Hi All,

Me and my wife are looking to move to Canada in the very never future. We currently going through the FSW application process and have the last few hurdles to cross e.g. Medicals etc.

It’s my wife dream to move to Canada and my own primary reason for moving is to help this dream be realised but as the time comes closer and after a lot of reflection, I have to be honest and am having second thoughts about the move.

From my personal perspective I have gone through a move in the past so I do have experience of what it’s like to move away from home. All be it the move was only from Cheshire to Yorkshire so it’s not the same kind of distance as UK to Canada but I know how long it took me to integrate and make new friends within the region.

My main concern am currently wanting to speak to people about is work life balance. We have two you girls aged 2 ½ years and 3 months. My current job and employer while demanding is very very flexible. I can regularly work long hours (e.g.8am – 6pm. 7am - 7pm when travel is taken into account) but there are very good perks that do allow for a reasonable balance. Am contracted to work 37hrs a week (lunch breaks not included) and I get 32 days annual leave. We have flexible working with the core hours (Hours I have to work) being 10am to 12noon and 2pm to 3:30pm. As we accrue extra hours worked above the 37 contracted hours I can also use this to take up to 2 additional days leave within a four week period. In theory If I was to max this out I could have an additional 26 days of leave a year (appreciate this is technically just getting back additional time I've put in). This doesn’t even take into account all of the statutory holiday am entitled to. I can also work from home up to two days a week, work schedule permitting, and as my trip to work is anywhere from 45-60min this is a big benefit to me.

Now the research I’ve done on line suggests that leave annual leave allowance in Canada is approx 10 days, some better packages seem to offer 15 days but in general you require a long service to acquire more leave. I haven’t been able to find much about the general approach to flexible working in Canada although I appreciate that this may differ widely from company to company and industry to industry. The research I've done though suggest that Canadians have a very strong work ethic, some suggest a reluctances to take leave (?) as people try to make themselves indispensable. In general though Canadians try to make more of their weekend to compensate.

As stated my primary reason for moving is to help realise my wifes dream but I also want to ensure we have a better work life balance. We’d like a better quality of life in Canada but I want to be able to have the time to enjoy Canada and all it has to offer as well as getting more family time. With the research I’ve done to date I have a real concern that moving to Canada we’d actually end up with the opposite.

With the above in mind am wondering if anybody is willing to share their experience of their move from the UK to Canada? How have you found the work life balance, UK vs Canada? Has anyone gone from a similar situation were they had a lot of leave allowance in the UK to very little in Canada? In such a situation did you find you still had a good balance and were there any changes to the way you approached life to ensure you still had a good balance between work and life. Is there any general advice or experience any one is willing to share on this whole subject?

Would just really like to see what experience people who may have been in a similar have had, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent. Any constructive comments are welcome.

Thanks

David

If the aim is to see Canada then that's better achieved by staying where you are and taking holidays. The combination of limited vacation time and high internal air fares makes living in Canada poorly compatible with the idea of seeing the country.

I went from having one week off every month, plus 18 floating days vacation in the UK, to having 10 days + stats (effectively 21 days, but you can't float the stats)

Work life balance in Canada I've found to be bad...

I'm also in a position where I literally only have 10 days holiday per year...if I end up having to work a stat day, then too bad...they think a little extra in the pay packet suffices for that

I think it also does depend on what you're actually doing, every job is different. As everyone has so far stated, in general, if you are seeking more time off then the UK almost certainly is a better place to be. We are better off timewise but maybe that's just the job that we do. I think this is more the exception rather than the rule. I think both you need to be committed to the move and it certainly sounds as if you have understandably developed cold feet. You are moving in your words to achieve your wife's dreams. You need to be happy as well. I don't know what you're line of work but you seem to have quite significant control of flexibility which I am sure will be lost unless you are extremely lucky over here.

I am usually one of the optimistic that members on this forum but I have to be honest, if you have your doubts now, but it then I would certainly think very carefully before going to the expense of such a huge move which may well not be too your advantage. You could live in Paradise but if you have no time off to enjoy it then what is the point?

With regard to the work ethic, I think that it is more that they aren't allowed the time off, not that they are keen to work every hour/day that they can

In the UK I had 5 weeks holiday + Stats and managed to take them all, every year, without fail, including at least 2 foreign holidays per year.

In Canada, I get 3 weeks + Stats + usually 2 or 3 Gifted extra days at Christmas and so far I've not managed to take them all in either of the two full years I've been here.

I've also only left Canada twice in 28 months - both times for less than 30 minutes at Peace Arch on Flagpoling trips and I've not been outside BC either, other than a work trip to Edmonton in the middle of January for a course....

I definitely work fewer hours per week and do in fact manage a lunchbreak that's not at my desk sending emails most days, which is a novelty...

We have a higher standard of living here (money does go further here for most things apart from houses in my opinion), but also a higher cost of living too for some aspects, mainly due to the price of houses, but we did go from a 130k GBP house in the UK with a 50K GBP mortgage to a $620k (when bought) house with a $450k mortgage here!

My job 'converted' at $2 to 1 GBP, which helped, but that doesn't necessarily happen with every job.

I agree with DBD33. If you have so much holiday entitlement in the UK, use it to take extended holidays in Canada to have a look around. We've been here over 5 years and only been to the States once. Back to the UK - never. What do you think the pull is for your wife towards Canada? Have you visited often?

