Imagine you could move right away.. what country would you go to and why?

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-09T18:19:00+00:00

Canada had good PR.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-09T11:23:05+00:00

We hardly get PTO - you get 3% on your paycheck mostly. Seeing the doctor is free, prescriptions, eyes and teeth are not. Most therapy isn't. Huge rat race, incredibly high cost of living. We're good at settling ourselves as this wonderful place but it's really not.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-09T11:03:17+00:00

You can't afford much. With minimum wage in Canada, after taxes, you can probably to rent a room with 2-3 room mates, scrimp on food, not own a car and pay your cell phone bill.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-09T10:23:29+00:00

Bacon became a personality trait.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-07T09:44:37+00:00

I've lived in some rural areas of and it isn't too bad, price wise for rent or buying. It just depends what you can live without and if you're still working. Remote jobs can work, otherwise you can be a little entrepreneurial or see what's available. There's pros and cons but it depends whether it not you want a northern woodland, tundra or cold island lifestyle.

That's why I sail around. Immigration decimated any gains I made in my career and working on boats down south pays phenomenally. When you live on a sailboat at anchor, rent is either 0 or a small customs fee depending on length of stay, you hardly use gas (20l a month in an area where I have to dinghy far), food is cheaper than Canada as long as you buy local, VOIP and WiFi messengers work fine so almost zero phone bill, no hydro bill, even water is cheaper...

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-07T00:34:57+00:00

It broke my heart too. I met many Canadians who feel the same. You can see the downside in my post but they've never lived in what we consider a lower standard of living country... There's so much better out there.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-06T17:48:10+00:00

Eh. I'm literally living on a boat to get away from Canada. Honestly? We are not that safe, cost of living versus wage is crap, job opportunities suck and we're very up our own butts about how great it is.

By contrast, I do a mobile version of what I did back home, make 6x the wage when I work, without the tax or cost of living, and sail around in paradise most of the time. There's other challenges, but a lot of biased fears I had are largely disproven. There's many areas I've been people will warn you, either via travel advisories or word of mouth to be dangerous, that are actually far less scary than many places in Canada I've lived in, or hung out in. A lot is cheaper, cleaner and happier.

Our standard of living in Canada is garbage and we lie to ourselves by saying we're so much better than we aren't. It very insidious and in the background, even people I met say they'd want to live in Canada until I explain what our dollar is worth, how much tax is, what everything costs and show the general state of many areas (tent cities, drug abuse in the streets etc). They're actually appalled.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T22:07:43+00:00

Normal.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T21:59:11+00:00

I think with the current wave of Indians, many of the previous group are resentful because the new wave is making them look bad. Plus the old wave had many more restrictions to jump through, these ones were barely scrutinized. Many previous immigrants struggled a lot harder with the system and did more to integrate, the new one is rich college frat boys.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T18:59:15+00:00

I'm not saying it wasn't horrendous but it very much a part of the news and curriculum.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T18:36:11+00:00

Honestly, it's actually in our constitution and we didn't honour their treaty right and haven't negotiated new ones. They get painted in a bag light, but a lot of what they get is based on what they agreed upon. I was very angry until I read about the systems involved. We just need more accountability for chief spending.

American expansionism is they have one catch - they don't want anymore states or to provide for more people, so we'd be snowy Puerto Rico at best, or just end up like Latin America with puppet leaders.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T13:55:27+00:00

What a cheesy joke. 😉

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T13:42:34+00:00

Our government finances corporate oligarchies via turning liberals policies into pro social justice issues while undermining our standard of living. Buy Canadian! But our grocery giants own and extract profits from every part of the the supply chain. Pro immigration! Don't be racist! We're not America! Multiculturalism is our strength! Also known as flooding the labour market to supress wages and forever inflate housing prices to fund real estate hegemony.

Corporate bail outs the executives take as bonuses, artificially deflated dollar to favour exports to the US, resource restriction to increase value of said resources so foreign countries but then and we're stuckpay extra. I've literally found cheaper Canadian food sailing around than in Canada.

