That is your personal opinion but you need to let everyone decide for themselves.

I can think of a number of turn offs for Australia but I am not going to go into these because what might turn you on about the place I might find a problem.

If you are trying to persuade more people to forget about Canada and go to Australia then you need to find out the motives behind everyone for moving.

Certainly wouldn't want to persuade anyone in any direction. I have said before that Canada is perfect for many people (that might have been in a PM actually), but if so I say it again here. Seriously, I have strong feelings often about living there. But, although I have family and colleagues from Canada, my experience of the country is (as it must be) all based on long and short holidays there.

When I looked into the working enviroment (i.e. tried to get serious about immigration rather than my usual impulsive behaviour), I didn't like what I saw very much. Working rights, Hire-em Fire-em, poor annual leave, high insurance costs, high utilities, etc, all put me off.

Up to this research, Canada was about cruising through chilled-out cities and obscenely large and luxurious automatic cars, waking up at 10 am and breakfasting on junk food before tracking down a good restaurant for lunch, etc.

Really, I suppose you could say that when I actually "got real" about immigration and looked at the grown-up stuff, I discovered Canada wasn't right for me. No view of the Rockies could make up for 10 days off a year, the high-unemployment and the reluctance to employ non-Canadians (or no Canadian experience). Then just when I was taking all this stuff in (and basically thinking that my life in the UK might be better long-term), I found out they expected me to wait 5 years for it.

I'm not sire whay Canada is so backward in the employment sphere, but I have a sneaking suspicion it might be because it has to keep up with Uncle Sam, who has much longer legs.

So I re-oriented my scheming little plans and consider I got lucky, for want of a better phrase.

I can see you're obviously fishing for a bite here Tableland, sorry mate, you're out of luck!

i was reading all this thread today and just came to it by coincidence...very interesting view points. didnt know canada tool longer than australia to get in! for me it took around 3 years...but had to go through security check and even though they didnt communicate well,meaning, didnt answer mails or calls, they were very efficient...
i think as number of immigrants increase in canada, the problems people talk about like difficulty to get work or having canadian experience will be solved...it takes political will ...and canadians understand that...they know if they want to be a prospering country, they need to get out of the shadow of uncle sam..and i think in long run they will as uncle sam will be broke in next 50 years thanks ro mr bin ladan !

85% of Canada's trade is with the US. if the US is broke, Canada is broke. Your point about no communication is very representative of complaints round these here parts. I have been very grateful to have so much contact with the Australian authorities, and they have really helped us navigate our wau through things, and even suggested ways for us to speed things up. Bugger knows how miserable and time-consuming it would have been if they had ignored our emails like the Canadians did while we were still thinking about going to Canada...

Like I said, we got lucky.

Good discussion, I really admire those sure enough of their decision to wait 52 months.

Like many have said lots return from australia, if the wait here was 52 months, thats a long wait to have if you end up so disappointed and return back home. Possibly, with canada being closer to the UK a higher % visit first.

One thing about australia, workplace reform has been brought in now, those expecting great working conditions may be disappointed.

This is misleading. More go to Australia in the first place. Nearly twice as many in fact, so you can see that it is logical that more will return. In percentage terms I doubt more return from Australia. What does interest me though is why people return from these countries, because they seem to follow a trend.

A majority of people returning from Australia cite distance from family as a reason, and those returning from Canada write about high cost of living and a very awkward employment situation (and sometimes the weather).

The "distance from family thing" is funny, because of course it really doesn't make much difference whether you're in Calgary or Brisbane. Both are about the same cost to fly home, and both are about the same distance in time-zone terms. The only difference is about 10 hours more to Australia on a plane. 10 hours is not going to stop you going home, and the cost is the same.

In fact, with so little annual leave you're even less likely to get back to the UK from Canada. If in Australia with 20 days holiday, you could take 2 weeks in the UK and have 2 weeks left over for regular domestic holidays, it would seem harder to use up your entire Canadian leave allocation visiting family in the UK, so I suspect most don't get back as often as they'd like, or go back for shorter periods. Either way, the level of access to the UK from both nations would seem about the same.

I am inclined to believe that the reason is primarily psychological: Australia is FAR AWAY, and Canada is JUST OVER THERE. Maybe is stems from the days of steam ships when Canada would have been a couple weeks and then a train, while Australia was more like 8 weeks. The jet age trashes all that.

Number one reason people return from Canada is due to family.
Number two is due to the weather.

Source: Délégation Générale de Québec à Bruxelles.

People probably return primarily for family reasons from any country. What interests me is that the reports posted on these forums have a very clear distinction between the two nations. Missing friends and family is referred to much more often on the Australia forums.

For someone who is evidently contented with their decision to relocate to Australia - you seem way too preoccupied with spreading doom and gloom amongst those that have decided to reject the country of your choice and relocate to another.

I am happy with my decision to relocate to Canada but I do not spend any time at all trying to convince those that frequent the Australia forum to relocate to Canada - they've made their decision and that is a matter for them.

Just an observation

This thread *invited* conversation and comment about Australia as an alternative destination to Canada, with specific reference to waiting times. Noting that people leave Australia for different reasons to Canada does not constitute spreading doom and gloom. In fact, it explicitly treats both countries in an equal capacity.

My main interest on this thread is to understand what motivates people to put their lives on hold for half a decade to live in a country with such a lack of employment rights and no annual leave. This, sadly, I have not had answered beyond the standard "We just want to." I'm just curious, because I once considered Canada and rejected it on a factual basis.

I was interested to read an other poster's posts regarding moving to Canada (He shall remain anonymous). He started off raving about Canada and how great it was and how Britain was a politically correct hell-hole, etc. Then he moved over to Canada and the posts began to change colour. First, he stated that posters on this forum were painting an inaccurately positive picture of Canada. Canada, he said, was not as great as is made out. Then we found out about how the Hire-em Fire-em attitude ain't so funny on that side of the Atlantic. As time wore on, we got to read about the bad attitude of Canadian employers vis-a-vis giving jobs to non-Canadians. In the end the posts were just an outright unmitigated Canada Slag-Off with a desperate scream to return to England.

It was like reading a diary discovered on a deserted Antarctica science base, slowly revealing what happened to the team. "March 9: Dr Wilson was in good spirits, signed Dr Smith." "March 11: Dr Wilson is acting most strangely today, signed Dr Smith." "March 16: Dr Wilson was scratching at his door last night, signed Dr Smith."

"March 21: Dr Smith no longer with us, signed Dr Wilson."

Perhaps some people are more interested in dreams that facts, and that's just another observation.

I don't think this holds. A quick scan through Travelocity suggests that return flights to LHR from SYD are about twice the price of those from YYZ. That's a difference of $1,000 or so per ticket; a crushing amount for a whole family. I haven't flown to Australia from London but from here it's a nightmare even without children, three changes, twenty odd hours total. By way of contrast, I expect people leaving here one evening to go to work in London the next morning.

That said, I wouldn't hang around for five years trying to get to Canada and, from a Canadian perspective, the fact that people will wait that long rather negates the merits of immigration; people who have waited that long aren't young and keen and about to set the economy on fire.

A crushing response.

dbd

It depends. I know we could do this all day, but if you look hard enough you can find flights to Australia actually below the cost of those to Western Canada. Perth is especially cheap, but I recently saw a flight to Sydney for £400 with Qantas. A flight to Calgary can cost up to £680 economy. It just depends. My broad point is that flights to Australia *should* be twice as expensive but they rarely are. And I have never felt like working after an Atlantic crossing........... Then again, I never feel like working.