Carlie: Hello there, it’s Carlie with the Expat Focus podcast.
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In this episode, we’re discovering what it takes to immigrate to Canada in 2024. Ruairi Spillane moved there from Ireland back in 2008, initially working in finance. He was motivated to start his own business in Canada after seeing so many expat friends struggle to navigate the system, and get access to the essential information they needed to be able to settle and thrive in the country.
Ruari launched the website moving2canada.com and in the years since, he has collected a swag of titles, including being named Best Immigrant Entrepreneur. Keep listening to find out what makes Canada attractive to foreigners right now, some current job opportunities, the typical visa application timeline, and some hurdles you can expect to face along the way.
Ruairi, I don’t know, I’m not sure if it’s the same for you, but growing up in Australia, my first introduction to Canada was a TV series, not even set in Canada, but in Chicago, about a Canadian mounted police officer. And he had a sidekick dog that was a wolf called Diefenbaker and he was helping the local police service solve crimes in his oddly Canadian ways. Did you have the series Due South in Ireland?
Ruairi: We did not. I’m not familiar with it. We had the likes of Flying Doctors from Australia. There was a famous Canadian TV show called Beachcombers with float planes which land on the coast. That was probably my first association with Canada because I found float planes are mesmerising, right? And you see them in Vancouver harbour to this day, right? So, yeah, I’ve got to check out Due South. I’m gonna maybe do a bit of YouTubing on that when we get offline.
Carlie: It’s actually one of those series I ended up tracking down on DVD as a box set, and it’s still sitting there in its packaging, waiting for me to go down memory lane and actually revisit this series from my youth. But I’m curious, when you moved to Canada, did you see those water planes in real life and did it give you like a little tick the box, you know?
Ruairi: Yes, it was one of those things. It’s more of a weekend trip rather than a day trip, but Beachcombers was filmed in Gibsons, BC. And it’s amazing to see, well, it’s the outside of the bar, there’s a bar called Molly’s Reach in it, and I guess as a child growing up in Ireland, we grew up with the likes of Home and Away from Australia, we grew up with some Canadian TV shows, and I guess a little known fact is that a lot of MacGyver was actually filmed in Canada. It’s a US TV show but everything from Rocky, to MacGyver to, I believe, Suits, as you mentioned offline, was filmed in Toronto. So, there are tax credits for the movie industry. So a lot of US TV shows and movies are actually filmed in Canada.
Carlie: So, Canada is the stand-in America when they want to film a bit cheaper.
Ruairi: Exactly. It’s called Hollywood North when the tax breaks are kicking in correctly.
Carlie: That’s awesome. Can you tell me what was the catalyst for your career change after you moved to Canada and then decided to pivot, to use that very popular word right now, and start your own business moving to Canada?
Ruairi: Sure. The quick answer was I needed to get out of finance. I was sitting in Vancouver valuing derivatives on September 20th, 2008, when the global financial crisis happened. Given I hadn’t really enjoyed that area of finance too much, the crash happening, seeing the devastation around the world, in particular the Irish economy, where a lot of our population had to emigrate as a consequence. That kind of opened my eyes a little bit and I badly wanted to get out of finance, but to give a more textured version, I always dreamed of being an entrepreneur. So you’re kind of looking for that business idea. I found living in Vancouver gave me the motivation to dream big.
As an expat, you tend to befriend other expats. Obviously, you’re hiring for friends, so are they, so I found every summer or winter, I found I was losing friends. They were struggling to navigate the immigration system or struggling to find work in their field. So, a lot of these kinds of personal experiences made me really curious. I was living in a very multicultural country and I was wondering what were the success factors of newcomers? You know, was it coming down to look that they settled well in Canada, or was it coming down to kind of more basic things like access to information or getting the right advice or planning for your transition to permanent residence in areas like that?
So, when I looked at immigration I always kind of saw a lot of agencies operating there and immigration consultants and lawyers so they’re essentially gatekeeping the critical information that I felt my friends and my fellow newcomers needed to plan well. So, the first step with moving to Canada was to actually democratise access to basic information. So, we did a really good job of doing that, so, immigration, settlement, employment.