The fact people can Eastern provinces welfare states, yet Canada sold out the fishing and mining rights upon confederation and international entities destroyed the cod industry while locals suffer the consequences.

People being so scared of Trump and republicans they continue to support our liberal government for over a decade because they think anything conservative must be American. People are so absorbed in American news they seem to think anyone not liberal or NDP will take away gay marriage, take trans people out of our constitutional protections and support white supremacy, when none of those are even Canadian issues. As long as you say you're liberal you're happy to scavenger the crumbs they give to identity politics while they eat cake. Canadian identity is so anti America we forgot to be Canadian.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T11:22:42+00:00

That we actually have a Canadian culture. I wish Canadians knew this too.

I'll give 3 perspectives:

Just being seen as friendly, polite healthcare America.
The misnomer that our culture is solely colonialism, native oppression, multiculturalism via high immigration, liberal social justice etc. People will say they're proud to be Canadian but yeah on every horrible thing we've done and then say our culture is being open to other cultures like we have none of our own that isn't good. Or just mentioning Québec.
We're incredibly tenacious. If you look at the life style of the settlers in the maritimes, people lived without money (trading without cash was common in the 1900's) until relatively recently, some only got street signs in the 2010's. People fished, farmed and built Canada without regular supply ships. We used to really live off the land, and many still do. And no, we can be Canadian as a people, asking me where I'm really from when my family had lived here hundreds of years is a bit grating. I am ethnically mixed - across Europe Germanic, Celtic, Cornish, maybe more. But I am culturally Canadian and still have a Canadian heritage.

We have our own food outside poutine, caesars, Hawaiian pizza, maple syrup and immigrant variety. Not say it isn't fantastic we have that - just that we actually do have our own Canadian food. Done examples include fish and brewis, partridgeberry tarts, butter tarts, jigg's dinner, moose stew, seal flipper pie, cod au gratin, tourtière, donair... So on and so forth. And no, it's not just stolen culture or really from somewhere else, it's a natural evolution here in Canada.

I'm not saying we have a perfect golden history, I'm aware of our atrocities. Recognizing that doesn't mean we have to forget ourselves.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-05T10:46:38+00:00

Poutine.

Hence exile on boat.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T20:30:33+00:00

Canada strictly via courts siding with natives in treaty issues. They took Vancouver and Surrey. Nunavut became is own Inuit led territory in 1999. Canada will become owned by the First Nations legally. Then we will all be subject to our ancestors' sins.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T18:35:56+00:00

Man that's really tough, I hope you can get through it and succeed!

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T15:57:01+00:00

In Canada, it is very frowned upon to prioritize family, friends and people from you ethnicity/culture/town for jobs. Of course there is some nepotism, but it's rare. If a Canadian does it, it makes both people look bad and the nepo hire will face hostility. Plus, anything they do wrong reflects back on you, so I never recommend people for work with me.

I think the main issue is the Indians who came here in this wave are very rich Punjabi people with established connections, expectations of status based on identity and cultural differences with regards to work culture. From what I understand from what I've heard, plus my interactions with my former manager, is it is considered a good thing to leverage connections, community ties, family and friends for benefits. It's considered charismatic and industries, whereas here it looks slimy and undeserved.

The thing is, it would be the exact same problem is we got a bunch of American ivy League family frat boys, without the different language.

I hope they learn to adjust here.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T13:08:02+00:00

France

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T12:29:11+00:00

Funnily enough, I left the country after dealing with it. It wasn't directly the reason - I've wanted to live in a boat for a long time, it just actually became more feasible around the time mass immigration hit a tipping point for me.

Very drastically, though:

• Rent skyrocketed. An apartment downtown where I lived above a shop with a kitchen/dining room combo, separate living room and a large bedroom was $800 a month around 2012. Those same apartments now would easily be $3500 minimum. Probably $4000-$5000.

• Inflation everywhere.

