Canadians hate being called the 51st state. But they don’t mind moving south of the border, study says

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Randy Clare, a Canadian living in South Carolina, rejects that Canadians should move to the U.S. for better health care, noting that the U.S. system is expensive, more fragmented, and often more stressful.

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He cautions that the U.S. only offers the “illusion of choice.”

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“You have all this choice, but your insurance company does the choosing, not you,” he warns, noting how his wife’s breast cancer care was disrupted by an insurer change that left her scrambling to reassemble her care team just weeks before surgery.

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While Clare loves his life in America, he does wonder whether he’ll one day be forced to move back to Canada due to costs.

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“My wife and I are one devastating diagnosis away from being back in Vancouver,” he said, noting how insurance gaps can be financially crippling in America.

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Stuart Martin, a Canadian living in Los Angeles, also pointed to the wider social safety net in Canada and the efficiency versus equity tradeoff.

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“In Canada, you have a support system… that can catch you. In the U.S., it doesn’t feel like you have a safety net,” he said.

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“The difference… is just the immediacy of access,” he said, pointing to a recent visit with his GP and how he was shocked to have been granted access to an allergy specialist within days, rather than months.

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While there was disagreement with the study over health care, most of the Canadians in the U.S. agreed that access to greater opportunities was a prime motivator.

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“I came from a small town in southern Ontario. My backyard was cornfields,” said David Zeyl, who moved to Michigan in the 1990s for university and is now looking to apply for U.S. citizenship.

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“I was looking for something bigger, a little more opportunity.”

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Martin, originally from Vancouver, said he moved for a work opportunity, noting the different market scale and access to capital, especially in PR and tech.

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“The salary range here compared to Canada is just vastly different,” he said.

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“The things you can do with businesses… the marketing activities… it’s on a completely different level.”

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The study also points to taxation concerns, and that’s something Cleveland-based immigration lawyer Richard Herman has seen firsthand.

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Since COVID, he has had a steady stream of Canadian clients, and “more often than not, it’s a business owner,” he said.

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“They feel like Canada’s going in the wrong direction,” he said, noting how he often hears things like “‘Our taxes are extremely high.’”

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Seeman agreed. Entrepreneurs, he said, “find it very, very difficult to conceive, hatch and sustain a business in Canada.”

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But just because people are finding incentives to leave doesn’t mean they will stay away. The study also found that 38 per cent of Canadian relocators are open to returning.

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“We’ve got a really exciting opportunity,” Seeman said, “to return to that era where Canada was a magnet, and Canada was a place that people came and stayed.”

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He said improved health-care access and quality should be a priority for Ottawa, along with more competitive tax structures.

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Herman also thinks Canada has an opportunity to stem the flow of leavers by “fixing the tax code.”

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Lacarte, meanwhile, says Ottawa could do more outreach to those who have already left, noting that Canada’s large public sector can make it hard for outsiders to re-enter the system.

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National Post

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