In recent years, we’ve actually pivoted to use technology more to empower newcomers. And what I mean by that is instead of giving you an immigration article to read, we’ve actually used technology to build a tool that will help you select the right immigration strategy for you. So, using technology, we can now create personalised checklists for any newcomer or any pre-arrival. So if you’re sitting in India or Australia or in Europe, you can basically select an immigration strategy. We have tools to help you decide what the right location is for you. We have e-learning programs to learn about various immigration programs. So, we’re essentially using technology to empower newcomers to build their dream life in Canada.
Carlie: I think that’s so important because it’s so true that the requirements for someone wanting to immigrate to Canada from say Australia probably differ quite a bit to someone coming from Europe or from France specifically or from India or anywhere else in the world. And it’s very true just from reading forums and group chats where people are disseminating advice that there is just no one size fits all for people when they’re looking for that immigration information online.
Ruairi: Definitely. And you actually pointed to one of the dangers there. For all the best of intentions, sometimes people disseminating information online can be more harmful than good, right? Because we have a habit as expats to generalise our experience onto others, you know? “I did X when I arrived and that works. So therefore doing X when you arrive is what you should do.”
And be so harmful sometimes because people are ignorant of the intricacies of immigration law or other aspects of it. It’s like, as I mentioned, they mean well, but they’re disseminating essentially the wrong advice, right?
Carlie: And also how things changed because I moved from the UK to France in 2016, and I realised as the years went on that my advice was becoming more and more out of date. You know, when I would reply to a comment on a forum or Facebook or something like that. So I’m like, oh, but there’s been a law change. Oh, but that doesn’t apply anymore, and maybe I shouldn’t be offering my perspective at all, you know?
Ruairi: It’s extremely true. I even have my own team members catch me out sometimes and they say, “Hey, you’re aware that that’s no longer true, right?” Because things change even over the space of months, right? Especially with immigration law.
So, it can be a double-edged sword sometimes. People like to get social proof and get people’s opinion on things, but you’ve got to take that with a grain of salt. So what we’re really trying to do is operate between the happy medium between pure advice, which is sometimes questionable, and then paid advice. So we provide basically high-quality independent advice. So we have immigration consultants on our team and we’re basically trying to empower people to take control of their life in Canada.
Carlie: We just spoke about how it’s really not great to generalise when it comes to immigrating to Canada and different experiences. But I’d like to ask, if you can generalise for a second in your experience with your business moving to Canada, is there a particular element of the immigration process that broadly foreigners seem to have the most difficulty with?
Ruairi: That’s a very broad question, but I guess I’ll give a broad answer. I’ll just say the complexity. What happens is, and this applies sometimes to employment as well, I just remember making the same comment. I say, it’s like, new country, new rules, different ways of doing things. We all have a habit of trying to generalise how something works, you know, we learn and then we try and say, oh, this is like the working holiday I did for Australia, or this is like that exercise. So, we’re all trying to seek familiarity. We’re trying to seek patterns in what we do. And I think what we need to realise is that, you know, different country, different rules.
I always ask people, are you adapting to Canada? Are you expecting Canada to adapt to you? Because once we hit a roadblock, sometimes mentally we get frustrated and we say this is so unfair and we get lost in the emotion and we just realise, you know what? you’re not going to change Canada’s immigration system. If they’re asking you to do a biometrics exam before you leave, you need to just go and do it. Try and go with the flow rather than resist.
And that’s the challenge is in, I find like relocation is factually, it’s a roller coaster of emotions. People don’t realise, especially when you have left your own country, you’re out of your own network, you’re living by different rules. There’s a lot going on inside and outside. And the key really is being able to adapt. It’s sink or swim.
A lot of people, when they move to another country, they kind of go, “Oh, I’ve moved to another country before or I’m highly educated.” and they realise that these are reasons why they can’t fail, but they’re not. It’s all down to how well they adapt. Your education or how many times you’ve moved before is just training, I guess, for some aspects of the move, but you really learn a lot about yourself when you’re trying to set up a new life in a different country, because you have to figure things out. You can’t ask for exceptions. You just have to kind of go with the flow and figure things out and adapt well.
Carlie: From the people that you work with, I’m asking for another general answer, which you may not be able to give me. From when you start your application to move to Canada, to when you find yourself getting on a plane, is there a typical timeline? Is it six months? Is it three months? I know for Australian partner visas, it can be up to two years, for example, before you get the green light to come.