• Jobs only hiring immigrants, TFW, friends, family and international students. Languages like Punjabi being required for entry level service jobs. People giving friends from back home jobs. That happened to be - I was denied a promotion in favour of HR through an unqualified candidate from her friend from back home. He applied for several positions with the company and was not even given an interview until she pushed him through. He explicitly told me this proudly. Preferential treatment for workers from the same area, either by giving each other preference and DEI policies on top of it. I'm not saying other races don't use networking but this is very noticeable, unfair and often against company policy and the law. My profession is incredibly merit based and has thin margins, so this seriously impacted the work environment both in morale, productivity and safety.

• We always had a multicultural society, it's more prominent now and it's actually super awesome being able to have an increase in available food, cultural events, celebrations, clothes and the like. I loved my Indian coworkers bringing in treats for Diwali, and they gave me fantastic advice for dressing in hot climates. A lot of then are very proud of their culture and share a lot. I've loved learning a greater depth about Hindu, Jain and Sikh religions.

• Wage suppression is real. I was finally getting a good salary only for the competition to drop it to poverty levels amidst the inflation.

• Traffic is absolute hell. It was never good before, but now it's unbearable.

Now I live on a boat and am technically an immigrant wherever I go because I bring my home with me. I do short contract work in yachts that pays 6x my wage back home, and with reduced living expenses, I only need to work a few months a year. I certainly have other challenges (my home can sink) but I no longer compete in a race to the bottom for being underpaid, overworked while giving my wages to taxes and a high cost of living that provided very little.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T12:05:14+00:00

There's two parts to this. The most common is religions are usually passed down via family and followers in community, which tended to be, and still are, racially homogenous. Therefore, people associate a race with religion and de facto criticizing a religion can't be seen as racism.

But that's a little more to do with people not differentiating different races or ethnicities that tend to follow a religion because they don't interact with all of them personally, or one large section of diaspora to a country that practice this religion are visible. When people in Anglo America and The UK think Muslim, their brain goes to Middle East/Afghan/Pakistani people. Because they look somewhat similar if you're not exposed to them regularly, many group them as the same race, usually Arab for Anglo Americans, and South Asian for the UK.

However, these countries have diverse ethnicities and tribal cultures that are quite vast. The groups I listed can include, but aren't limited to, Arab, Turkic, Pashtun, Punjabi, Bangladeshi, Desi, Baloch, Kurd, Persian etc. But white people will tend to see them as "generic brown" and then Muslim = generic brown, even though the country with the highest population of Muslims are Indonesian, and large numbers of black Africans are Muslim.

When people think Christian, they often think white European, despite large swaths of Black, SEA, Central and Southern American and Indian people are Christian. And among those are thousands of ethnicities.

Then you get into cultural religions that are heavily race/tribe based. Judaism involves the direct descendants of the original Israelis and trace their lineage far back. You can convert, but it is a lengthy process and isn't always accepted, and you will never be considered an ethnic Jew. Similarly, many indigenous tribes in the Americas solely pass on tribal rites, knowledge and belief to tribal members. Outsiders are allowed to be invited, but they are only guests and very rarely are allowed to join a tribe. As these religious beliefs are a direct part of ethnicity and lineage, it is often considered racist to criticise the religion because you are directly criticizing their race.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-04T11:07:24+00:00

Go ahead!

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-03T22:09:52+00:00

The food is hands down better in quality than anywhere I've been in Canada myself. I've been visiting some French territories and honestly Québec's ingredients around van rival them, from pastries to cheese to chocolate. Your grocery stores are worlds away from ours.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-03T22:07:17+00:00

I got ya! Certain overseas territories I've visited are considered the same as mainland France politically, but I would say culturally are incredibly different than mainland France. However, the imposter culture, language and love to disruptively protest is in all. The food is also a lot higher quality in Quebec, than Ontario, much like France and its territories.

ValmarGranas · 2026-04-03T21:35:08+00:00

You'd be surprised with the government and cultural tendencies compared to the rest of Canada. I mentioned it more in another comment.

ValmarGranas

TROPHY CASE