mediocre jobs, squeezed into a tiny apartment that wasn’t big enough for the two of us, but was cheap. Vancouver is outrageously expensive, and I was out of funds. We watched every single dime. One time, we paid our rent in pennies. It took a terrible strain on the relationship. Nothing seemed to be breaking right, and I felt that the road was coming to an end.
The Canadian government could take the heat when they turned me down. They obviously would; letting this guy, with nothing to his name, take on the fiscal responsibility of a whole other person was ridiculous. I didn’t have to leave; they could be the bad guy. When the letter came in that I was now allowed to be part of Canada, at least, sort of, I went into shock. It didn’t feel real for several days. I guess I should have been overjoyed now I thought things would be so much easier, but since I never intended on staying, now I had a choice to make.
Rappaccini’s Daughter
There is a second part to immigration. Unlike the first, this is much harder. It strikes at your very core, at your whole identity, and the worst part is it takes people by surprise. They have to ask themselves, for real:
“How much of yourself do you want to give up to be part of this new world?”
It takes a certain type of American to come to Canada thinking they are going to stay for good. They always think there is something magical about this place, that it’s some kind of progressive paradise awash in rainbows and free healthcare. But once you get here you realize that it’s not magic, that things are not as simple as you thought. There’s no silver bullet, no miracle cure, and human beings are human beings and are the same no matter where you go. And wherever you go, there you are.
But perhaps the most surprising things are the things you are going to give up. (I mean, aside from hordes of cash.) Americans complain a lot about their rights being taken away, or, lately, the “end of democracy”, but that’s only because Americans have these things to begin with. You can’t miss what you never had, and Canadians are blissfully ignorant of what they do not have. Oh sure, they say they have “free speech” and “democracy,” but these things in Canada are but pale specters of the real thing. Once the American realizes this, the rosy glasses’s view is replaced by the kind of cynicism of a lover betrayed. More than a criminal record, or bad debt, this proves fatal to most Americans' applications to come to Canada.
Perhaps the most obvious one is the right to “free speech.” Canadians have a right to free expression, but they don’t have a right to “free speech.” This is an important distinction because free expression does not mean “hate speech.” What constitutes as “hate speech” has changed in Canada over time, but you won’t see a neo-nazi rally in Canada any day soon. Well not unless you include the assholes screaming about Palestine every weekend. For some reason, the Tentifada doesn’t count as hate speech, even though it crosses the line at almost every rally.
But there are other laws that matter too. Another law is that Canadians don’t have a right to guns. Those guns can be seized at any time, for any reason or no reason if the authorities think this is prudent. Most Canadians think this is a reasonable trade off, feigning horror at the casual manner of gun ownership in the USA - or at least they did until recently. Covid or perhaps the threat of American annexation must have changed that. Now when a politician mentions the banning or registering of guns, the response from the public is borderline tepid, an impressive move for Canadians. That’s practically a red wave in American terms. Or blue wave, as the case may be,
These authoritarian flourishes should seem enough to give your average American pause when thinking of leaving the land of the free and the brave, but it’s the rights no one ever thinks about that really matter. For instance, in the United States, if you are searched by the police, and they don’t have a cause or warrant to do so, anything found on your person or in your possession that could be used for evidence is thrown completely out of court. It doesn’t matter if it’s a gun or even a dead body, the police have to follow the rules or any evidence they find, or evidence of evidence they find, is unusable if they don’t. Of course, this means that people who may have committed terrible crimes get away if the cops don’t dot there “i” s or cross their “t”s but thems the rules and no one as far as I know is very inclined to change them.
Not so in Canada. According to the very first part of the Canadian Charter, rights are a little…flexible…if the government needs something really bad. If the government’s desire passes the “Oakes test,” they will be allowed to do certain things at trial an American court could never do. If the government needs evidence that is fruit of the poisonous tree, or wants to censor speech, it can be done if the government has a really good reason. The case that established this test, R v Oakes, was ironically trivial when considering the major question: could the government undermine the presumption of innocence if it had a good enough reason?
