I have been informed by my (to be) employer in Winnipeg that during the application for permanent residency the Winnipeg school board will charge $900 per month for each of my children to go school. If this process can take up to two years it could cost me up to $43,000.
Has anyone else come accross this in either Manitoba or any other province.

That seemed so weird to me that I had to look that up. According to my interpretation of this http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/ks4/finance...respolicy.html and assuming you have a work permit to work in Canada, your kids are eligible for provincial funding. I'm guessing that means that you don't have to pay (well at least not directly) just as any other Canadian but I'd phone or email just to be sure.

I think there was something on this a couple of weeks ago. It highlighted inconsistency, now theres a surprise. I'm on a work permit, lived in Mississauga and Cambridge, and in neither place did we have to pay school fees. We had to get a letter of admission from the regions school board. But this was in Ontario.

Other people responded saying that they had to pay school fees though.

I'd speak to the school board direct, explain the situation and see what they come back with. You might be surprised.

Yep pretty crazy! We have to pay $4,500 per semester for my daughter to go to elementary school even though we own a property and pay full taxes which includes schooling.

Wow that really does sound crazy! My friends that came here from Scotland, had to get student visa's for their kids, seems to me it was a few hundred dollars every 6 months, until they got there PR.

Yep, you will need the student visas too on top of the fees. It seems odd to pay in the taxes and in form of fees, but then when you are on a work permit you pay EI and CPP like everyone else, but cant claim if you lose your job.

As I've said before, unfortunatly if you want to live in canada you have to play by the canadians rules, and they dont exist for the benefit of anyone but us canadian citizens.

And PR's .... we get all the benfits of citizenship, without feeling guilty about not voting or dodging jury service

We are here in Montreal on a work permit and waiting for PR. Our daughter went to public school for 6 weeks and we didn't have to pay any extra fees at all. Now in private school but that's another story!

With the exception that you cant bugger off south of the border for a few years on a TN1 visa, and then easily come back north to retire