Hello. My name is Emma, and today we are going
to talk about whether you should move to Canada.
Many people want to come to Canada. As some of
you know, I'm from Canada, I live in Toronto,
and so I thought it would be a great idea
to make a video about what it is like moving
to Canada and living in Canada. Many students
ask me, "Is Canada a good country to move
to? Is it a good country to immigrate to?" My answer is always, "Well, it depends on
what your goals are." So, I'm going to talk
a little bit about that later. Before I talk
about this video, I also wanted to tell you a
bit about my background. So, I teach English,
I have many students from many countries around
the world, I teach immigrants English, I am
the granddaughter of an immigrant, so my grandfather
immigrated to Canada, and I have a lot of
friends who are immigrants. In fact, more than half of Toronto... More than half of
the people from Toronto were actually born in other countries. So, we are a place and
a city of immigrants. So, in this video, I'm going to talk a little bit about life
in Canada. We'll talk about the first question
a lot of people wonder, "Are Canadians rich?
Are there jobs in Canada? What about housing?
Is it easy to buy a house or find an apartment?
What are the good things about living in Canada,
and what are the bad things?" I hope by the
end of this video, you will have more information
to help you make your decision about moving
All right. So, one thing many people in the
world believe is that all Canadians are rich,
and if you come to Canada, it is easy to become
rich; you just need to work hard. Unfortunately,
this is not exactly true. So, let's talk a bit about this. The Canadian dollar, so the
Canadian currency, is very strong. So, when Canadians go to other countries, we often
can buy quite a lot of things because we have
a strong currency. But here's the problem.
When you live in Canada, everything is very expensive. So, I'll give you some examples
of this. Let's start here. So, in Canada, in
2022, the average salary was about $41,000
US. So, that's what the average Canadian made.
There's some Canadians that make more money
than this, and there's a lot of Canadians who
make less money than this. Now, the problem
is you might think, "Well, that's a lot of money." But if you think how much money a
house is in Canada, it's over $800,000 US.
You might think, "Well, what about if I rent?"
Rent is also extremely expensive in this
country. Food is very expensive. Pretty much
everything is very expensive. So, you make a lot of money, but then you lose most of
your money every month because of the cost of daily living. So, yes, Canadians make a
lot of money in general, but we also spend a
lot of money on rent, food, transportation.
It's an expensive country to live in. We also
have very high taxes. So, a lot of the money
you get goes back to the government. So, again,
life in Canada is very expensive, so it might
seem like Canadians are rich. When many immigrants
come here, they start to work, and they think,
"Great. I'm making so much money." But then they have to spend all the money they make
on the cost of daily living and on rent. So, it's a very expensive country.
A lot of people don't realize also that Canada
has a problem with homelessness. There's many
people who are poor in Canada and actually
live on the streets. You might not know this
because when you think of Canada, you probably
picture a beautiful country with a lot of
nature. That exists, but in the cities, many
cities have problems with homelessness. It
might even be worse than where you're from, or there might be less homeless people, but
I can tell you, Canada has a lot of homeless people.
So, let's learn a little bit more about this
country and whether you should move here or
not. Okay, so a lot of people want to know, "Is it easy to find a job in Canada?" Well,
here is what the problem is. In Canada, we
actually need many immigrants. We have a lot
of jobs and not enough people to work the
jobs. We really need doctors, we need nurses,
we need engineers, we need people in IT, we need construction workers, we need people.