Ruairi: Well, I suppose the key thing to touch on there is it really depends on the program. So, if you’re applying for permanent residence offshore in Canada or from overseas it can typically take about six to eight months if you are eligible through the express entry system. It’s modelled on the Australian system, by coincidence.
Carlie: Figured that.
Ruairi: Yeah, exactly. Well, the thing is Canada is very much a late adopter of different things. They like to watch other countries test things and New Zealand and Australia actually do a really good job. New Zealand has the highest density of immigrants per capita, so it has the most open immigration system in the world. Australia is probably second, and I believe Canada comes third. So they look to their peers, they’ve adopted a similar points-based system to Australia. That process is called express entry, it’s meant to take six to eight months. That’s in practice. There’s always exceptions, right?
Another thing you touched on is I think you said a partner program. So if you’re looking through family sponsorship, that can typically take one to two years, it can be a more convoluted process sometimes. The quickest way to Canada, there’s actually about 32 countries in this, but typically there’s Commonwealth countries, there’s Ireland, there are a lot of different European countries, typically, they have a program where you can come to Canada on an open work permit. It’s International Experience Canada, it’s called, and it allows you to come for one to two years. It’s typically under-35, it’s under-30 for some things, so you can check that out on the Moving2Canada website, but that’s typically the quickest way to get to Canada, and you’re looking at from application to getting on a plane, two months is the shortest it can be, but typically it’ll take about two to four months. So if you’re young…
Carlie: Yeah, I was gonna say, if youth is on your side, you have the best chance.
Ruairi: Exactly. So, if you fit that criteria, that’s perfect. By far the easiest way that’s coming on a temporary work permit, but that’s a great segue into permanent residence for anyone who is eligible because as we touched on with permanent residency, it’s quite competitive, it can take a little bit of time.
So, if you’re young and you’re eligible for that IEC program or International Experience Canada, that’s the best segue into Canada because you can come, you can work and play, you don’t even have to work. You can travel as you want. You can do a ski season here, a ski season there. You’re not confined to any location either. So it’s a lot more flexible than in the Australian working holiday programs where you actually have to do some agricultural work.
Carlie: I was going to say, does Canada send you off to a farm to pick apples for six months?
Ruairi: That is not mandatory to stay for the second year. So that’s quite flexible, right? So it makes it very competitive, I guess, with Australia in that regard as a location.
Carlie: Yeah, for sure. When I dug into exactly what working holiday makers in Australia need to do to get that second year, I was like, wow, you really want to stay.
Now, Ruairi, I was speaking to New Zealand immigration expert, David Andrews in my last episode, and he was saying the reality about New Zealand is that they do have a skills shortage for particular sectors, and they do need immigrants for those jobs, but not the lesser skilled people. It’s not people with low skills that they want to let in. And you did talk about someone applying to move to Canada being highly educated. How important is the type of education you have or the type of work background you have when it comes to applying to immigrate to Canada?
Ruairi: Wow, that’s a broad question, but we’re trying to break it down. So, yes, there are particular skills which are more in demand in Canada versus others. You know, to give you examples, skilled trades, I think that’s a need across the world right now, because there are fewer and fewer people getting into the trades. Then when you look at categories like STEM, like science, technology, I’m trying to think what’s the E in…
Carlie: Engineering.
Ruairi: Oh yeah, engineering. There you go. Yeah, sorry. So, breaking down areas like that, so what I would describe Canada’s immigration system as it’s ageist in that it’s biassed towards youth, as in there’s more points. You start to lose points once you’re over 38.
Carlie: There goes that dream.
Ruairi: Well, you just start to lose points, right? But again, the criteria is what they’re really looking for is young, highly-educated people with strong English or French skills. Sometimes both are beneficial as well because it’s a competitive system. That is one inherent flaw in the system, because basically what they did is they sit down in Ottawa, you’re designing an immigration system, and your immigration system is designed on who has the highest probability of paying the highest tax. So, it’s very biassed people that will contribute to the tax base in Canada.
Carlie: Work for the longest before they retire, I gotcha.
