Peterborough, Ontario. Those are the cheaper summer prices. You regularly see rustbucket cars here held togerther by duct tape. Bald tyres, failed brakes.

Sorry but you are wrong. Tesco semi skimmed is £1.99 for a 6 pint bottle which is 58p/litre. In fact you can get Yeo Valley organic semi skimmed at Tesco for £1.88 for 4 pints. Chavsda is even better, they do a 4 pint bottle of semi for a round pound (44p/litre).

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.[/QUOTE]

Christ I hope she hasn't got to wait ten years to get a reasonable quote!

Also it's not just milk, the price of cheese is extortionate! I was shocked when I saw the prices in the supermarket versus identical stuff in the UK.

Haven't heard that one before.

Cheese is a big topic on this forum. The general consensus is, good cheese is very hard to find and generally overpriced.

The extortionate cheese prices (for example) are because the Canadian Govt shove on massive import duties.

I've seen loads in the last 18 months. Given the fact I'm only over for 10 days every 6 weeks I find it worrying. Based on my own anecdotal evidence I would estimate that about a quarter of the cars I've seen on the road require some work to make them what I would consider road worthy, and maybe a quarter of those should really be sent to the crusher. That's not to say there aren't cars on the road in the UK that need the same (the number of cars here on dodgy tyres has definitely increased during the financial mess) but there are definitely more in ON. Coupled with the amount of tailgating and poor driving (I have to say that people in ON generally use their indicators though) does make you worry when out in the car.

I couldn't agree more about the tax. Why should you pay 13% (Ontario) on a private vehicle sale. I would imagine this would help in preventing unlicenced dealers or curbsiders as they are known here.

I only know for Ontario but the etest is age dependent and yes if a vehicle is the required age then it will need both an etest and safety before it can be licenced to the new owner.

If you buy and take the chance of doing the safety yourself then you can obtain a temporary permit which I believe lasts 10 days. During this time you should do the work get it passed the etest and safety,then licence. You can only get the temp permit if the vehicle was previously licences as fit. If it is marked unfit you can only move the vehicle by towing.

Bokeres rules. Why not just have a bit annual safety inspection and be done with it.

I think, overall, prices are pretty much the same with some more, some less and some extreme examples.

I think it is possible to shop cheaply more so in Canada than the UK for reasons several of us have gone into before, best summed up as avoiding paying full price - but not couponing.

But there are huge variations province to province.

I'm in the city - albeit a smaller one. 4l of milk is $6.35 here. I think it might be more in NS.

Originally Posted by bats
Food was definitely cheaper in England when I was there in june. I am just back from the store here, $2 for a cucumber, $8 for a squash $4 for a melon, $5 for cherries, $2 for apples.
An English cucumber is getting on for $2 but other times a buck. Local cukes can be 69c.
Apples are anywhere between $1.99 and $2.39 a lb. But my local meat/greengrocer store often has 10lb bags for $5.

Cherries are often $3 or $4 a lb. That's when I buy them. Mostly they're nearer $7 or $8.

A water melon for $4 is grabbed. $7 is more likely but I buy when they're $4.

The other thing is that when I moved over, the exchange rate was about $2.25 to the £. At that rate I felt things were slightly cheaper overall.

The current rate makes comparison look much less favourable but our food bills are actually not that much more in $$ than when we arrived. I still buy many things for the same prices we paid when we moved here.

My wife (Canadian) swoons when she sees front loader washing machines. I've not seen one under $800 here. You can get one for £200/$300 back in the UK.

Now that's a nice car! My OH would kill me if I bought something like that bad boy!

4 liter of milk in Canada for 3.97? Where?

In Vancouver where I am, I am usually paying around 4.97 to 5.25 for 4 liters of milk, even in Ontario where I lived it pushed 5 dollars for 4 liters.

Its probably the nicest car we ever owned, so nice OH didn't want to drive it in case a rednecked eejit dinged it, so it went to a new home the year before last.

He is also lucky he is still married after his crazy spending spree he went on this summer, he is now working on halving his collection to a more manageble 15ish, it was supposed to be 10 but we have too many 'keepers'

It's one thing to fail a car because the brakes are corroded and leaking. It's quite another to fail it because of a jagged, non-structural rust hole or a crack in the windscreen, or the other nonsense that's been added over the years. As far as I can see, the primary goal is to reduce the economic lifespan of cars so the car companies can sell more.

It's probably also one reason why second-hand cars are cheaper in the UK, because people who can afford new cars don't want the hassle of being forced to spend hundreds or thousands of pounds for pointless 'repairs'.

Yes cheese is expensive. It confuses me because the Canadian government spends a lot of money advertising how people need to eat more cheese (TV ads, billboards), whereas if they spent that same amount of money subsidizing the product and reducing the price, it would probably have more of an effect! Going to independent delis can save you money on Cheese, you can get a 500g block of decent cheddar at Santa Barbara in Vancouver for $8. Supermarket cheese is baaaad - though people have mentioned the President's Choice Extra old cheddar as an affordable decent option - I've tried it and it's OK.

It's often a theme with food shopping - if you want to save money, go to an actual farm or farmer's market store.

Clothes are cheaper in the UK, but that is more because the UK has more choice of good quality supermarket clothes, in Canada there is no real equivalent of Sainsbury's TU range for example. Comparing brand name clothes prices (Adidas, Nike etc.) they are comparable. However in the US, even the brands are cheap, so really it's a moot point since 90% of Canadians live near the US border. Just go to an outlet mall for your clothes shop and your set. Or order online and deliver it to a US mailbox.

If we're going to compare prices, lets compare eating at a restaurant. In the UK this is around 2x-3x the price of eating out here (Nandos for example). The only place I found that was cheaper is Weatherspoons, where you get a roast dinner plus a pint of beer for £8 - pretty hard to beat that!

Fuel is also cheaper as others have mentioned, dirt cheap if you cross into the US also, so even if the initial cost of a second hand vehicle is higher, you would probably cover the difference in fuel savings in a few years anyway.

Houses are more expensive, but that's just Vancouver for you.

Computer parts and electronics are comparable prices, I haven't checked thoroughly but I think it is a little bit cheaper here, NCIX is always very cheap for computer parts, and they pricematch. You can also score great deals at Walmart since they also pricematch almost any promotion and have the some of the cheapest extended warranties. Some items that haven't fully caught on here yet like front-loading washing machines and combination convection/microwave ovens are more expensive for various reasons, sometimes just lack of adoption and sometimes because they have to be bigger to meet the North American expectation.

Care to volunteer why? Why would a dealer expect you to pay $20k on a used car with absolutely no documentary evidence that the thing has ever had an oil change (or even seen an oily rag), let alone anything else? Makes no sense to me at all