It's a big problem here. There are a lot of
jobs, but here is the bigger problem. Canada
has a problem with red tape. "Red tape" might
be a new word for you. What red tape means
is bureaucracy. There's many people who come to
Canada who were doctors, they were engineers,
they have great skills. We could really use
them, but the problem is because of regulations,
paperwork, visa requirements, college rules,
maybe translation of education, a lot of people
come to Canada with great skills, but they
cannot work in these professions, even though
they want to, and the reason is because of red
tape. For example, imagine you are a doctor in
your country. You come to Canada and you want to
be a doctor in Canada. You know we need doctors
here. The problem is to become a doctor, you will
have to go through many different tests. It could
take years. It takes a lot of money. Your previous
experience might not count, and so even though you
have this great experience, you might not succeed
in becoming a doctor in Canada. This, to me,
is heartbreaking. It's very frustrating because we
need people. There's people who have the skills,
but for some reason, we're not getting these
people in the professions we need them in.
So, if you want to learn a little bit more about
immigration, my colleague Alex actually has a
good video where he talks to somebody who helps
immigrants come to Canada. So, you can check out
that video and learn more if you're interested.
The bottom line is for many people, they come to
Canada, they can't find the job they want, and
they actually leave Canada, or they work in an
industry completely different because they can't
do what they were trained to do. Okay, so let me
tell you a little bit about some of the good
things about Canada because there are a lot of
good things about living in Canada. First of all,
Canada is a pretty safe country. There are crimes,
yes, but there are less crimes than maybe in other
countries or other places. I like the fact that as
a woman, I can walk around in the evening time
alone and still feel pretty safe. You have to be
careful, but it's overall safer than a lot of places
in the world. Canada is also very multicultural,
especially some of the cities like Vancouver,
Toronto, and Montreal. We have many immigrants
who come to Canada, so we are used to immigrants.
There are different restaurants with different
types of foods from around the world. You can hear
different languages being spoken in these cities.
Overall, Canadians love immigrants, and so we are
used to immigrants, we love immigrants coming here,
we love learning about different cultures and
different beliefs, so we're very welcoming
towards people from other countries. Another
positive about living in Canada is freedom.
You have the freedom to say what you want to say
or to express your beliefs. We accept people from
different political beliefs, different religious
beliefs, different sexual orientations, different
races. So, overall, if there's... The beautiful
thing about Canada is there's a lot of freedom,
especially compared to other places, so some
people like to come here for that reason.
Another good thing about Canada is nature.
There's a lot of nature here. Even in the cities,
like Toronto, where I'm from, there's a lot of
green space, lots of parks, you can see wildlife,
so it's a great country for people who love nature. In fact, many Canadians during the
summertime go to the forest to cabins or cottages,
they go camping, they go on fishing trips, so these
are popular pastimes. So, if you like nature,
this is a great country to visit or move to.
We have great libraries in Canada, especially in
the cities. I mention this because when immigrants
come here, you can get a lot of information, a
lot of resources, sometimes even free English
lessons through the libraries, so they're always
a great thing to check out if you come here.
Another thing that is good about living in Canada
is we have a lot of support for people who have
disabilities. It's not perfect, but it might
be better than the supports in other countries.
So, I'll give you an example. I had one student
who was in a wheelchair, and I remember when he
came to Canada, his world opened up because he
was able to take the bus to different places.
They have special buses for people in wheelchairs,
so he could go to different parks, things were
accessible. So, he really enjoyed coming to Canada
because where he was from, there wasn't a lot,
but coming to Canada for people with disabilities,
there can be a lot more supports or more
accessibility. Another thing I just wanted to
mention was healthcare. So, Canada has a healthcare
system where, in general, because we pay high
taxes, in general, we don't have to pay for a lot of
our healthcare. If I want to go to a doctor, I
don't have to pay. If I need a surgery, in general,
I don't need to pay. If I have to go to the
hospital, I don't need to pay. So, this is very...
this is amazing in a lot of ways, especially if
you don't have insurance or you don't have a lot
of money. Having free healthcare is great. The
problem, this is why I put a question mark,
is there's a downside to this, and that is that
sometimes there are long wait times to see a
doctor or to get a surgery. So, on the one hand,
it's really good, things are free in general, but
on the other hand, you might have to wait or you
might have difficulty finding a family doctor.