Ruairi: But there are a lot of oversights with that. As we said, the skilled trades are one little loophole. The student program in Canada has become very bloated in recent years. So now we have a huge population of students who are carrying, I will say finance and marketing diplomas, because studying as a strategy became very, very popular in recent years.
So now we have a challenge that we have a lot of students studying the same programs, looking for the same jobs, and they end up driving an Uber, working for DoorDash or something like that. So trying to get newcomers working in their field is actually the biggest problem that we find to solve now, because it’s one thing getting into the country, it’s another challenge trying to find work in your field, because they always joke, and I think this is the same with other high-immigration countries, they say one of the best places to have a heart attack is in the back of a cab, because the driver is most likely a surgeon from South Asia who cannot work in his field, he’s been invited through the immigration system, but then there’s foreign credentials, restrictions and areas like this.
So that’s what I would say is Canada’s biggest challenge right now. We have huge volumes of immigrants, but moving to Canada’s purpose is to get these people, we say achieve success, success is a very subjective term, but for a lot of these immigrants, they’ve come in their education and their work experience has got them through the immigration system, but it’s another challenge trying to get into the labour market, right? Because there are so many barriers you have to really adapt and kind of jump through all of the hoops required in Canada, and it just takes a lot of grit and determination to work in your field as an immigrant.
Carlie: I was going to say, because surely the health sector is one sector where they really need immigrants. But I did encounter this when I first moved to London. I was working in hotels for a while and I was preparing room service meals next to doctors and scientists and lawyers from Bulgaria and different countries in Asia and all these different countries. And they were like, “Oh, well, this was my profession back home. But here in the UK, my qualifications are not recognized, my English isn’t good enough. So this is what I’m doing instead.” And that’s really humbling.
Ruairi: That’s it. That’s a big challenge for a lot of countries as well, because you set up your immigration system to bring these people in. But then you realise your labour market is not in sync with the immigration system. So, you look at the problem on the newcomers thing is they’re not working in their field, which is extremely demotivating, right? You’ve worked hard to come to the country, but then you look at the problem on the countryside and you say, we’ve brought in these immigrants, but they’re not actually utilising the skills that we brought them in for.
Carlie: So, is Canada trying to do something to fix that? Are they trying to align, say, that Thai doctor’s qualifications with equivalents in Canada so that he can work or simply pass an English test and be able to contribute in his field? Like, is that a project that’s even on the government’s radar?
Ruairi: They are trying. Progress is very, very slow. There’s been a lot of progress trying to remove foreign credentials, restrictions across a whole multitude of fields. There are actually bills being passed at the provincial level here. But when I see those bills, I’m like, why is this only happening now in 2024? So, that’s the challenge. A lot of time we’re inviting immigrants to come to our country, but essentially our labour market is sabotaging them from working in their field.
So, that’s the reason why I’m moving to Canada as a recipient of federal funding, because we’re actually doing a job. We’re basically a private solution to a public problem, because it’s one aspect getting them into the country, it’s another aspect giving them the skills, the soft skills, the hard skills, teaching them the persistence, how to adapt your resume, because it’s not just a case of showing up and distributing your resume.
That’s what a lot of expats fail. They fail very hard when they kind of realise that as they kind of go, I’m young, or I’m educated, or I have work experience. Therefore, there’s a job waiting for me in this country. But, I think we’ve all learned that finding work in your field is extremely hard as an expat and it takes a lot of grit and determination.
So we’re really focused on helping people from all over the world develop the skills to crack the code in Canada, because it’s a combination of a results-focused resume. It’s a combination of tailored job applications, you know, focusing on quality over quantity. It’s a combination of networking after the application to make sure that you’re chatting to the right people or it’s been viewed and stuff like that.
So, the whole job hunting in a different country is a skill. It’s a crucial life skill that nobody teaches us. And I find even our universities, I’ll look at Ireland, where I’m from, we’re not taught how to present ourselves, we’re not taught how to write a resume in university. And it’s really damning when people go abroad, because we talk about different generations, we look back and we say, Oh, they grew up with the silver spoon. It wasn’t like that in my day. And it’s actually getting worse that our young immigrants that are arriving are even more and more less prepared for the skill sets to job seek in a different country. So it’s sink or swim when you get to a new country, you either have to adapt or you’ll fail miserably, right?
