Counting Canadians abroad

From an article in today's Globe and Mail:

Research by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada suggests there are perhaps nearly three million Canadians abroad. As a share of the population, Canada's "diaspora" is larger than the overseas communities of the United States, Australia, China or India.

...

Sixty-four per cent of Canadians abroad consider Canada "home." Interestingly, naturalized Canadians living abroad are more likely to call Canada home than native-born Canadians — a finding that challenges the view that return migrants are somehow less Canadian because they have chosen not to live in Canada.

...

Nearly 70 per cent intend to return to Canada to establish their principal residence. Overseas Canadians originally from British Columbia are most likely to return to establish their principal residence, followed by Canadians originally from Ontario. The two most important reasons for returning to Canada are family and quality of life. Fewer than one in five respondents identified Canada's health care or social services as a reason for returning.

...

The emergence of a Canadian diaspora is not a transient phenomenon. It is the flip side of large immigration inflows over the past two decades, and a function of global competition for skilled workers. To some extent, outmigration is a response to the difficulty that many new immigrants face in finding suitable work in Canada. But a far more important reason for the rise in Canadians overseas is the burgeoning economic opportunities in immigrant source countries such as India and China.

Beaten to a pulp

Canadian forestry industry realizes it's getting its ass kicked by Finnish forestry industry. Details on this and other interesting non-World Cup hockey related Canada vs. Finland facts laid out by the excellent Konrad Yakabuski in ROB online.

Approaching normal

As moving madness blurs into holiday madness, I can feel a shift to a new stage in our little immi experiment. We're mastering the morning rush, we know which shops have which stuff (we even made rye bread and squeaky cheese), we have our brunch place and a few well-kept secrets, our friends are used to our being in the same area code. I've even been back to Edmonton twice already, with another trip coming soon. And if Mr. O gets this job, which is (dare I say) likely, then things will be different/improving/almost normal.
Okay, so Mr. O is still judging Finland vs. Canada matches in his head on a daily basis, but he's also starting to see that both places have both advantages and disadvantages. A woman I know who moved here from Denmark more than 40 years ago told me the other day that the thing that appealed to her about this place was that nobody was going to carry you through, you really had to make your own way. And it's true. While I'll never stop believing in the basic social net that the Nordic countries have so perfected, and you'll never convince me that free universal daycare and post-secondary education are anything but pretty damn sweet, I can see a point there. Living in Finland, you start to expect that the government will clean up every mess - the rampant alcoholism that spread its ugly all over our old neighbourhood comes to mind - and so the individual need not ever stick his neck out. Canadians, with their head-up-ass time-waste of a government, suffer from no such illusions. Even in Toronto, which is the quintessential every-man-for-himself city, people still help each other out. It's a ultra-thin lining, but there it is all the same.
A week ago, we were seriously talking about picking up and heading back to Stockholm, where Mr. O would have a sweet job and I'd take a Swedish course, make meatballs. In a way, it feels like the easy option. On the other hand, the thought of packing alone gives me vertigo. And Mr. O, fed up as he was, couldn't give up on the few plans we've already made on this continent next summer: a trip down south for a family wedding, a weekend at the Folk Fest with my sibs. There are still things we need to do here, and so Stockholm will have to wait. So will Berlin, and Helsinki, and all the other places we still want to go. Now that things have calmed down a bit move-wise, we can take a bit of time to have a good time, or just do nothing at all.

National occupation

So Mr O. is, for the second time in a month, *this* close to scoring a real job. In fact, they'd like him to start next week. Trouble is, you know what the trouble is: six weeks' wait and a long detour to the CHC in London. Whether or not he could apply through a domestic office because he is already in Canada on a temporary permit is unclear.

With a bit of digging, however, it seems that there is a potential short cut: jobs listed on the "National Occupational List" are eligible for concurrent processing, which means that we can send in the visa application before receiving an LMO - which means saving around two weeks.

BUT - and there is always a but - the catch is that, in order to qualify, the application has to go through a foreign office, i.e. CHC. Which would suggest that otherwise he could go through a domestic office, or that as a temporary resident he's not eligible at all. We shall see.

On the clock

E-cas update: Mr. O's file is officially "in process" as of last Monday (although the updates don't appear till Tuesday, we discovered) - exactly 29 days later. Total count to date: 33 days and counting.

Thus spake the mighty e-cas:

"We received your application for permanent residence on October 29, 2007.

We started processing your application on November 26, 2007."

So longer than most of my peeps on immigration.ca, but still in under a month. I bite my tongue.