In Mr. Oakes case, the small amount of hashish he had in his possession failed to move the court to find for the government. However, considering the lethality of fentanyl in even miniscule amounts, and the fact that Oakes is still available to justify the government stepping on the Charter, that may not be the end of it. The United States does have a kind of similar test in its “strict scrutiny” but that is more in the service protecting individual rights. While it is similar, it is not a permission structure like the Oakes and there is no section like number 1 in the American Bill of Rights.
There is also, in the United States, the right to a jury trial in a civil matter. This sounds like nothing until you find yourself in “phone court”, where the the main concern is the best interest of the government. The adjudicator may or may not have enough legal knowledge to know what “parole evidence” is while you are arguing over whether a certain door in your lobby is or is not a “designated door.” Certainly, you may have a better chance with a jury, who can look at the size disparity between you and your opponent and decide who is telling the truth and who is “intimidating” actually.
Without that right, Canadians work under an extensive tribunal system that can be…um… less than fair. The purpose and philosophy of juries is to provide a check on the justice system. Juries of peers keep justice in line with the common mores of society and make sure that justice is delivered in an open, transparent, and simple way. Take those juries away, and now you have individual judges, calling balls and strikes. The only recourse may be an expensive appeal that also involves a single or handful of judges calling balls and strikes. This is judgment by The Elite, an anathema to Americans. Juries ground the justice system in society and in what the common man thinks justice should be.
The founding fathers did this on purpose. While America was still a handful of colonies, the colonists sought relief in courts that were first helmed by judges from their own towns. However, these judges could be overly sympathetic to their neighbors at the expense of the British Empire. Annoyed at this, the Brits sent over *their* judges to ensure that any decisions they made were in the best interest of the Crown, contributing to the eventual revolution. When it came time to make a new country, the Americans enshrined juries in the civil procedure as a way to keep the justice system at bay. After my little foray in the Rental Tribunal, I can safely say it has its benefits.
There is more. Remember that old show “Night Court?” Aside from it being one of the best comedies ever created, it illuminated another unique quality of the United States: the right to a “speedy” trial. This right has become so ingrained that in major cities, with lots of crime and people, courts run all day and night. They dispense justice with breakneck speed compared to Canada. In the USA, the outside limit to bring something to trial is only 70 days and only in very extreme cases. In Canada, you can languish for anywhere from 18 to 30 months before you get to know your fate in front of a judge. After the arrest of Canadian, Tamara Lich, allegedly for being the mastermind behind the Trucker Convey of 2022, the government held her for eighteen days and conducted two bail hearings to do everything it possibly could to keep her in jail. In California, she would have probably been out in less than 24 hours, had she even been arrested at all.
Unsatisfied with that loss, the government would arrest Lich again, when she attended a function to which she had been invited to by her lawyers. She found herself, incidentally, in the company of another of the Convoy’s organizers, a violation of her bail conditions. She would, again, remain in custody for a whole month before there was another bail hearing. She was released by a judge who considered the government’s animosity saying basically* (*cobbled together from reports) “public confidence in the administration of justice requires not only enforcement of court orders but also fairness and reasonableness in how we treat those accused of crimes. The public would not see a fleeting, incidental contact at a public event as warranting extended detention, especially in a case involving non-violent charges.”
Lich then did not stand trial for another 19 months. The trial lasted for a whopping 45 days whereupon she was found guilty of a single count of mischief. She was sentenced to time already served which was 49 days, all for attending an entirely non-violent protest and becoming what seems to be its reluctant spokesperson and just not being sorry enough about it for public taste.
Lastly, and while this is not an exclusive list, I should mention the fact that in Canada, your right to remain silent is another right that’s…expression…is somewhat limited. While Canadians are fond of saying things like “taking the 5th” the reference to their right to remain silent is found in section 11(c) of their own Charter. The meaning of the text is the same, no court has the right to compel anyone to act as a witness against themselves in a criminal court. However, in the USA, any interrogation of a suspect must cease on the detainee’s demand to contact a lawyer, the meaning behind the phrase, “to lawyer up.” This is not true in Canada, where police can continue to ask you questions and apply pressure to get you to talk.
