Statistics Canada Reports II

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Toronto's competitors are not other Canadian cities, it's the world's pre-eminent tech and financial hubs like Silicon Valley, NYC, London, Singapore, Dublin, Sydney etc. In this respect Toronto is clearly struggling, because the tech giants aren't building their A-Teams in Toronto, and Toronto has failed to build any momentum in global finance post-Brexit, even though NYC keeps gunning ahead.

In tech, the cream of the cream of Waterloo IT graduates are still relocating permanently to Silicon Valley and Seattle for co-op and/or post-graduation, and the wave of returnees have died off completely after a short spurt in the mid-2010s.

This is exactly right.

Canada has always has a bit of a brain drain lured by the higher wages, lower taxes, and better climates that the US offered. Many Canadians, traditionally, made their way back because the quality of life in the US was lower. From entrenched poverty, urban ghettos, high crime, oppressive racism, no healthcare to speak of, and huge income/wealth gaps.

The lure of the US still remains but now the gap in quality of life has diminished considerably with our hundreds of tent cities, a healthcare system on the verge of collapse, a much larger gap between US & Canadian wages, 2 million a month lining up at our Food Banks, skyrocketing housing prices, and a general malaise amongst the populace that our best days are well behind us.

We are a nation in decline and for many young people the US looks like a far better option and for those already there, they see little reason to return.

[osirisboy]

Based on the younger people I know they have zero interest to move to the us, especially with the restrictions on healthcare for women

[thebasketballgeek]

^Yea I’m not interested in moving to the US at all. Canada’s still got better health care, the cities are more walkable and friendly to non-car modes of transportation, cities are (much) safer, the tap water tastes better, electricity is cheaper, I prefer the food here, public education is better, and the political divisiveness is on another planet compared to Canada. Canada is also better suited to deal with climate change as a significant chunk of the Southern US will be deemed inhabitable in the coming decades.

However, I’m not sure if Canada is the place I want to live for the rest of my life. Money isn’t the main motivator but rather quality of life. Québec is definitely an improvement compared to Winnipeg in this regard (sorry Winnipeggers I still love y’all). My eyes are set for France with their much better health care system, public transportation, cheaper cost of living, incredible food, I can still improve my French over there, and they take urbanism a bit more seriously compared to the majority of the planet especially North America. I’m a city boy so my values differ but as one of the rare people on this board in my early 20 I wanted to provide my 2 cents.

Also fwiw, a lot of my friends do in fact want to move either to the States or Alberta with the sole reason being money. People put too much damn value in money man there’s more to life than just numbingly participating in the rat race prevalent in these hyper capitalist societies. But no a lot of people just want money, sex, and drugs and that’s deemed a fulfilling life.

[Build.It]

It should be clarified that for those in the US with access to insured healthcare (which is the majority of their population), the quality of care is generally better than here.

A health insurance plan is something like $500/month if your employer doesn't offer it. That is more than offset by the significantly lower cost of living and higher wage you're likely to make for your skills over there. And if you're Canadian living there you could just travel back to Canada for your treatment anyways.

If I was in my early 20s starting out I would give the US very serious consideration. Especially Michigan considering it's still close to family, similar culture/hobbies/etc, strong economy, low cost of living.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Build.It;10219750[B

]It should be clarified that for those in the US with access to insured healthcare (which is the majority of their population), the quality of care is generally better than here.[/B]

A health insurance plan is something like $500/month if your employer doesn't offer it. That is more than offset by the significantly lower cost of living and higher wage you're likely to make for your skills over there. And if you're Canadian living there you could just travel back to Canada for your treatment anyways.

If I was in my early 20s starting out I would give the US very serious consideration. Especially Michigan considering it's still close to family, similar culture/hobbies/etc, strong economy, low cost of living.

Can confirm, having had fully-covered surgery in the USofA. The standards were far beyond anything offered by public medicine in Canada.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Noooooo!!! Not OKOTOKS!!!!!

Moncton: There are more than a number of things to do

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Moncton: There are more than a number of things to do

Indeed. We even have a zoo, and warm salt water beaches only 15 minutes away.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Indeed. We even have a zoo, and warm salt water beaches only 15 minutes away.

I have made it to Shediac in under 15 .

[dennis]

Originally Posted by craner

Airdrie just north of Calgary is expected to hit 100,000 in 2028.
When I was a kid growing up in the ‘70s it was 2000 people and a bit of a drive in the country to get there.
They say it will likely grow to be Alberta’s third largest city.

