Tell me about Canada.

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awww...kilroy, if you want someone to drink with, i'll be your drinkin' buddy? i dont' like to drink alone either...if you don't like the jack daniels (my liquid of choice) we could always hit a timmies?

seriously. i'm from canada too. we can't live THAT far from each other... lol!

6 hours non stop bus ride

who?

six hours in which direction?

south, where I live is quite far north
I go to Toronto every summer for Warhammer convention

please tell me you've heard of george thorogood...?

ok, krista, get out your map of ontario....time for a geography lesson
so six hours would put you probably somewhere past sudbury/north bay? closer? further?

lol the name sounds familiar but its almost 1 am so...my mind isn't sharp ask me at 1 pm and I'll tell you easy
and I PMed you

oh, pooh....
it's still early...lol! and it's the weekend, so no need to get up early anyways!
got your pm...pm'd you back.

oh....ummm....sorry krista for hijacking your thread....

did you have any other questions for us?

no I gotta get up early
my fault for trying to have a life lol

I don't care, thread hijacking is not offensive to me

been there twice.

Once to Windsor, which is a gambling tourist trap for Yanks from Detroit.. no anti-smoking ordinances (at least not back in the 90s) so you needed a machete to slice through the fumes going from one room to another..

Once to Toronto. That was a bit different; 15 people in a meetup who spent the whole time going "I dunno...what do you want to do?.." Everyone was nicer than we'd been led to believe, except for Customs (but that's an international thing, I've never met a nice Customs agent..

Aside from Loonies and Twonies (sp? Canadian coins), the money wasn't hard to get used to, and as mentioned, they were nicer than we thought (there's this thing that Canadians hate Americans, but that's probably at the governmental level.. They did give us Celine, but they made up for us by giving us Shatner and Rush...

I think this thread needs to be refreshed - a lot of Americans are starting to wonder about Canada lately... how might an unemployed, introverted, autistic person get permanent residence and eventually citizenship in Canada (or any other developed country - any of them are better than the US these days, unfortunately, unless you're super-rich...)

Excellent post, KristaMeth, and thank you ThomasL2 for refreshing it.

Krista, it is like you are describing my life, apart from geographical details and you being a girl decades younger than me. Our health care in Scandinavia used to be top quality, it was free for all, with a nominal yearly fee. This was in the past. It is still free but you have to line up for 2-3 weeks to get a number. And when you finally meet a doctor, you don't get anything. Like you, I have considered moving to the next country, Sweden or Norway, to find a haven. It just doesn't work -- I am so home-bound that I cannot live anywhere else. I need to see Finnish people in the market place, hear Finnish language daily, read newspaper in my own languge, etc. Things like that. Your situation is a little better, they do speak English in Canada.

There was much more I intended to say but I forgot what it was. I have been staring at my message for several hours, not able to decide if I should post it or discard, fearing what American or Canadian visitors to this site would think about it. They might think, "What is this Finnish oddball doing here?" or "Go home, you."

If I don't hit Submit the next second, nobody will ever know I am here. Dare I jump? I have given myself 60 seconds from now.

Health care is not "free" here. We pay taxes for it. We do have a phone number we can call to get medical advice from Registered Nurses vs. having to go to the hospital for silly little things. As for taxpayer funded health care, for the most part if it's necessary then it's covered. Dental and vision are not covered. Coverage, and cost, varies from Province to Province. In BC we have to pay $x/month per person/family for our coverage, in addition to high taxes. The poorest people don't have to pay, though. Same for prescription drugs.. most are covered and the amount of coverage you get depends on your income, so if you're very poor you pay nothing/minimal amounts. Never really had a truly bad experience w/ health care here, personally, but like anywhere in the world doctors do make mistakes and some people have bad experiences. The worst is the waiting lists people have to wait on for MRI's and surgeries, that are sometimes years long.

Obtaining citizenship isn't super easy. You'd have to go to Canada Customs and Immigration's website for info. It helps a lot if you have an education or trade that is needed here to fill a job. People can't just move here w/o approval, and approval can take months/years just like someone trying to move to the USA. There are work/study visas, skilled worker visas etc. Otherwise you have to have enough money to move here and support yourself with. The details of investor immigrant programs change, but at the moment Quebec still has a program where you can basically buy your way in if you have enough money. We used to have one in BC where if you lend the gov't $800K for 5 years interest free then you're in. There was a waiting list of tens of thousands of people from China waiting to move here via that program before it was scrapped last year. Google is your friend, do some reading. But yeah, you can't just decide you want to be here and move here.. you have to apply and await approval and have to meet various criteria. Not to sound like a jerk, but if you're mentally/physically ill and can't work, then the chances of you moving here w/o being independently wealthy are probably slim to none. We need working taxpayers that build our economy, not expensive liabilities. Another way in is via someone who is already here sponsoring you because they have enough cash to pay your bills etc. Again, google it all - there are gov't webpages that explain everything.

Our gov't are similar to any other democracy, including the USA's. Not too dramatically different, really. Cops vary across the country.. they're probably the most lenient here in Vancouver, BC. Other areas of the country are very anti-marijuana and have jerk cops like the typical American cop.

There are French people in Quebec. Not too many elsewhere. No need to learn French unless you move to Quebec, really.

Pot laws are super relaxed here in BC, but strict elsewhere. The weather is also the warmest and most moderate here, too. We don't really get "Winter" like the rest of the country does. It rarely snows in the city. We have EVERYTHING here - oceans, mountains, dessert areas, glaciers, rivers, city, farms, rainforests.. everything. The only downside here is that it is extremely expensive to live here. The average house price is now well over $1M and incomes are a pittance in comparison, making our city the 2nd or 3rd least affordable real estate on the planet - and it's getting worse by the day. I bet we top the list next year. If you're ok with being broke in paradise, it's a fantastic place to live.

I haven't seen bagged milk for about 25 years.

Your fiancee is on parole? Chances are he has a criminal record that makes him inadmissible to Canada and he will never be allowed to move here regardless of what job skills he has or how much money he has. I can't say with certainty.. you'd have to do your own research, but chances are he will never be allowed in if he has a criminal record. Double check with Canada Customs & Immigration. They have websites and phone numbers. You can contact them and find out for sure.

Canada is far from being a country with extremely severe restrictions on immigration in general... Except if you're disabled. No matter how mildly disabled you are. As long as you spend more money than the average Canadian per year when it comes to your disability, and it doesn't matter if you actually have enough savings to pay all (some immigrant families showed evidence that they could afford the whole cost, they still got their visa denied), you're going to be denied almost any kind of immigrant visa (the only exception is the spouse visa). You're viewed as potential financial burden. To give you an idea of how severe the restriction is, someone with stabilized diabetes can enter, but someone with unstable diabetes can't, and someone with a neurodevelopmental disability is never going to have the right to emigrate especially if you had any costly treatment or hospital monitoring (even if it was when you were a child). If the disability is congenital, they don't care if it's currently getting better because if there's any chance that it might get worse again, they don't want to take the risk unless if it's 100% cured.
http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/socialpolicy/access-inclusion/hawking