In a famous example of this, in 2017, Gerald Stanley was arrested and charged with the murder of a Mr. Colten Boushie. Allegedly, Mr. Boushie and some friends had decided it would be a capital idea to steal an ATV from Stanley’s farm. Unfortunately for them, the Stanley family was armed and no way amenable to letting these young people take off with one of their vehicles. The altercation that ensued left Mr. Boushie dead from a gunshot wound. All kinds of controversy swirled around the case; Stanley was a white farmer and Boushie, a member of the Cree Red Pheasent First Nation. Long before BLM, racial tensions in that part of Saskatchewan had been brewing, and depending on what you believe this was either another example of aboriginals doing crime or white farmers being racists.
But that’s not the interesting part of the story for our purposes. In the fight over what evidence was going to be brought to trial, Stanley’s lawyers sought to exclude statements Stanley made to the police during questioning. You can read for yourself the transcript of the interrogation that the police conducted of Stanley while he calmly waited for his lawyer. The transcript[i] is a masterclass on how to say a lot of things without saying anything at all. He does this for 4 ½ hours.
Both Gerald and his son had shot their gun at the group, however, only one bullet made contact. There was no way to knowing which person was guilty of murder. Since the main question at trial would be who shot the gun that killed Mr. Bouchie, any hint of anything that would condemn either man would have been valuable. Instead, the senior Stanley, politely and apologetically deflects every persistent question in a very Canadian manner. In the USA, the very act of asking for a lawyer would have ended such questions on the spot, but instead, not only does the questioning continue after Mr. Stanley makes contact with his lawyer, who probably told him to STFU, but those statements are then allowed into evidence by the judge. It didn’t matter, Stanley’s statements never amounted to any kind of admission that the jury could hang a conviction on, and the man walked free. Some would say he got away with murder.
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s
These are some of the things you lose when you cross that Rubicon. It’s not a comfortable feeling. You never expected to be legit concerned that something you said online could be construed as hate speech, something you could have said just offhandedly, or as a sarcastic joke. Or that you could get dragged into the Human Rights Tribunal where a single judge would get to decide if you violated the human rights of man because you refused to let him into your house and wax his genitals.
The individual power you had in America now feels like a luxury. This loss can also feel unsafe. Most Americans don’t expect to be told,
“I know you are upset that you are paralyzed for life because something went wrong with a routine surgery, but the doctor followed the plan the government laid out for him so you just have some really bad luck there.”[ii]
You can’t sue, and even if you did, the government would defend the doctor to the ends of the earth - and you would lose. Good luck with the rest of your life. We always have MAiD if you want it. That hardly seems like paradise.
And that’s even before you get to the parliamentary system and its supremacy. It can be a sobering thing to realize that elections can happen at any time or possibly never and even if they do happen, and a certain party gets a majority, two lessor parties can gang up on it and now your "democracy" doesn’t exist. If you complain, suddenly there’s no money in your bank account. Why is that guy Prime Minister anyway? Nobody voted for that dude! And WHY is there a MONARCH on the money!
But I was lucky. Even though my situation was balanced on a knife’s edge, the one thing they could not take away from me was my cynicism. I met American after American who also followed what they thought was a yellow brick road to Canada only to find themselves poorer by degrees. The worst were married couples. They had enough money to pay the maximum in taxes and receive none of the benefits. The money they thought they were going to save on healthcare instead got spent on groceries and rent and car insurance.
But just because you left the USA, doesn’t mean you can just be done with it, either. There was the American IRS which over the years has shown varying degrees of interest in the income and bank accounts of expats. Americans, as a rule, live in absolute terror of the IRS, and now you have to deal with not one, but two tax systems. For some people, the ones with money, that meant the cost of filing their taxes skyrocketed. $5000 was not unheard of just to stay right with the IRS God.
In addition, these Americans new Canadian spouses were now also subject to scrutiny by the IRS. It only counts if your married-married, so my sponsor and I didn’t qualify, but there was no chance I would marry anyone and expose them to a system which can ruin your life like the IRS can. In any case, we didn’t have any money for them to take, a platinum lining on an otherwise miserable cloud. Even though there is nothing to be afraid of and even though I know it’s probably a check, I still get a little panicky whenever I see a letter from Canada Revenue. The IRS never sends you letters, and if they do, you are probably totally fucked.
