Moving from UK to Canada

[Floydey]

Hi All,

I've seen a couple of posts on here around emigrating and picked up a few hints/tips, but thought I'd pop my own up with a few questions if anyone is kind enough to offer some insights

I've got a young family, me, my wife, a 1 year old (16 months if you ask the wife) and another on the way later in the year. We've been looking at our options and after several months of discussions we are almost settled on relocating to Ottawa. Something about the quieter life (we live in a City now), the likelihood of a bigger home, more areas to explore, whilst still having some form of NHS and English speaking community.

We've got a couple of options -
(a) My current employer have facilities in Ottawa among other Canadian cities, and would be willing to sponsor me moving across but it would mean a slight career change and around 6 months of studying to gain a professional accreditation to support this
or
(b) my existing skills/experience are on the NOC list (I'm no expert, but looked it up), and personally I'd prefer to keep doing what I'm doing, but this would mean handling all the visas/moves/finances/etc. myself

I'm not set on either, but have also had no experience of living overseas bar a few months in the forces in the late 90's early 00's and an extensive travel background from my work, though this mainly tends to be East rather than West.

Has anyone already trod this path, and could offer some insight?
I'm sure there are plenty of other factors to figure, but we've been talking about this for coming up a year and it'd be good to start making real steps
TIA

[Floydey]

Thanks for all the replies

Whilst not my preferred route, I think from the sounds of things the company sponsored route will be the 'safest' way to get across, I've set some time aside to get going with the relevant training so hopefully can wrap things up this year (though they have said if I'm 'in training' they'll still have me over sooner, pre Covid-19).

I think the observations we've made echo most of what's being said, so hopefully no massive shocks;

We'll likely expect to earn a little less, but in terms of property get a bit more (we've got a 3 bed terraced in Bristol at £300k mark, looking at Ottawa outskirts for CAD $500k we'll hopefully be able to pick up something detached, with garages and possibly an acre or two)

We live close to the centre and often need to drive 30-60 minutes to get anywhere with a decent amount of greenery, the draw of the outdoors and in particular big lakes and so on is a massive plus for us

Whilst we are partial to the odd pub lunch, with the young family we often find ourselves only eating out when it's an occasion so I don't think these will be too much of a miss, but the view of being less materialistic and more around the quality of life is exactly what we'd be looking for so it's great to hear

I think our next plans are probably going to circle around getting across for a visit. We were due to head to the Canary Islands then probably Germany late summer (family) but all those are seemingly cancelled, so frees up the cash for flights/hotels.

I think one key thing that may sway things is the wellbeing of my better half. She's always struggled with integrating quickly and is the type who normally needs to thaw before letting barriers down. I have slight reservations the lack of a social scene coupled with a new move could cause some early problems - I think a way to mitigate this would probably be through an ex-pat community. I've heard there are plenty out there (my office in Ottawa has something like 10% natives and 90% imports!), does this sound there/thereabouts?

Thanks again all

[Floydey]

These are exactly the sort of things that I probably wouldn't have thought of til further down the road, but ideal to get them out now (especially whilst I have time for research)

My firm do have private healthcare and pension/etc. But I'm not sure what the policy for inter-company movement would be, I know its a whole new contract, t&cs and so on.

A big factor will be the house we have in the UK, we plan to keep and put up for rent - we should realistically be looking at 125%-150% of our mortgage as rental depending on where the fallout lands later this year. I haven't even looked yet at moving money between the countries, and where I would have to declare/pay tax on the rental income - anyone already doing/done this?

And for Canada, I think (rightly or wrongly) I read somewhere I couldn't get a mortgage for the first year or so, need to build up credit history and so on, is this similar to the UK?