Actually it wasn't bad, we've done it a few times now.

I would agree to all of this but would add wood and every sort of do it yourself item.

I am horrified by some of the cars that are driving around, they are bloody death traps, the North American produced cars are by far the worst, the foreign jobs seem to be either better built or had better rust treatment. How can an MOT be called ridiculous? Would you let someone you love drive an unsafe car?

Yes, but it isn't very well implemented because Canada is roughly 20% more expensive than the US.

When you first move over here you effectively start from scratch vis a vis no claims etc., so our car insurance for one car and home insurance for rental condo was close to $3k per annum. It is gradually dropping as we have made no claims since we moved here.

Ah, I live out in the sticks rather than a city! 9 yrs no claims, but it's the rural location and no crime that brings it down I guess. My husbands is even cheaper!

Maybe there are problems in Alberta but not here in Ontario. We don't have a rash of unsafe cars on our roads and I have never once heard the cops claiming an accident happened because of unsafe vehicles.

In my mind the MOT most certainly is ridiculous and is also a ripoff. If you (and by that I mean the collective you, not you specifically) pay even the remotest attention to your car you should know when something is going wrong and be able to get it fixed. I notice if I need air in my tires just by how the car feels. I do not need a mechanic to tell me about my own car. And there is also the issue of unscrupulous mechanics claiming things need to be fixed when they don't. One of my oldest friends moved back to Britain and was told by a mechanic that several things needed fixing on his car. What that mechanic didn't realize was that G was a mechanic himself (started on cars but transitioned to heavy equipment) and G immediately called the guy on his BS claims about things needing fixed!

No, sorry as I am not familiar with the area. But I did post in your other thread.

You'll only get that if you buy privately as dealerships here do not tend to do that.

I live in Ontario and drive a lot and I do not see these allegedly knackered cars you're talking about.

Dairy is not cheaper in Britain.

Check the Tesco website (just using Tesco as an easy example). They sell 2L of milk for £1.99. Do the conversion and that works out to be $3.21CDN for that 2L. I just bought milk when I was out today and got 4L of milk for $3.97. So I paid $0.76 more but got twice the amount.


Car insurance is also very expensive (and I live in Greater Manchester where I get ripped off for car insurance even though I've got 15 years no claims). When my wife moved over to Ontario last April the cheapest quote she had was $4000! Fortunately this dropped after 6 months to around $1200, but cheap it most certainly isn't.[/QUOTE]


That is because she is new here so of course it is going to be more expensive for her as she doesn't have a driving history here yet (if I were to move back to Britain today I would expect to pay through the nose due to a lack of driving history over there). Once she has been here 5-10 years compare what she is paying here to British insurance premiums.

For two cars, yes it is.

Where the hell were you shopping that you paid those prices? And where do you live? If you are somewhere rural it might make sense but those prices do not reflect what I pay for items like those.

And that is for two cars while living in one of the worst places in Ontario for car insurance premiums (Brampton).

What is the score with buying privately? You have to pay sales tax, right? (That is plain wrong in my book, why anything secondhand should be liable to sales tax/VAT when the items has been sold once already is morally corrupt. I know secondhand cars in the UK carry VAT if bought from a dealer (which is wrong) but private sales don't), also I don't understand the chain of events, it needs an e test/safety certificate before it can be licenced? Does the seller do this? If they don't how can you get it sorted without it being licenced? How do you pay the seller? Do people take cash (difficult as i can only get $200 a day out of the hole in the wall, could take a couple of months to get enough money!) as bank transfers don't seem to have made it to Canada yet? Very confusing and highly risky as well. I may be stuck with my bicycle until I get my head round these bonkers rules!

I have been to Ontario you know and seeing as my OH is a mechanic who also wishes there was an mot here due to the lack of maintenance people give their cars. At least in the UK if a car is unsafe it will fail a mot and then you would have to fix it to get it taxed, here he will put do not drive in the story (as the write up is called) to cover his own back when he has advised there are no brakes or the tyres are out, he even refuses to road test some vehicles as they are that unsafe. There are no end of cars being driven that would fail MOT. You cant necessarily know the car in front of you or behind you has functioning brakes and tyres that will stop the car in time.

It was only 2 weeks ago he saw someone cable tying his suspension together before he hit the highway to drive 1.5hrs. This type of thing is why I worry about my kid on the roads.

2l of milk at Tesco (2.27l generally) can be usually be had for £1.25 per bottle. In fact, lately there has been a new brand selling for £1 per 2l (exact) bottle. Not as pricey as you suggest.

Of course it is well implemented and NAFTA has absolutely nothing to do with prices being higher in Canada than in the US. That is caused by multiple factors:

http://business.financialpost.com/20...ng-u-s-prices/


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/...y-pricing.html