For some immigrants, their dreams of settling permanently in Canada have taken an unexpected turn. The Canadian news group CTVNews.ca interviewed three immigrants to Canada to understand their choices to leave the country despite several years of living there.
According to a 2023 study from the Conference Board of Canada, the number of immigrants leaving Canada has been steadily increasing since the 1980s.
Beyond seeking better employment opportunities and a higher standard of living elsewhere, the reasons why newcomers leave the country can be more complex, and are sometimes a personal choice rather than a practical decision. or a necessity.
Disappointed by Canada
Nadia Bilal said her husband earned three times the salary of an IT professional in Saudi Arabia, but he quit his job so their family could move to Canada.
Bilal, a 40-year-old robotics and coding teacher who lives in Mississauga, Ontario, said her family arrived in Canada in August 2017. Their savings were enough to help them survive while her husband looked for a job, which he found in the following five months.
Originally from Pakistan, she said she was looking for the dream of a better life and future for herself and her family, and they found it during the first few years in Canada. Although Canada is inclusive and respectful towards religion, something the family was looking for, she said she is now unsure if it is the place where they could realize their dreams.
Bilal said her husband was “pretty happy” with his still well-paying job in IT, and added that everyone in his family had become Canadian citizens.
But now she’s trying to convince him that they should leave Canada.
“I feel disappointed,” Bilal said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca. “I was quite happy to live in this country… I would age well in this country. But now I’m reconsidering it.”
Initially, she said, she expected Canada to be a safe environment with a good health care system.
“Like when you’re heavily taxed, you expect these things to be given, right? But after the pandemic… there is a downward trend.”
With three children aged 15, 13 and just 22 months, she felt less safe going out as she noticed what she described as an increase in crime, road rage and general disregard for the law.
Life after the pandemic also meant a higher cost of living.
The high cost of housing was a problem. Bilal said her family was forced to move out of their three-bedroom rental home in January because, she alleges, their landlord wanted to illegally increase the rent from $2,700 to $3,000.
“We can’t even afford a house for ourselves and we struggle with rent,” she said, noting the expenses of raising three children and supporting her in-laws, including including groceries and rent for a large enough house.
“It’s hard to save money even though my husband makes over $120,000 a year.”
When it came to health care, she said she didn’t feel supported by her gynecologist during her last pregnancy, during which she suffered from a condition called esophageal achalasia that made things “really difficult”.
Looking for change
Duncan Yuen says he and his ex-wife were yearning for change when they decided to move their young family from Canada to New Zealand in 1995. His daughter was seven at the time and his son was four.
A year before their move, Yuen, then 32, had been laid off from his job as a computer programmer at a large American company in Toronto.
“It’s not that we don’t love Canada,” Yuen, now 62, said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from Auckland. “I decided to try something new. And my ex-wife at the time wanted to try that too, so we ended up in New Zealand.”
In addition to a change in lifestyle, a warmer climate was attractive. He said his wife, originally from St. Catharines, Ont., found Toronto a little too crowded.
“She wanted to move to a quieter place,” he said. “She didn’t like Toronto that much. We lived in a townhouse. The neighbors are very close.”
His mother, two sisters and in-laws on his wife’s side remained in Canada, so the decision was not easy. However, they decided to try a new life elsewhere.
The IT industry was changing very quickly, but he found work as a software consultant just three months after arriving in New Zealand. He then learned new skills and got “much better” jobs, including as an IT systems administrator.
Although New Zealand is similar to Canada in many ways, being an English-speaking country, Yuen said, Auckland was smaller than Toronto, the cost of living there was high and people generally made less money than in Toronto. in Canada.
Still, he and his family appreciated the moderate weather, with rainy winters and summers that didn’t get too hot, and they appreciated the friendly people.
Yuen, who came to Canada as an international student from Hong Kong in 1979, feels his roots in both Canada and New Zealand. His ex-wife and daughter also decided to stay in New Zealand because they loved life there, but his son, now in his 30s, returned to Canada four years ago.
“I’ve noticed as an immigrant that some people, like me, always have a sense of belonging wherever they go,” he said. “Whereas some people, they always have the impression that they have left a part behind them, that the roots are elsewhere. So my son feels that his roots are in Canada. It’s different for different people.”
After 25 years in Canada, Henriëtte Breunis left the place where she loved, lived and worked in September 2023.
Love brought Breunis to Canada in 1999, when she met her late partner. It was love again that led the 72-year-old to decide to return to her home country, the Netherlands, so she could help care for her son.
A stroke in 2018 left his son, Marco, with brain damage. His left half is paralyzed, forcing him to use a wheelchair. Her friend accompanied her son to medical appointments. The friend also visited Marco every week until spring 2023, when she moved to the countryside and it was no longer realistic to spend so much time in the capital.
So, in August 2023, Breunis retired from her position as research coordinator at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto and returned to the Netherlands to be the caregiver for her 54-year-old son.
“He needed more and more help and he lives in an assisted living facility, but help is only available inside,” she said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from Amsterdam. “So I came here to help her do more things outside the house… go to concerts and a museum; from time to time go to dinner.”
Before moving, she explored the possibility of him moving to Canada to receive care, but said it wasn’t financially feasible.
“His care is so expensive that I could never afford it,” she explained. “In Canada you can bring someone with an existing condition but the government would not pay more than the average per capita cost in Canada and that would not be enough.”
In the Netherlands, health care is privatized but long-term care, which applies to her son, is public, she says.
If she could cover the cost of her care in Canada, she said, she would have stayed in the country.
Still, she says the healthcare system in the Netherlands is “very expensive”. Living on a Dutch and Canadian pension and savings, she says she pays $300 a month for private health insurance herself and taxes are higher there.
Her son’s care costs about 80,000 euros a year (C$120,000), she says, with most covered by the Dutch government. Depending on income, he only pays the equivalent of about $600 a month for care that includes nurses and personal support workers who look after him seven days a week. Although he can no longer work, he receives a long-term disability benefit from the government, based on 80% of the income he had while working.
Her apartment rent costs $15,000 a year, she added.
“He lives quite independently. He has a two-bedroom apartment. He has day programs where he can do art, and I don’t have to live with him,” she said.
Her son is happy to have her around, she says, but she misses life and her friends in Toronto. She says she renounced her Dutch citizenship to become a Canadian citizen in 2005.
Ms. Breunis, who was divorced, moved to Canada in 1999 when her daughter was studying at university and her son was working, so none of her children moved with her. She decided to immigrate so she could be with her Dutch-Canadian partner, Breunis Kamphorst. He had befriended her after discovering that her last name was the same as his first name. Tragedy struck shortly after she began her new life in Canada, as he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in November 1999. He died a year later.
She said she found Canada more welcoming to immigrants than the Netherlands, and added: “I especially miss the melting pot of all cultures that we have in Canada.”
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