OrangeMango

I know St. Clair West and Korea Town quite well.

I think currently there is a stay at home order in Ontario.

However with the downtown condo you could still sneak out to some 24 hour convenience store close by and at 3 am in the morning you wouldn't really expect to answer the door to anybody checking on you anyway.

It might also be that due to the stay at home order shopping hours are reduced.

DigitalGhost

I personally wouldn't do that but others might. Tbh I think there are so many delivery services in downtown Toronto these days that you don't really need to.

I hated St Clair West but love Toronto Korea Town. Some of the food I've had there is better than what I've had in Seoul and the fact you can also get a haircut from a professional Korean or Japanese stylist for $15 makes it even more appealing. I couldn't live there though, it's a bit too mid-town for me plus Honest Ed's isn't there anymore.

OrangeMango

You may even have been longer absent from Toronto than I have. If you return, you will see that the city changed massively. Many property owners are merely letting their shops sitting empty and are waiting for the next property developer to come along buy their lot for a lot of money in order to build condos which cost even more...... At least that was my impression before I left. In the case of Honest Ed's it was clear from what was sold in that place that it wouldn't survive long, but in the end it was one of Toronto's icons and they should have kept the sign, like the kept the Sam the Record man sign......

But now we're deviating from the subject thread very far.

DigitalGhost

I haven't lived there full time for about 7.5 years now. I was last there in September and it has definitely changed. There's a lot of urban development going on at the moment and in many ways it reminded me of where I currently live in Manchester because that's exactly the same. I've been out this morning and most of the people I've seen on the street have been construction workers.

I think the arse has well and truly fallen out of the downtown condo market though and at the moment it is apparently cheaper to rent a 1 bed condo in downtown Toronto than it is to rent a 1 bed apartment in some parts of the GTA. The WFH revolution born out of March 2020 has caused a lot of people to question their lifestyles and seek places with more open air, space and foliage. I am not one of those people though.

Honestly, I'd say if you really are opposed to quarantine but want to return soon then just look for any direct route to Calgary that you might find. It might not be cheap and it might be a long trip e.g. connecting in Dubai or Abu Dhabi but it will get you there. The quarantine really isn't as bad as you think though and I know that as someone who went through it last year twice, when I got to Canada and then again when I returned to the UK. Most government and public services are online focused at the moment as are companies hiring and recruitment agencies. For me the biggest challenge was access to fresh fruit and vegetables but that was more of an issue in the UK because UK supermarket delivery services have been so chaotic over the past 10 months.

OrangeMango

It is primarily not my intention not to comply but more the intention to comply. Thus I am often researching the Alberta option and who knows, maybe KLM brings the Amsterdam to Calgary flight back sooner than expected? The quarantine issue is also not a "per se attitude of mine, to seek confrontation with the law" but more an attitude of "never having done it before" and "not knowing if I would be emotionally able to", whilst knowing that at the moment, Canada can't surveillance me every single step of any given 24 hour day.

On top of that I also have the lack of logical understanding why Alberta offers an option that Ontario so stubbornly refuses? Yes Ontario is bigger, but still the same option could work.

And then there are many other to date unanswered questions. like the lack of knowledge or willingness from the Canadian government to share information on when or better under which particular circumstances the quarantine obligation would ever be scrapped? A certain incidence rate? A specific test or several tests? A vaccine? Infection levels dropping almost to zero? I think, we as citizens have a certain right to know that at some point.

DigitalGhost

And that is something I completely understand. Like I'm sure is also true in your case, I have never been detained by the police or arrested or anything like that in my life and when I flew into Pearson Airport last year knowing that I was legally bound to make my way somewhere and then remain there for a fortnight, I felt a sense of dread I'd never felt before. It did feel almost like I was being found guilty of a crime I didn't commit. However, when you get there it really isn't like that and if you don't have to work from home during that time then I think the best thing you can do is try to make a little holiday out of it. They did call me a couple of times but the calls seemed more out of concern for my welfare than checking up on my compliance which really is impossible to do by phone these days anyway.

I did read over the weekend that KLM have reached an arrangement with the Dutch government regarding a special testing strategy for flight crews so it's possible they may bring the long haul routes back after all. I think they've realised that putting those restrictions on KLM would have pretty much shut down Schiphol entirely.

https://skift.com/2021/01/24/klm-to-...-crew-testing/

I noticed they hadn't stopped selling long haul tickets for next month this entire time and like many others assumed they were just trying to keep a cash flow going on flights that would never actually take off but it seems they may have had this on the back burner.

BristolUK

Malta? Problem solved. Do a bodyswap with Gozit.

DigitalGhost

Sorry, I've just realised, he's not the one in Malta is he. He's somewhere else in Europe.

Siouxie

The phone app will track you - and if you didn't respond to the knock on the door or the phone call / text you may well find the officials carting you away..

DigitalGhost

You don't actually need to use the phone app and based on my experience you probably shouldn't since it was riddled with bugs when I tried it. I ended up just using the website.

You do need to answer their calls though which caused me a fair bit of aggro. I used a limited time SIM that I bought from Amazon UK and included free data and calls across Canada and the US. It was a target for frequent spam and scam calls about car accidents etc. Because I didn't want to reject the Health Canada calls though, I had to answer all of them.

OrangeMango

One actually can buy a limited time SIM in Europe for use in Canada and the US? Sounds interesting. It's easier and cheaper to offer a Canadian number than a UK number for these regular check up calls anyway. Even for the Alberta option, I would need that.

Apart from the quarantine, the issue I see these days is that authorities increasingly expect one to use an app, often making this app obligatory, but only offering this on either Android or Apple. Of couse one isn't legally obliged to own a cell phone much less always having it around, even when going to the washroom or taking a shower. it also leaves a lot open for deception and fraud, if detecting the location is concerned, like one could easily re-direct the number from that phone to any other phone. Myself, I tend to live completely without a smartphone, I use my PC to make all the calls, which solves cell phone contracts issues often narrowed down to one single country.

Regarding this particular app for entry into Canada during the pandemic, I don't think it's obligatory to use GPS. I don't think that every smart phone has a GPS function, but I am no expert on this. If GPS isn't used, they can only detect the next transmitter it connects to. If there is a convenience store within a short range of the condo dwelling it's very very hard to detect if one is in the apartment or briefly out....

Revin Kevin

I take it that in Toronto they don't have business rates, which in the the UK are significant and payable in full whether or not the property is occupied.

DigitalGhost

Yes they sell them on Amazon. They don't have a Canadian number though, the number they gave me had a Los Angeles area code as I recall. Some American carriers include Canadian and Mexican roaming at no extra charge. The one I bought was from Amazon UK but I think it was actually handled through a company in Germany.

I mainly bought it for the ArriveCan check up calls because although some UK networks offer free roaming in the US, they don't include Canada in that and the data roaming costs outside Europe can be astronomical.

Some countries like Singapore and Korea require arrivals to use their smartphone app but Canada doesn't. You can actually just use the web based version of ArriveCan and print the confirmation page if you like. All you need is the unique number is generates for you at the end.

OrangeMango

Not concerning Canada, but this also begs the question, does one actually also have to have a smart phone running this smartphone app? Or could also one have a windows pc with an android emulation running the smartphone app there? If they legally only ask for the smartphone app, it doesn't mean that they also can dictate which device you're using? I would tend to interpret the law that as long as it powers up and the app can run and you've got it installed and are using it, you're legally compliant, no matter what device you're using?

DigitalGhost

You don't need to use the app, full stop. You can complete the initial form and do the daily check-ins using the website.