Inevitably, these wannabe Canadians would go home after their three-year work visas expired, now disillusioned and broke. Since I did not start with this glorious idea of escape to fantasy progressive paradise - I just agreed to let my ex-husband try it out for a time - I did not feel betrayed. Besides, he’d stupidly run up $10k in credit card debt and the signing bonus bailed us out of that. I didn’t even bother to really check Canada out before I came. I just let him go first and make all the arrangements. It would either work or it wouldn’t. By the time I arrived at the place where I’ve lived now for over twenty years, I had spent one night in Vancouver and that was it. I wasn't ever upset it wasn’t what I imagined; I hadn’t imagined it at all. I thought we would always come home – together.
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Now that you have the residency, after a period of time you can become a citizen. Usually this is about 3 years or 1,095 days. These days are exact so if you are out of the country one day less you won’t be able to process the application. However, the process is MUCH simpler than becoming a resident so getting the citizenship is a forgone conclusion for most people. You can apply online or on paper but not both. You will be asked to take a test, which is basic questions about your understanding of Canadian law, history, and culture. Then you will have to swear an oath to the monarch of England, aka the King of Canada. It currently goes like this:
"I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles the Third, King of Canada, His Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including the Constitution, which recognizes and affirms the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen."
That’s right, the KING of Canada. Not to some sacred document or the people or on your honor or even God, the king.
I suppose if you come from a country that already has a king, swearing allegiance to another one isn’t that big of a deal. Sure it’s *that* king, but what difference does it make? You probably weren’t totally in love with the one you had to begin with if you came here. I’m sure you had a better reason to even come here than your husband maxed out the credit cards. No, you probably had a war, or someone you were in love with, or needed a job and, unlike me, might actually get one. It’s not like the country kidnapped you, stole all your money, and held your dog hostage until you married one of its rogue citizens.
But most people probably never even think about what their citizenship means. Like a religion, they are borne into it, assuming all the rights and responsibilities of it like a fish assumes that water is the only way of existence. They hold convictions they never question, or if they do question it, it’s mainly to be contrarian. No one *really* wants to censor speech. No one wants to wait for an eternity for trial. No one even considers that a jury, six to twelve randos, is what is standing between you and tyranny. We all just assume that it’s the guns. And it is, actually. It’s not like Americans who come here have anything to compare it with, even if they do go to Italy or take a cruise. You only become a true expat when you can say, “Yeah this country is great in some things, but America…” and then drift off, not being quite able to convey what you mean to someone else that’s never gone through it. That’s when you truly understand what it means to be an immigrant.
Between the residency and the citizenship, you live, still, in this grey area. You cannot do certain things, like vote, or work certain jobs, usually for the government. If you commit some kind of crime, and the sentence is longer than six months, you can still be deported. You can collect some benefits, but not others, and if you leave for too long of time, you have to start the process all over again. Every five years, in order to leave and return to the country you must apply for a special travel card where you do a little “mini-application.” You must list your jobs and addresses and times you have left the country over the last five years, and you need to make sure that you apply early enough if you are traveling because getting it back could take a minute. It’s a total pain. Honestly, I think it’s to annoy you into getting citizenship.
After so many years, you can apply to become a citizen. Some people don’t. Almost 40% of permanent residents are now eschewing citizenship.
You would think you would. You would think that by then, after all that, it would be a no brainer. Just get the passport. Certainly, the opportunity to have two passports and a possible escape path if something goes pear shaped is alluring. But it also is a promise, a sacred covenant, that you have decided, on purpose, that you will tolerate whatever nonsense or ridiculous system of government that country has chosen for its people. Whatever that country requires of you, you will deliver. And if that’s in conflict with what the old country needs - even if you think it’s better for the world? You’ll have to let it go. That’s what it means to be a citizen of a country, and if you can’t make that promise, you probably shouldn’t. It should mean something. And if the same rights are just handed to you without that promise, then what does it matter? What does it even mean?
I guess a lot of people don’t care. Canada and the United States do not force their people to choose currently so a dual citizenship is possible. That may not be true always. Personally, I still have to think about it. As a libertarian, I’m not very fond of the government I am subject to; why would I want to add a whole another one?? It feels wrong and weird to take that oath. Maybe that's why it's so hard. Maybe that's why Meghan Markel (Sorry, Duchess of Sussex) giggled when talking about the curtsey. Kings and queens are for fairy tales and Disney, not real life. For now, I appreciate what I signed up for just by being born the daughter of an empire.