So, there's good and bad when it comes to the
healthcare system. So, I'm just going to tell you
a little bit more about immigrating to Canada
and what that might be like, and hopefully this
will help you make a decision. Okay, so let's talk
about some of the negative aspects of living in
Canada or immigrating here. For many immigrants,
the weather can be a big surprise. Canada can be
very cold in the wintertime. The main thing I
notice, though, is the weather really changes.
So, it can be suddenly very cold, and then a week later, very hot. Then it's raining,
and then it's snowing, and then it's perfect
weather, and everybody's happy. So, you may
come from a country where things are usually
the same. In Canada, the weather really changes.
I think, on the one hand, though, because of
global warming, many places are getting very,
very hot. Many places are becoming too hot. I
think Canada might actually be a good country
to be in in the future if some of these things continue to happen.
Transportation. One of the issues with living in Canada is it's a big country,
so there's a lot of difficulties when it comes
to transportation. If you want to travel between
cities, it can be very big distances, so you might
have to drive a lot. Even if you live in the city,
like, for example, I live in Toronto, to get to
work, it can be very difficult because we only
have a certain number of highways, everybody
takes the same highways, so there's a lot of
traffic jams and a lot of very long commutes.
So, many people find it difficult to get around,
especially on workdays, just because there's a lot of traffic.
Rent can be a big problem in Canada, especially
in the cities like Vancouver and Toronto.
Rent is expensive here. I think... And these
numbers frequently change and increase,
but when I last checked, the average cost of a
one-bedroom apartment, so an apartment with just
one bedroom in Toronto, was $2,100 per month.
Now, even trying to find an apartment can be very
difficult. A lot of people try to find an apartment, there's not enough apartments,
so there's a shortage of housing and apartments.
So, this can be very stressful, and it can be
really hard on immigrants because they come here and they can't find a place to live.
So, before you come to Canada, really, really think about where you will live,
and do you have enough money for rent for the first year you're living here.
Finally, another thing I wanted to mention
about maybe some of the negatives about Canada
is we have a problem with career colleges. So, in Canada, we have universities,
like the University of Toronto, or the University
of British Columbia, or McGill University. These
are great universities, and, you know, they
have great professors, they have a lot of great
programs. We also have what we call "career colleges". So, these are not universities,
they are these almost fake colleges that are
created. They try to get a lot of international
students, they do not have good professors, they
don't have good programs. The diploma in Canada
is not seen as useful or, you know, it's seen as a scam. There's a lot of fraud
with these colleges. So, the government is trying to close down these colleges,
but they keep coming up. So, if you are coming
to Canada for education, please be careful.
Look at the reviews for the university, make sure it's a real university.
So, be careful because some of these career colleges charge a lot of money,
and they're not good programs. So, these are
some of the issues with moving to Canada.
I've talked about some of the positives of living in Canada.
So, should you move here? Is Canada a good
place to live? I would say, again, it depends.
Many people believe they will come here, they'll
be very rich, they'll have a great house,
life will be easy, and everything will be perfect. I don't think that's true.
I think that it's difficult to be an immigrant
in Canada. I know a lot of people come to Canada
and then leave Canada because they find the life here too difficult.
On the other hand, I think that there's a lot of good reasons to come to Canada.
I think that if you are looking for a safe
country with freedom, I think that if you are
looking for a country where it might be a good
place to have children and raise your children
in a good environment, I think there's a lot of positives about living in Canada.
So, I think you need to ask yourself, "Why am I immigrating?" and then decide
if the reasons for immigration match with the Canadian life.
So, thank you so much for watching this video.
We talked about a lot of different things.
For those of you who have immigrated to Canada,
please write in the comments below about your
experiences. I think it's a very good topic,
and I think people could really benefit from
understanding if you had a good experience
moving to Canada, or if you had a bad experience
moving to Canada, and what your advice would be.
So, thank you again for watching, and until next time, take care.