Working for the provincial government in BC , gets you are starting holiday allowance of 15 days. If you are part of the union you get flex days every 2 weeks (26 days a year). On top of that you get 8 stat days. So in total you get 49 days. The caveat is you can't bank all your flex days and take them off altogether. The work life balance here is pretty good, working just over 35 hours a week on average. There aren't many perks but I noticed a lot of people who end up working in government, never leave, probably due to a good pension too!

Also, you get paid every 2 weeks which was a new thing to me, compared to getting paid at the end of the month, makes budgeting easier.

The secret that I've found is to be quietly efficient at your job and I stress the quiet bit. By being sort of invisible but getting all the work done, nobody really notices you. That way they don't notice when you're late to work, take two hour lunches, go home early or take cheeky three or four day weekends when they aren't scheduled. The mistake I see people make is either they bang on how hard they work, about long hours and how tired they are. Its stupid, all you're doing is getting noticed and thus missed. So leave your ego at home, stop pretending to yourself or others you're doing a good job, nobody cares rather they'll just resent you for it. Smile a lot and stealthily bring the only people who can really do you in, the receptionists, nice chocolate biscuits. Work/life balance sorted.

I think it really depends on the company you work for to be honest, some are going to be more flexible than others.

I have worked in places where they were surprised I wanted to take a full week (or even 10 days off) and others where it was encouraged. I thought I'd struggle going from 5 weeks to 3, and it was a bit of an adjustment initially. Though that was more having to pay attention to how much time off I had booked!

I have a good balance in my current role, I work very independently and if I need to stay late then that is recognized in banked time. But for the most part I am out of the door at 5 pm with no pressure to be staying late.

I think when you've decided on a move, you can get all sorts of cold feet for various reasons. When you move over, you're slightly euphoric for a while and then reality sets in as you constantly compare where you left with what you're in now (often unfavourably). Then you adapt. There are recognised stages of culture shock which we all go through to varying degrees.

I still compare stuff like having to pay an MSP premium, seeing older people having to pay on the buses ...I get irritated by the high cost of medication, dentists and all the stuff like tax returns etc. Then there are the good bits (for me): take out food is more variable and cheaper, the landscape is prettier than where I lived in the UK, coffee in coffee shops is cheaper and better (I think), long walks by the beach, hiking ... These may be little details, but I enjoy them.

I think what you need to do is think about how you got to the point you are now at: applying through FSW (I assume through EE and an ITA??). You must have got to this point because of a number of reasons which I suspect are probably more than just your wife's dreams of Canada. Once you get to those kinds of points, I think it's difficult to go back without a lot of what ifs (what if I had tried it??). However, if you become PRs, nothing to stop you giving it a go then moving back if it doesn't work out. You can rent your house in the UK rather than sell, perhaps take leave of absence from your job etc. etc. Your kids will be fine whatever you do: they are young enough to adapt.

S

Very young children. Do you have family and friends nearby for babysitting? Even if you don't it will take a while to build up a support network here.

Plenty of posters comment on how hard it is without family around

What everyone else has said.

Moving from Cheshire to Yorkshire, in no way, will prepare you to moving across the pond. Everything is different, or will feel that way at first until you either find a rhythm or decide it's not working and move back to the UK.

You don't say what you do & that may tremendously impact your work life balance in Canada. In 12 years I've had three jobs one with zero flexibility, one with a bit and one that, aside from the need to travel once a month, offers me excellent flexibility with my young family. The rub is, that job is pretty unique as I effectively am now a remote worker for a UK company.

Supporting your wife's dream is all very well. I did that, although in my case my wife is Canadian, and her dream was to move home. That's a different dynamic from you but fundamentally it has to work for[B]both[B] of you (and your kids). Believe me, I've gone through doubts and highs and lows over the past 12 years, as has Mrs AX, in the reality of living her dream.

Whether you try or not, whether you can be successful or not will depend on you and yours. If you regard trying Canada out as an adventure, something to be savoured, and if it all goes pear shaped, you can move back to UK, the n alls well and good. With a young family, I imagine that obtaining jobs, income and being able to provide for them are paramount. I'm risk adverse, so if I had those things in UK I'd think very carefully about giving them up. As I moved over before I had kids, I think things would have been very different if we'd had kids already. I suspect that 50/50 we'dve stayed in UK.

My 10 cents.
AX

I am with Stinky on this one. I too am usually very positive about the place but I really get the sense that you are ONLY doing this for your wife, and that can lead to resentment if it doesn't work out - not healthy. I went from, due to a combination of long service, bank holidays, carry over from previous years and flexitime, an astounding 11 weeks leave in the UK to 3 when we moved here. And now, due to working for myself, none at all, not even weekends. The compensation I found was the fabulous weather in the summer, which makes it possible to be outside most evenings from end of May until end of September, so every evening on the deck with a glass of wine, watching the wildlife as the sun goes down is like a mini vacation. My company was understanding if the kids were sick and I could work from home if necessary. Being a long way from a support network with small kids is a struggle. We made some good friends who helped out, but it's not the same as having grandparents around.
I suggest you talk to your wife about how you are feeling and really put some thought into if this is what you really want to do. It can be fantastic, but it's definitely not easy so you have to buy in to the process.

Apologies yet again btw for my crappy typing/ grammar- I was writing between patients and, as usual got my paws in a tangle

One of the best ways of securing a good quality of life in Canada is immigration.