"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."
What do you say, Mike Meyers? Neil Young?
My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord
I often wonder what life would have been like if I had never come here. Would I have married someone else? Would I be rich or poor now? Would I be scrambling for health care or would have Obamacare fixed that? Would I have this career, bolted together from the lessons of my old career? Would I have, like, three degrees? Would I have my own business? Or a law degree? Or be living in my mother’s basement? Would I be out of - what is now - millions of dollars if I had not left the greatest country in the world?
We will never know. In the meantime, I keep trying to recover from the catastrophe, still burning in this money pit, cash in "fuck you" quantities, and whatever is left of my youth. I lurch along from one job to the next, never finding purchase, never completely paying off the credit card. Sometimes I get some help here or there from back in the “the states,” back from the before-before time when I was still rich. I live, like Dom in the Fast and the Furious, one quarter mile at a time.
Celebrities who are rich and have none of these problems complain and it grates. Sure, come here because “democracy is dying” in the United States. You won’t have to worry about its demise here, it’s already dead. In fact, it never existed here in the first place, you egotistical tools. You won’t have to worry about money or jobs or whether you can afford a home. You’ll marvel at the coin-released shopping carts as if preventing their high propensity for theft is the pinnacle of civilization. You'll lie and pretend it's better even though you know the weather sucks ass.
Besides, you have staff to carry around groceries in their hands like a novice juggler at the circus. Everybody will love you because you are famous and know how to say the right things; you check all the right cultural and political boxes. And when you get homesick you can just hop on a plane, first class of course, or maybe even a private jet, and go home. Just remember, the exchange rate only matters if you are being paid in US dollars. For the rest of us, $7 for a carton of eggs is still $7 for a carton of eggs. Go ahead, Google the prices of gas and beer.
Money isn’t the only reason I’m stuck here, there are other, bigger and more important things now, twenty years after the fact. Moving between countries is difficult at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. There are all kinds of things to consider like where to go and what to do. And how would I even get there? It’s not like I have any money. And if I wait long enough maybe I won’t have to do a damn thing. It will be like I never left. But despite all the cash, stress, and heartache, I know so much more now than if I had never left. I feel like that is valuable in a way that matters more than money. In the accounting, Canada and I are *almost* square.
Maybe I won’t have to go anywhere if Canada becomes the 51st state. I won’t have to do anything special, just re-adopt my old identity. I will feel sorry for the renouncers, the ones that thought there was no going back and still here they are. Where will they go now? France? Germany? The UK? But I have met a lot that said they wished they hadn’t burned that bridge. They want, like me, to still be “waved through” to the American side every time they want to go to Disneyland or Palm Springs. They might even find it funny, to go through all that trouble and then to have it snatched away. It seems like a dark, hilarious irony. I wonder if those American wannabe Canadians will ever come back, too. Canada is a beautiful country, filled with promise and adventure. It will be a siren song to Americans, good people and bad alike. Then Canadians will also have to accept the fact that people are the same no matter where you go.
I will have some fun, though. I think I can recognize the difference. Now I also have that curious radar that allows me to distinguish Americans and Canadians in a crowd. Then I can walk around town and go up to Canadians and go, “Ha, ha, look at who is the STUPID AMERICAN now??” I will be ruthless, LOL. That might be worth the added carjackings. Maybe I will finally *belong* here. I will have finally assimilated. Canada got me. It won.
Maybe I don't totally hate this place, maybe I should start calling myself an “American-Canadian.” Maybe this was just a fixer-upper and it can be remodeled. Maybe the good days now outweigh the bad. To tell you the truth, I kinda like the fight, even if I don't get to actually punch a stupid person in their stupid face. If I want to do that I just have to get that citizenship. Maybe I should square that circle and admit that on a beautiful day like today, it’s not the worst thing in the world to look at trees and mountains. Maybe it’s like the War of 1812 – a draw.
[i] R v Stanley, 2017 SKQB 367 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/hqxp2
[ii] This is based on a true story relayed to me by the disabled’s spouse.