Some bits and pieces of info for those considering this:
- remember to sign up for OHIP (or the local equivalent) as soon as you arrive, there is a time limit on how long you can wait before signing up after arriving in Canada. If you don't do this in time you will not be covered.
- Canada has some pretty severe weather in the winter, everywhere except for the area around Niagara falls and Vancouver. The latter is the better spot all year round. Big cities are your only chance to mitigate the worst of this, rural life is brutal.
- Don't make any irreversible moves (giving away stuff, actually moving) until all the paper work is done. I made the mistake of believing a bunch of government officials during my own move to Canada on an entrepreneurship visa and it cost me dearly.
- Elsewhere in this thread someone asks why not go to the US, well, (1) free (and good) healthcare, (2) a bit more laid back business climate. That said, the laid back atmosphere and the different venture capital climate make it a lot harder to get off the ground in Canada. Cost of living is slightly lower than in the US for most parts of Canada.
- Outside of Waterloo, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and maybe Quebec City it's going to be hard to find qualified employees. In Ottawa you'll be bidding against the government.
- No matter where you want to go in Canada you'll have to score reasonably well on the French language test. Even if that's the only time in Canada you'll ever use your French. (imho this is a ridiculous requirement, and that's with 5 years of French under my belt and a ton of exposure, you simply don't need it unless you plan on living in Quebec).
- Paperwork processing in Canada can be terribly slow, it is basically the luck of the draw whether your paperwork will be processed in weeks, months, years or even decades! (no kidding...).
I could go on like this for a while, if you have any specific questions about moving to Canada (but not about this program) feel free to ask.
The skytrain will take you from the YVR arrivals terminal right downtown. Cost is 6 bucks, and you will be at your apartment or hotel in 20-30 minutes.
The city is most the most walkable in the world, with almost no need for a car (unless you really like to go on weekend road trips). Crime is extremely low right now, and the city economy is very solid.
With TED moving to the city next year (and a bunch of other things falling into place), it is a great time to move to Vancouver to find a job or start a business.
Also, the thing about french is not true in the west. No one speaks a lick of french anywhere west of Ontario, and it will never be a job requirement, unless you are applying to work with the federal government.
I'm from Vancouver and I've lived in San Francisco. Compared the SF, the city is very walkable and the transit is far more efficient than SF's Muni, which crawls like a croaking dog. I never thought I'd say that transit in Vancouver is better than in other cities, having been part of the fight to get more transit funding in Vancouver, but it's not bad.
SkyTrain is the most beautiful rapid transit line I've ever been on.
Best in the world though? Not sure - I'd like to see it compared to Zurich or Hong Kong or Amsterdam in that regard.
Granted. It depends where you live. If transit is a priority, you want to live near the Canada line, which is fast, clean and has really good security.
If you live out in the burbs, transit is okay, but not better than most European cities.
Downtown Vancouver and false creek were designed with density and walking in mind. Every condo tower must have street level retail, and they make sure to have essential things like good grocery stores every few blocks. Check out the walk score for Yaletown: http://www.walkscore.com/score/davie-st-and-pacific-boulevar...
> Canada has some pretty severe weather in the winter, everywhere except for the area around Niagara falls and Vancouver.
Niagara falls is still brutally cold and snowy in the winter. The only place you won't freeze your ass off is the west coast of BC. aka Victoria/Vancouver.
> Cost of living is slightly lower than in the US for most parts of Canada.
Unless you are in Vancouver, where it is quite expensive to live. Housing, food, fuel... There are very few places in the US that are as expensive to live as Vancouver.
> the laid back atmosphere and the different venture capital climate make it a lot harder to get off the ground in Canada
It is harder to get VC funding in Canada than it is south of the border. From what I've seen startup's in the US/Silicon Valley that may get 20million, you can expect ~1million in Canada, and most won't even look at you unless you already have paying customers. I don't really know all the factors that cause this but investors are much more conservative here.
