This is not necessarily true - I pay less in insurance here in Alberta than in the UK. I was told countless horror stories but if you shop around and find a company that accepts UK history then it will be fine. At least here it is.

As for a lease - I think with a job offer you should be OK. A lot of it seems to come down to the actual dealer and how much clout they have with the lenders.

You def have a better chance of leasing than financing - I tried to finance a car and fell flat on my face even with a confirmed job offer. Dealers all said they would have been able to get me a lease with a decent deposit but not something I wanted at time. I did not like the idea of committing to a 3/4 year lease the first month I arrived in the country and struggling to get out of it early if circumstances changed.

That's a valid point. Committing oneself to a long term payment (or expensive buyout) within a few months or weeks of arriving in the country is probably not a good idea.

The point regarding insurance is that a new car, especially a lease will require fully comp collision insurance, but an old beater you can have on the minimum third party rates.

If you got insurance for less than what you were paying in the UK then you are in a very, very small minority.

OK sure I did make the blanket statement "in Canada" and yes, you're right: Alberta insurance isn't that bad all things considered especially not compared to Ontario.

But the OP *is* from Ontario and I have experience of Ontario. He *will* get screwed.

And my other point: things are not necessarily cheaper in Canada is totally valid. Personally I struggle to think of *anything* that's much cheaper here in Alberta than in the UK with the possible exception of steak. Just about everything else I buy on a daily/month basis is the same or more expensive.

Ooops no doubt I will have started yet another "no you're wrong. Canada is much cheaper" thread.

There was a time and it wasn't that long ago that things were cheaper here but that time has now past.

The pound being as low as it currently is does not help that situation.

Sorry, don't expect things to be cheaper in Canada. Welcome to real life.[/QUOTE]

who mentioned anything about Canada being cheaper ?

Sounds like a topic for a new thread on cost comparisons.

whenever I compare the cost of stuff I buy here (not day to day stuff, but "big ticket items") canada is still cheaper. Even more so if you can mail order it from the US

personally, I wouldnt recommend it. You can lease from O'Regans if you have a whopping deposit if you have just arrived and dont have a job. We didnt even have work permits and we leased as we needed a car. It was a mistake though, we should have bought the old banger.
We also leased to start our credit rating as we fully intended to just pay it off after a couple of months and explained this as our reason for leasing. The APR was something ridiculous as we had no status effectively and when we came to pay it off, we had lost something stupid like $2000 in leasing costs. All for the sake of having a car on lease for a couple of months.
I wish I had asked all the right questions now so that we could have avoided it. But, looking back, we had so much to think about, it was just get a car quickly, and oh, start building your credit.

It was an expensive way to do it!