retsujou

Huh? literacy rate for the UK should be median at 99.0 and it should be the same for Canada.

Steve_P

From a CBC indepth article March 2006.

Illiteracy Canada's Shame

Balance of piece here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/ed...ada-shame.html

BristolUK

The word 'Handicapped' is still considered acceptable.

Little is done to prevent people slipping into poverty - some provinces worse than others.

Almost Canadian

With the acceptable alternative being ?

For the record, I am handicapped and don't whether people call me handicapped, disabled or any other form of adjective one wishes to use.

Please explain what is wrong with handicapped ?

fledermaus

The WHO uses the word handicapped and makes a distinction between handicapped and disabled
Their definitions are

"Impairment: Any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological, or anatomical structure or function.


"Disability: Any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.


"Handicap: A disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or disability, that, limits or prevents the fulfillment of a role that is normal, depending on age, sex, social and cultural factors, for that individual."

So handicapped is what society makes disabled people. The barriers we face.

hudd

Norman Family

In 1999 I remember telling my friend back in England that time travel does exist. As said in other posts it like being transported back to 1960's especially in rural areas.

I found a big difference in the work place compared to the UK. Health and Safety legislation and practices were several decades behind in some companies I worked for. In the UK Human Performance and Risk Assessments are important part of my work, but in Canada I found these were not being used. The difference I found that Canada would use 1 in hundred thousand chance of an accident in the risk model whereas in the UK 1 in 10 Million risk of accident would be used. This make a quite a difference in working and safety cultural practices. It was quite hard to lower your expectation in the work place in relationship to safety.

In the rural areas I lived, men went hunting, fishing etc and the wives would be expected to stay at home a raise the kids. The men would expect to have there trip/free time even if family had to go without holidays etc.

Found it much more unionised and strong demarcation in the electricity generations industry compared to the UK. This caused me a few problems as a employee and manager as in the UK I was and am used to multi skilled teams. In UK as a Chemist I undertook cross functional tasks from reactor chemistry, radiation protection, HSE, instrumentation repairs and project management. Where as in Canada Chemist role was just Chemistry, Health physictist undertakes Radiation Protection, C&I Technicians repaired instrumentation.

Customer service we found was hit and miss. No customer charters ie level of service many UK companies offer. Utility company service people would not turn up on the day you expected no phone calls to tell you why they were not coming, no delivery tracking systems available via internet of goods purchased.

As said in previous posts it is quite nostalgic, but at time I found living I he past quite hard, especially when I was managing a department of mixed union staff.
I found Canadians nice people generally and at time were too laid back for me, especially being in a management role. Canada still reminds me of 1970's UK civil servant era.

I hope this help you from an expats view.

hudd

Rich_007

The word 'retard' is still considered acceptable.

R.

Rich_007

"Less able" or "less enabled". More self-empowering. Think NDP politiko-speak.

Positive spin not negative spin. Handicapped implies needy, etc.

R.

LotteW

Me, and most of the words I have to correct are due to my inability to type!

Lots of transposed letters and things like that.

Incidentally, "That" is the word I had to correct in the above - I had typed is as taht.

Nothing to do with lack of literacy, more to do with the fact that I type fast and get letters mixed up.

jericho

You see a lot of cars on the road in a condition that would be obviously illegal in the UK. A LOT of cars have severely cracked windscreens for instance.

Internet trading is virtually non-existant over here.

Having to pay to receive calls/texts on a cell phone contract. WTF is that about?

Electrical safety standards seem sub-par compared to the UK.

Canada2006

It all seems a lot more advanced than continental Europe if you ask me. Customer service levels are generally higher, people are polite, much better selection in the shops than in Brussels.

No complaining here.... oh except about Rogers Wireless but only that

retsujou

Excuse me?

pennyhp

The banks don't have glass partitions up to separate the tellers from the public.

I can't remember the last time I saw that in the UK.

G77

Everyone wants you to fax them things.... I'd never even used a fax machine before I had to fax my signed contract to Canada....

Why fax when you can scan then email?

retsujou

Well as funny as it sounds, when you fax something from point A to Point B it is actually recognised as legally binding document. In Austria it has something to do with the way the telecommunication law is written and Fax machies being perceived to not being capable of altering the residual image of the document once it has entered the buffer.

When you scan something and then email it, the resulting document is not legally binding because your computer is capable of altering that image prior to sending it.