This got me wondering - is Surrey more populous than Vancouver now ?

Last time I was there it had a bit more than 10,000

[theman23]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Yes, that's been my experience too.

The other nuance is that the GTA is mostly made up of immigrants and first generation Canadians from immigrant backgrounds. Whether their families are from India or Hong Kong or Nigeria or Iran, living at home until you're married is not considered to be a sign of weakness, so you can have 29 year olds with several years of professional experience spending effectively zero for housing. Also, being of a different cultural background means they're not likely to consider other parts of Canada to move to. I personally don't know anybody who grew up with immigrant parents in the GTA who moved to Edmonton or Moncton or whatever city people claim all the young talent is moving to. Last year there was a Toronto Life article about a woman from a Caribbean background who moved from Mississauga to Edmonton and then back to Mississauga again, saying that she "missed the big city". A lot of people made fun of her, saying that Mississauga isn't a real city and that you'd be a fool to give up ownership of a big home to go back to a shoebox in the suburbs, but to me it seemed pretty reasonable: "the big city" was code for "black
culture", and owning a detached home isn't a universal value.

That’s true, but largely due to the lack of labour mobility we have with the USA.
During the oil boom there was a decent exodus of second gen Canadians out to Alberta. Immigrants are generally career focused and there really isn’t any city or economic region in Canada that offers the same job opportunities as Alberta in the Noughties. There would be less reason to decamp if you can just live with your parents in Toronto and make the same money. A lot of that Alberta cohort moved back to do exactly that once the oil bust happened. But as mentioned, and this fits with my own observations from the Gen Z/late millennials in my family, anyone that can leave now ends up going to the USA.

[MolsonExport]

Surrey (2022 Estimate): 633,234
Vancouver (2021) 662,248

Surrey's pop is more than double what it was when I worked out in Whalley back in the mid nineties.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

I have made it to Shediac in under 15 .

The Shediac four-lane (Veteran's Highway, NB-15) is certainly a bit of a race track, and, is generally busier than the TCH..

All those anxious Monctonians making a bee-line to their cottages on the Bluff or in Pointe-de-Chene after work in the summertime can make for an interesting driving experience.

It generally takes me 20 minutes to get from Parlee Beach (in Shediac) to my house in the Magnetic Hill area of northwest Moncton, using Highway 15 and the TCH bypass.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Toronto's competitors are not other Canadian cities, it's the world's pre-eminent tech and financial hubs like Silicon Valley, NYC, London, Singapore, Dublin, Sydney etc.

Maybe. At the very top of the talent pool, this may be correct. Most people aren't deciding between Dublin, Singapore or Toronto for their next job unless they're (a) so high up and so well-compensated that cost of living in these cities isn't really much of a thought - and it's more "what does this job do for my career goals?" or (b) digital nomad types, who are kind of fickle and don't really set roots down anywhere. For (b), Toronto might just objectively suck no matter what it does because, at the end of the day, it's a city in an unsexy part of the world with a bad climate.

I don't want to defend Toronto or Canada too much - we have some serious problems - but it's worth noting that our peer cities/countries are all dealing with their own laundry list of issues. Other than the US, the most innovative parts of the world are places nobody wants to move to right now for obvious reasons: Israel and South Korea. Some other countries that used to be at the forefront of innovation, like Germany, are stumbling badly, and they need to be innovative more than Canadians who always have natural resources to fall back on. Some places that used to be shining cities on a hill are getting tragically neutered for reasons that they can't control. Losing Hong Kong, a city that I once thought of as the 5th most important place in the world and a former hive of culture and urban life, feels like what losing Beirut must have felt like to people in the 1970s.

Other than higher pay and more job options, the US is really declining in value prop. A lot of things that I used to tell Canadians were American strengths that aren't captured in statistics are rapidly eroding: the inventiveness and resourcefulness of the people, the bespoke customer experience and consumer choices, etc. I just came back from my first big trip to the US post-pandemic, and a lot of those things that I used to envy about them are fading away. They're also getting ridiculously expensive. I feel like the sticker prices of items are the same as they are here, and sometimes even worse, so a USD80,000 salary buys the same as what a CAD80,000 salary does here.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Maybe. At the very top of the talent pool, this may be correct. Most people aren't deciding between Dublin, Singapore or Toronto for their next job unless they're (a) so high up and so well-compensated that cost of living in these cities isn't really much of a thought - and it's more "what does this job do for my career goals?" or (b) digital nomad types, who are kind of fickle and don't really set roots down anywhere. For (b), Toronto might just objectively suck no matter what it does because, at the end of the day, it's a city in an unsexy part of the world with a bad climate.

