British Expatriate Network

Hi folks

I feel a little guilty about playing the 'I know nothing card' but I’ve the mails (one's I thought may help me anyway) on here and you all seem good enough not to go mad at me.

My situation is that an associate/friend of mine went to work in Calgary/Canada just over 2 years ago and he has got in touch and has given me the opportunity to go work over there with him in a large and well established company. I’m pretty fed up with things at home at the mo and like the idea quite a lot.

Today I received a formal offer from them and all of a sudden I realise I know very little about what will need to be sorted to allow me to go out there (visas, health, tax etc etc)

The company have said they will sort out the visa but I’m sure ill have to do something as well (get health checks etc?), just not sure what.
I have visited the web pages of the embassy and got their info on applying for visas and rate well in their points scheme (English, Engineer, Degree, Good health etc) other web searches have me drowning in mis/information.

If you can I'd be grateful if you could point me to any good sites or guides or FAQ's that may help me fill in any holes on what I need to know.

Two more specific points though that are running in my mind at the moment

Is there somewhere I can compare how their offer (money wise) relates to what I might expect to get paid in Canada compared to what I get here? (I’ve been monitoring the exchange rates for a while)
What sort of deductions (tax etc) can I expect from my earnings over there (ie from tax & NI in England I’d lose roughly 25% of what i earned, similar out there?)

They say I have to get 'Alberta Health Care Coverage' by myself first. errrm what is it? (I admit I haven’t tried to look this one up yet (I think I’m panicking a little) but I will do tomorrow).

phew, hope I haven’t put all of you totally off.
any help is v gratefully received.

Thanks all

Mike. ???
Micheal Kordain

The owner of this site is going to be displeased with me, but there is a lot of info on Canada on a very similarly-named site which I once typed up by mistake...(sorry Nigel!)

http//www.britishexpats.com (go to the forums too).

Anyway, welcome to this site and from now until if/when you do move to Canada, please bookmark and contribute to this great british-expat site here!

Cheers! smile

We're looking at moving to Canada too (Manitoba region) and I've been looking at some sites - you may have across them already but here's a few-

http//www.webimmigration.com
This covers stuff like what to expect when landing, opening bank accounts, medical exams needed etc.

http//www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigr/index.html
This has info. in 'settling in' in Canada and stuff about banking, health etc.

http//www.taxcalcs.com/
Offers a tax calculator, if you know your future salary it will work out the deductions for you.

http//www.finfacts.ie/Private/isl/salcalc.htm
This is a salary calculator - for instance I typed in a salary of 30,000 pounds in Gatwick and it says you would need to earn the equivalent of 17,000 pounds in Calgary. Here is an explanation of how they came to those figures
The data elements used in calculating the cost of living index are housing cost (33%), utility cost (8%), consumables (16%), transportation (10%), and other services (33%). The consumables portion of our data is obtained through a sampling of the average American lifestyle.

Please note that our data does not take into consideration
1. Taxes one might have to pay in a foreign country.
2. Inflation or deflation that may occur after our period of data collection. This can be an important factor in some countries and in the future, we will have a method for updating this information more frequently. Until then, we encourage you to use other sources in the local country and city as further confirmation.

It's a start anyway - I wish you luck in your quest - let us know how you get on. smile

Hey great thanks,

Hmmm, either im on to a good thing or the calcs a little off. im getting paid nearly 3 times in Canadian $ as i do now in £ and the calc tells me i need only half of what i get now to be in proportion!!

OK, well Ive got chance to spend some time on it all over the weekend.

Ill certainly be letting you know how i go on.

The best to you.
Mike.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by Kordain on 2002-02-23 1233 ]</font>