Carlie: Oh, I have never worked with a recruiter, coming from radio in Australia where you’re auditioning for jobs, essentially, like it’s based on how you sound as opposed to what’s written on your CV, broadly.
I moved to London and suddenly I had to work with recruitment agencies and I had no idea what I was doing. It took me probably a good 12 to 18 months to land on my feet because of that. And that was moving from one English-speaking country to another. So I can only imagine the minefield that you have to navigate.
But I have another question, which is: How advantageous is it if you come to Canada from a French-speaking country?
Ruairi: It can be very advantageous actually in the recent climate because they put a lot of emphasis on prioritising French skills. Canada is bilingual. You can get by in, people generalise and they say Quebec is the only French-speaking thing, but actually I believe New Brunswick and maybe Nova Scotia are also going to have French as an official provincial language. But if we generalise, we’ll just say is, you know, Quebec, you need to have French to get by. Montreal has some exceptions, some industries where you can get by by speaking English only, but as a general rule, I would recommend you would have to have basic French skills to survive in the province of Quebec.
In the rest of Canada, it’s an added bonus. It can really help you right now because there are a lot of additional points available. So for example, if you have English and French skills, it can be very advantageous to you because going back to the immigration system, you’re ranked against other candidates based on your age, your language skills, your work experience, your education.
And then for it, there’s a number of other factors as well, including, you know, having Canadian work experience, which can help you. So I would say that French is a very, very useful skill right now. It’s very competitive, whether you’re in Canada or overseas, in an extremely competitive immigration system, getting those additional points can give you that competitive edge, for sure.
So, we’re actually seeing a lot of candidates studying French now to actually boost their score. So, any way you can boost your score is very useful in a competitive system.
Carlie: And how’s your French score?
Ruairi: It is pretty poor. I speak very, very little. Petit pois.
Carlie: Yeah, mine’s not amazing either, and I live in France, so there you go.
So when it comes to moving to particular cities in Canada, we just spoke about the French-speaking cities. Vancouver, Toronto, they’re the cities I know from popular culture, from the little exposure I’ve had to Canada. Spoiler alert: never been to Canada. How popular or how attractive are other cities that may not first come to someone’s mind when they’re looking at where exactly in the country they would move?
Ruairi: Yeah, there’s huge optionality for people in terms of cities to choose, as in Vancouver, Toronto, I think everyone simplifies your country, Australia down to Melbourne and Sydney. And it’s not fair, right? As in, I think we always break it down.
I even say France is probably broken down to Paris and Paris, right? So, it’s really, I guess it’s unfair. There are a lot of amazing destinations in Canada. It’s the second largest country geographically in the world, so you’ve a huge landmass. I think, wrongly, a lot of our newcomers focus on the two largest employment markets or the two largest cities.
That can be very challenging. Living costs are exceptionally high in those two cities. Especially if you’re moving with a family, that can really impact things. But, I think it’s a lot of newcomers, you’re playing the numbers game. You’re looking at, well, where are the biggest labour markets? And therefore they have the highest probability. But if you’re really clever and you look at these things is, don’t. Getting away from the crowd can be very advantageous to you because you’ll have lower living costs and it can also be less competitive in a lot of these things. So, I guess the location you will choose should ultimately depend on your personal preferences, but also work preferences as well. You know, as in if you work in banking or finance or investments or something, you know, Toronto’s where you need to be.
Carlie: Is that where you landed originally when you had your finance hat on?
Ruairi: It actually wasn’t. So I got offered a finance role in Vancouver and that’s why it was really unique, you know? I knew very little about Vancouver, but Vancouver to me, it’s a very outdoors-focused city. It’s an average city in an amazing location, if you love the outdoors. So, Toronto is more akin to New York. It’s the big urban, sprawling kind of centre of Canada. But there are some great kind of regional cities that don’t get a lot of credit, you know? For example, the likes of Ottawa; Calgary; Montreal; even Victoria right now, which is not far from Vancouver; Edmonton.
So there are a lot of cities that have a lot to offer in terms of different industries. They’re stronger in different industries. They can offer you a smaller, more accessible city. Montreal, for example, is just an amazing choice, but as we touched on earlier, it can be very difficult if you lack basic French.
