Pine Cone

For those of you who seem to post from a more ambivalent perspective of Canada when compared to the UK, how do you feel about Canada post-Brexit? More positive towards Canada? No different?

Media is a dangerous thing, but I've found the reports of racially motivated attacks and generally unpleasant behaviour in the UK towards certain racial/social groups to be deeply unsettling and I've been wondering whether the UK's social cohension is starting to crumble at the seams, undoing decades of progress. I've always found the UK to be a less racist society than either NZ or Australia. It's not that most people here are racist. They most definitely are not. But there does seem to be a real undercurrent of real ignorance, resistance and distaste towards immigrants that are 'not the right type' IYSWIM. In the UK, whilst there were pockets of trouble, we've always worked and socialised with people from a wide variety of different ethnic/racist/religious backgrounds and always found people to be very respectful, interested in and supportive of our differences.

I'll get to the point How are things in Canadian cities, especially Toronto?

dbd33

Toronto's not a centre for Canadian racism. Everyone in Toronto is from somewhere else so they hate whoever they hate based on quarrels from the old countries. Since there are many old countries and many feuds racism is diluted and the overall impression is of harmony.

In order to have overt and successful racism, "successful" meaning effective in causing suffering to the victims, you need to have a defined minority to persecute. Regina would be my first suggestion as a place to look for apartheid in Canada.

abner

Bit of a strange question, no? Canada's multi-cultural mix marches on, mostly muddling through, successfully if slowly, Brexit or no Brexit.

Really you seem to be asking whether those who have an opinion about UK multi-culturism have changed it, post-Brexit-referendum. Why not just ask that?

Pine Cone

That's not quite what I'm asking. I'm just wondering whether people have changed their view at all, perhaps viewing Canada more favouribly by comparison. Of course this will make no real difference for people who are happy and settled in Canada. But there are a number of people posting who appear to be more ambivalent and suggest that in the fullness of time they are considering a return to the UK. I'm just wondering whether Brexit has changed their view on this at all, even a little, not at all etc.

Living somewhere that is comparatively peaceful and cohensive is important to me and it's interesting to hear of peoples Canadian perspective on this. Certainly many expats down under are currently saying publically how glad they are right now, having made the decision to move well away from Europe. This is interesting to me as the one thing that keeps coming up again and again, when you ask expats what they miss about the UK, is easy access to cheap European holidays.

Engineer_abroad

I don't think it is just the UK. The whole of Europe right now is becoming increasingly nationalist and with this comes the sort of nasty behaviors and attitudes we are seeing. The US is increasingly going this way, look at Trump.

Canada seems to embrace its multi-culturism more than I have seen in other countries, as others have said it mostly just marches on slowly without great political comment. There is some signs of increasing tensions in Vancouver right now but that is more to do with where money is coming from rather than people.

beckiwoo

And the effects on the housing market.

Engineer_abroad

this is what most people are most worried about unfortunately there is a growing trend of those who criticize where the money comes from being called racist (especially by the Provincial government, who don't want to do anything about the problem as it leads to huge party donations) and this is only making many people in Vancouver increasingly angry and breeding increased nationalist tendencies.

dbd33

Surely the tendencies aren't "nationalist". People in Vancouver may want to stop rich Chinese people pricing them out of the housing market but the people objecting aren't of one nation and their proposed solution isn't likely to be to give Vancouver to the Canadians. The people priced out are still English or Indian or Anglo-Swiss or whatever, they're only Canadian by passport. This is one set of immigrants vs. another.

To me, objecting to foreign money treads a fine line as regards racism, in any city the foreigners with the money are likely to be from one, or a few, places; China in the case of Vancouver, Russia or the Middle East in the case of London. The objection may be legitimate, though I'd argue that, if you can't afford Monte Carlo you should move to Cap D'Antibes, or in the Canadian case from Vancouver to Regina, but the focus is racist. One may counter the racist argument by saying that it's only the rich educated Chinese who are the problem but I doubt people arguing that eagerly welcome the poor uneducated Chinese.

abner

Again, the Brexit vote hasn't changed Canada itself one iota. Any UK expat who was ambivalent about Canada probably remains so, whether or not post-Brexit ethnic tensions might also make them more ambivalent about any potential return to the UK.

I doubt that will ever change...

dbd33

It did cause a ten minute discussion at home on the merits of living somewhere dull. In Canada, we don't have to deal with political upheaval, excitement or drama, and one may be thankful for that; more so, perhaps, if one comes from Turkey than the UK. That said, dull is still dull, the wind may go straight through you but this is no place for the young.

Engineer_abroad

The fact that most people can see through the issue being nationalistic doesn't mean it isn't perceived that way, especially in the lower educated/lower earners in society. Those of us with some nonce about us can see that Trump's arguments about Mexican immigration takes US jobs are nonsense but it doesn't stop a huge majority of disgruntled US citizens buying the argument. Remember the Nazi's came to power whilst Germany was a democracy, on the back of the very same attitudes.

In relation to the Vancouver housing market there is a huge difference in rich foreign investment in say commercial property and those coming to live in Vancouver and those buying and selling residential housing stock like it is stocks and shares. The system in Vancouver is broken, there is no checks and balances, no checking of the source of incomes, false declarations when buying, no tie to tax records, a BC government which tries to shut down data collection and even when it does allow it massages the figures to show there is not a problem. The BC government is one of the few jurisdictions in the world that can legally accept donations from foreign companies and individuals, so there is always going to be the question of whose interests do they represent, it is not racist to expect the government to safe guard the interests of the resident above foreign interests.

I accept your point that if you cant afford it you should look elsewhere but we are talking about 30%+ increases in property prices a year, that is unsustainable. From the articles I have read there are many young, professionals leaving BC for other provinces (BC has the highest property prices, highest student loan repayments and amongst the lowest salaries). if the city and the province isn't careful there is going be a huge brain drain from the city and Vancouver and by extension BC will become Canadas Disney land.

MarylandNed

Most maybe but not "everyone". It also depends on what you mean by "somewhere else" - somewhere other than Toronto or somewhere other than Canada? A little over 50% of Torontonians were born outside Canada. That means that almost 50% of Torontonians were born in Canada. Now, of course, quite a few of those come from elsewhere in Canada but there is still a sizeable number of Torontonians who were actually born in Toronto.

dbd33

This is how housing markets work. It's not broken, it's just a popular market at the moment. The same pricing issues pertain to beach huts at Frinton on Sea but no one (at least to my knowledge) says the government should intervene so that people who are frequent sunbathers resident in Essex can afford one.

Vancouver has a, relatively, low cost rental market so there's not even an argument that government intervention in the housing market would get people of the streets. The issue here is that immigrants from some countries can afford houses and those from others cannot, the novelty is only that those who can't afford are from Europe and not from Africa.

dbd33

NS, S.

abner

Thank God they're all still intermingling on a geographical basis, or where else would we get new Torontonians from...???