Given Toronto's meteoric rise in rent and housing prices, the COL gap is shrinking vis-a-vis these superstar cities, especially given the high income taxes in Toronto. Many young professionals in Toronto used to stay because at least the rent/housing prices were reasonable to balance it off, but that's no longer the case and it's harder to justify staying just to see your career growth stunt. Within our peer group, it's mainly family obligations that forces them to stick around. They don't have to be top top talent.. basically any high performing young professional is faced with this dilemma of Toronto's declining value proposition these days.

Other than higher pay and more job options, the US is really declining in value prop. A lot of things that I used to tell Canadians were American strengths that aren't captured in statistics are rapidly eroding: the inventiveness and resourcefulness of the people, the bespoke customer experience and consumer choices, etc.

At the same time, the intangibles in Canada is also rapidly decreasing. Our collapsing public health system, where everyone in my peer group is already assuming that it will be dismantled by the time we retire (which makes us question why we have to pay for it, if it's really only to primarily benefit the boomers). It's in such an embarrassing state that it's even hard to talk about it in front of our American, European and East Asian peers. Car theft so rampant that my parents are too fearful to buy a new Lexus, after violent break-ins just down the street from them in the 416.

I just came back from my first big trip to the US post-pandemic, and a lot of those things that I used to envy about them are fading away. They're also getting ridiculously expensive. I feel like the sticker prices of items are the same as they are here, and sometimes even worse, so a USD80,000 salary buys the same as what a CAD80,000 salary does here.

But for a lot of professional roles these days, especially in the tech and FIRE industries, salaries aren't matching dollar for dollar. What pays CAD80,000 in Canada often times is already paying out in the low 6-digits in the US, plus you can shelter more income through married joint tax filings (something Trudeau took away after Harper implemented a version of it), more generous 401K deductions, excellent healthcare coverage etc, some states don't even tax income (i.e. Seattle, Texas, Florida, Nevada). This also goes for Canadian HQ'd firms, and why many young savvy Torontonians are jumping on the chance of an L1 Visa to NYC/Cali/Texas/Seattle/DC.

A big reason why a trip from the US stings so much is because of our severely weakened purchasing power with the falling CAD, and the fact that our salary increases haven't kept up with the US.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

But for a lot of professional roles these days, especially in the tech and FIRE industries, salaries aren't matching dollar for dollar. What pays CAD80,000 in Canada often times is already paying out in the low 6-digits in the US, plus you can shelter more income through married joint tax filings (something Trudeau took away after Harper implemented a version of it), more generous 401K deductions, excellent healthcare coverage etc, some states don't even tax income (i.e. Seattle, Texas, Florida, Nevada). This also goes for Canadian HQ'd firms, and why many young savvy Torontonians are jumping on the chance of an L1 Visa to NYC/Cali/Texas/Seattle/DC.

Ditto for physicians, especially for in demand specialists and subspecialists.

Canadian hospitals are poorly funded and falling apart. Equipment is not being replaced in a timely manner (often in use for 25 years or more), meaning the equipment is obsolete and unreliable for years before a replacement is judged unavoidable. The installed equipment base is also inadequate. My hospital has one 1.5T MRI, when if it were located in the US, it would have 3-5 MRIs, at least 1-2 of which would be 3.0T capable of functional neuroimaging. We are rapidly reaching the point where medical care in Canada is no longer "state of the art."

At the same time, physician compensation is not keeping up, and, JT has compounded things by removing almost all advantages we used to have by personal incorporation. This used to partially compensate for the salary differences between Canada and the US, but, not any more.

Canadian physicians are paid less, get to work with inadequate obsolete equipment, and are stuck with intolerable queues for laboratory and imaging studies. They are not able to provide timely services to their patients, with surgical wait times for some procedures being 18-24 months, or, even longer.

The government has made a push to improve things for meat and potato procedures like hip and knee replacement surgery, but, overall surgical capacity has not changed, meaning that less frequently performed surgical procedures are often sidelined. Patients with these conditions are neglected by the system.