So, I would encourage newcomers to look beyond those two cities because there are so many options within Canada and you really are following the herd and that can have negative impacts for your lifestyle and I guess for job opportunities, as well. Because we definitely see that that people can I will set out their stall and the two cities that they’ve learned the most about but then after maybe a few months they’ll go, “Wait a minute, I actually I’m starting to consider Edmonton now or I’m starting to consider Calgary because maybe I kind of overlooked the fact that there’s great opportunities there and it’s a lower cost of lifestyle.”
Carlie: That’s exactly what happened to me when I’d spent a couple of years in London before I decided I’d be moving to France. I was like, “Oh, I don’t have to live in London. Bristol, Manchester, they have industries I could work in, I could live cheaper” and sometimes I think the city you first immigrate to is just your landing spot until you really get familiar with the territory a bit more too.
Ruairi: Yeah. And I always say that as I’ve been in Vancouver for 17 years and it takes a lot of courage to immigrate, but to relocate twice, and that doesn’t have to be to immigrate twice, but it’s like to relocate away from there, it takes a lot of courage, but I think it can also deliver great rewards for people. Because as you said, as you might spend, whether it’s a few months or a few years, and then you kind of go as maybe this was a better choice.
So, going back to that as well as research and planning is a critical part of your success as you move to any country. So I think really getting a grasp is, am I choosing this location because I know people there or am I choosing this location because I know what has the best long term value for me as a newcomer?
Carlie: If you were to move within Canada today, what city do you think you’d go to?
Ruairi: I think I’d be in Montreal. I think Montreal is in my mind, the best city, as in it’s a very eclectic kind of cultural mix. I just find Vancouver is very clean and it’s very sterile and very new, but it kind of lacks atmosphere. Toronto for me would be a little bit too big. I’ve lived in New York before, and I would always say is, I’d prefer to live in New York or London if I wanted to live in a big city. You know, I think Toronto kind of lacks that appeal. But yeah, Montreal always fascinates me as I kind of move around.
And I think you can get by, I think, as given that I work for myself, I think I could definitely do that. But the challenge is, I think I would miss the outdoors too much. As I said, no place is perfect. And I think people are probably surprised to see me kind of refer to Vancouver a little bit cynically. But I think we’ve all got to learn that as everyone has that. All expats have a habit of, you know, eulogising about their choices and it’s like, yeah, they’re your choices, but there are a lot of trade offs with every choice you make. And I think people take your opinion a lot more seriously when you can actually talk about the good and the bad of a location rather than just focusing on the positives, right?
Carlie: Yeah, definitely. It’s funny you mentioned Montreal because when I think of Montreal, again, having never been there and not having too many reference points, but one reference point I have is Cirque du Soleil, and just circus arts in general, from watching TV shows as a kid and some, you know, guy that decided to learn how to be a clown, went to Montreal to do it. Do I have my city correct?
Ruairi: You’re 100% correct. So, Cirque du Soleil are based in Montreal. So I think there’s about what, it’s more than 20 different circuses now travelling the world, right? So they’re absolutely amazing.
Carlie: You mentioned the importance of planning, Ruairi, when it comes to nutting out a move to Canada. If someone is very fresh with this idea, where do you suggest they start their research?
Ruairi: For Canada, I would definitely recommend my own website moving2canada, that’s moving2canada. But I think just in general, there’s tons of different resources, right, that’ll help you build a more balanced view, right?
Even I would recommend that people use a number of different sources, right, as part of your research. People will very often, some people are very factual are data-driven in terms of how they look. A lot of people want to chat to friends. I think it’s really being expansive in terms of research and starting to notetaker kind of gather information and figure out, well, when I start chatting with immigrants, we’re having a kind of checking call, no matter where they’re at. I’m like, What’s on your mind? You know, what are your problems?
Because it’s a very big move. Most people move to another country once, right? As I mentioned, it takes a lot of courage to move a country twice, right? But moving to another country once is a huge deal. A lot of people will just stay where they are, right? So, I think it’s managing your emotions and just realising that it’s a real complex task, you know? It just goes down to how do you, how do you eat an elephant, right?
You’ve really got to eat it one bite at a time. And I think having the courage and the energy to get started on the process, and then it’s like any project, it’s just putting one foot in front of the other. But making that start and identifying some resources that can help you.