> - No matter where you want to go in Canada you'll have to score reasonably well on the French language test. Even if that's the only time in Canada you'll ever use your French. (imho this is a ridiculous requirement, and that's with 5 years of French under my belt and a ton of exposure, you simply don't need it unless you plan on living in Quebec).
I don't believe there's a French language requirement. It's either English or French, one or the other. From the website:
"You must meet the minimum level of CLB 5 in either English or French for all four language abilities."
Whether rural life in Canada is brutal depends on where you're from. And your definition of brutal. Between 20 minutes north of Toronto and the start of the Arctic Circle there is a fair bit of variation. If you grew up in the desert and have never lived anywhere cold, you might find it brutal. If you come from somewhere that has snowy winters and you don't mind bundling up you might find that you love Canadian winters (I do!) They're absolutely essential if you want to enjoy such lovely outdoor activities as tobogganing, skiing (downhill and x-counrty), snowboarding, ice skating, hockey, snowshoeing, beerbogganing, and camping in a Quinzhee.
> Cost of living is slightly lower than in the US for most parts of Canada.
I find cost of living in Vancouver (North Shore) quite high when compared, for example, with Portland, OR. Granted, this is one of the more expensive regions in Canada vs a city in a state with no sales tax, but still most of the goods and food in Canada are significantly more expensive than in the US.
Interesting, ok, you can xordon both mention Vancouver to be much more expensive these days, please note that any information about Canada that I have is likely to be 6 years out of date (that's when I last spent time there) and wrt Vancouver closer to 8 years.
I know several people that moved there from Toronto recently and neither of them mentioned expensive housing but I'll take your word for it.
Its house prices make it one of world's most expensive cities, with slightly worse weather than Seattle (where it's overcast at least 6 months a year), where houses are much cheaper.
As a developer working in Ottawa, I'd like to say that working for the government and working for a start-up are very different experiences. I don't think that the government takes so many developers away from the high-tech community here that an aspiring entrepreneur should consider them competition for employees. They're different kinds of jobs for different kinds of people.
I think there is a large concentration of talented people here who are far more interested in working in high-tech than working for the government.
Serious question: how are the Pakistanis and Zimbabweans and other folk who are elderly and whose skills aren't current (I'm assuming) becoming Canadian citizens? Vancouver, for example, is a melting pot. Is a skilled worker legally allowed to bring any number of their unskilled extended family over?
- remember to sign up for OHIP (or the local equivalent) as soon as you arrive, there is a time limit on how long you can wait before signing up after arriving in Canada. If you don't do this in time you will not be covered.
- Canada has some pretty severe weather in the winter, everywhere except for the area around Niagara falls and Vancouver. The latter is the better spot all year round. Big cities are your only chance to mitigate the worst of this, rural life is brutal.
- Don't make any irreversible moves (giving away stuff, actually moving) until all the paper work is done. I made the mistake of believing a bunch of government officials during my own move to Canada on an entrepreneurship visa and it cost me dearly.
- Elsewhere in this thread someone asks why not go to the US, well, (1) free (and good) healthcare, (2) a bit more laid back business climate. That said, the laid back atmosphere and the different venture capital climate make it a lot harder to get off the ground in Canada. Cost of living is slightly lower than in the US for most parts of Canada.
- Outside of Waterloo, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and maybe Quebec City it's going to be hard to find qualified employees. In Ottawa you'll be bidding against the government.
- No matter where you want to go in Canada you'll have to score reasonably well on the French language test. Even if that's the only time in Canada you'll ever use your French. (imho this is a ridiculous requirement, and that's with 5 years of French under my belt and a ton of exposure, you simply don't need it unless you plan on living in Quebec).
- Paperwork processing in Canada can be terribly slow, it is basically the luck of the draw whether your paperwork will be processed in weeks, months, years or even decades! (no kidding...).
I could go on like this for a while, if you have any specific questions about moving to Canada (but not about this program) feel free to ask.