Physicians are starting to move to the US again, and I suspect we may reach similar heights that we saw back in the 1990s. As I've said before, if I wasn't retiring in two years time, I would be looking into moving myself........

[theman23]

I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of physicians moving to the USA yet. And really, this isn’t a physician specific problem. Rather, they simply work less. We have an extremely hard time recruiting new permanent staff, and have a large roster of what are essentially regular locums. When you pay more than 50% tax on an income that won’t even buy you a median home in the GTA or BC, people start valuing their time differently and reevaluate their life priorities.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by theman23

I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of physicians moving to the USA yet. And really, this isn’t a physician specific problem. Rather, they simply work less. We have an extremely hard time recruiting new permanent staff, and have a large roster of what are essentially regular locums. When you pay more than 50% tax on an income that won’t even buy you a median home in the GTA or BC, people start valuing their time differently and reevaluate their life priorities.

It would probably be more accurate to say that new physicians may look at establishing themselves in the US. I don't know about your specialty, but, it is not uncommon for radiology residents to do post residency fellowships in major American hospitals for subspecialist training. This gives them a chance to get familiar with the American system, and to get noticed by American recruiters. Almost all radiology residents these days do their American Board examinations at the same time as their RCPSC fellowship exams, so they will have double American and Canadian certification. It makes things very easy for relocation purposes.

I agree that established physicians are less likely to relocate, but, we seem to have a bit of a revolving door problem at my hospital where certain in demand subspecialists (hepatobiliary surgeons, thoracic surgeons etc), will work here for a few years before drifting off to their dream assignments (usually academic, sometimes in the USA).

[Nite]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Given Toronto's meteoric rise in rent and housing prices, the COL gap is shrinking vis-a-vis these superstar cities, especially given the high income taxes in Toronto. Many young professionals in Toronto used to stay because at least the rent/housing prices were reasonable to balance it off, but that's no longer the case and it's harder to justify staying just to see your career growth stunt. Within our peer group, it's mainly family obligations that forces them to stick around. They don't have to be top top talent.. basically any high performing young professional is faced with this dilemma of Toronto's declining value proposition these days.



At the same time, the intangibles in Canada is also rapidly decreasing. Our collapsing public health system, where everyone in my peer group is already assuming that it will be dismantled by the time we retire (which makes us question why we have to pay for it, if it's really only to primarily benefit the boomers). It's in such an embarrassing state that it's even hard to talk about it in front of our American, European and East Asian peers. Car theft so rampant that my parents are too fearful to buy a new Lexus, after violent break-ins just down the street from them in the 416.



But for a lot of professional roles these days, especially in the tech and FIRE industries, salaries aren't matching dollar for dollar. What pays CAD80,000 in Canada often times is already paying out in the low 6-digits in the US, plus you can shelter more income through married joint tax filings (something Trudeau took away after Harper implemented a version of it), more generous 401K deductions, excellent healthcare coverage etc, some states don't even tax income (i.e. Seattle, Texas, Florida, Nevada). This also goes for Canadian HQ'd firms, and why many young savvy Torontonians are jumping on the chance of an L1 Visa to NYC/Cali/Texas/Seattle/DC.

A big reason why a trip from the US stings so much is because of our severely weakened purchasing power with the falling CAD, and the fact that our salary increases haven't kept up with the US.

Rents in Toronto are relatively cheap compared to comparable global cities and even mediocre US cities. Rent prices like house prices in Toronto are falling and are down 2.2% YoY
A 1-bedroom apartment in the old city of Toronto average price is going for 1,810 USD currently, i doubt you will find any lower in any other global city.

https://rentals.ca/national-rent-report

Here is what rent in the top US cities look like in May



and Europe in June


https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/europe/rent

1,810 USD (1,664 Euro) median price in the old city of Toronto seems pretty good in comparison

[MolsonExport]

From the perspective of someone toiling away in Academia for 20+ years, and someone that spent 12+ years acquiring university education, I gotta say that these numbers don't look too shabby. Do they leave out the fact about self-funded pensions (re: gross clinical income)?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by osirisboy

Based on the younger people I know they have zero interest to move to the us, especially with the restrictions on healthcare for women

My kids and their significant others (early 20s) certainly haven't ruled out the US as a place to launch their careers and live. (They like Europe too so places like France and Switzerland aren't off the menu for jobs and studies either.)

That said, one of my kids has chosen an educational and career path that would be difficult to continue on in the US, so that settles things for that one.