We’ve built a lot of technology. Now you can create a moving to Canada account. It will help you identify an immigration strategy. It’ll tell you step by step what you need to do to execute on that strategy. It gives you a checklist for things you need to do before you leave, things you need to do when you arrive. So there are so many resources out there right now, whether they are government resources or private websites or just chatting to people, Facebook groups, Instagram groups.
And I think the key really is just getting a little bit of traction and just making that start, you know? There are always going to be one or two resources that will just break things down for you and kind of give you a little bit of control on what the key steps are. And then once you identify those key steps or milestones, as we call them in the product, we help you in how to achieve what are the first two or three things I can do.
And I guess one of the big things that people fail to do is they kind of measure their success based on, you know, if I want to move to Canada from Australia, for example, you don’t measure yourself as a success until you’re in Canada. You’ve got to break down all of these projects in life. You’ve got to break them down and celebrate the little wins and just make it bite-sized, make it easy, but also make it motivating.
And like any project, you should really be able to scope it out because that’s the challenge I meet with a lot of would-be newcomers to Canada. They kind of have all of these problems in their head, but they have nothing on paper. And then suddenly, once they start writing things out, they realise there is no problem, right? And as human beings, our minds are very powerful, but starting to execute on a plan and getting things written down on paper and actually being able to visualise the components of your project is actually one of the best things to actually break it down and make it happen for you.
Carlie: It’s amazing how doing that exercise can make things seem so much more achievable.
Ruairi: Our minds are very busy places, and it’s like, when I have check-ins with a lot, as in, you know, if I’m checking in with somebody, I’m like, what’s on your mind? And then they put it out there, and then we come up with two positive steps to solve that problem. And then it’s gone. And it’s just like, just learning the skill of dealing with that, because there’s a lot of complexity. It’s a roller coaster of emotion, there’s culture shock, there’s a lot of things going on, you’re far away from home. So it’s being able to manage those emotions and actually realising that there are kind of ebbs and flows in the life of being an expat abroad, right, no matter how long you’ve been or whether you’re in the planning phase.
Carlie: Definitely. Just finally, Ruairi, I’d like to know, after I believe you said 17 years in Canada?
Ruairi: 17, yes.
Carlie: What is it that you love the most about the country?
Ruairi: For me, it would be the great outdoors. I’m about 10 hours from the Rockies here, but I find just being 10 hours away from the Rockies makes me very, very happy.
Carlie: 10 hours is still a bit long.
Ruairi: Yeah, it’s a bit of a charm, but obviously we have beautiful local mountains. To me, the Rockies is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I believe you, I’ve been to Patagonia, I want to get to South Island in New Zealand, but I’m just like, when you’ve got these turquoise blue lakes and you know, 4000m mountains and just seeing that kind of expansive scenery, I find that it’s so varied across Canada as well. Like, BC is particularly green and beautiful. We get the four seasons where we are as in, you know, the winter is not as extreme as the rest of Canada. Our winter season is mostly rain when you’re in Vancouver, where it’s mostly snow and other parts of Canada.
But I would definitely say for me, it’s the great outdoors. That’s complemented by the fact that we get four very distinct seasons, right? That’s quite different, I think, to a lot of different climates. Canada being extremely multicultural, it’s an extremely welcoming place where I think diversity is celebrated. That makes it very accessible as well for newcomers.
I found when I moved here, as in, I wasn’t from here, but I realised very quickly that nobody really is. There’s like 20% of Vancouverites are actually from Vancouver. The rest are immigrants or just blow-ins from other provinces, right? So, it’s a very, very dynamic kind of eclectic place and I think it’s very, very welcoming. And I think that’s why I’ve kind of enjoyed and settled here.
Carlie: Ruairi, thank you so much for sharing your advice today on the Expat Focus Podcast. moving2canada. com, I believe is your website if anyone wants to check out all of the amazing resources you have to help people move to Canada.
Ruairi: Perfect. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
Carlie: That’s it for this episode. If you have questions for Ruairi, be sure to drop them in the comments on YouTube or hit us up on social media. We are Expat Focus. Sign up to our monthly newsletter for all the latest updates, and I’ll catch you next time.