So what am I doing here?

It's been more than six months since we left Finland. Since then, I've re-established links to some old friends and got some new ones here, enjoyed a couple good DJ gigs, got used to some aspects of living in Toronto and enjoyed our trips to Ottawa and Montreal and being a bit closer to my wife's family and seeing them more often.

But in other ways, I haven't really got much further from where I was last year when I arrived. I still have the same, rather meaningless job I had in the beginning. I have got myself a new job, but since I still only hold the same temporary work permit I had when I first arrived, I can't yet start my new job before the government approves my application for a new work permit (if they do). I have no rights as a permanent resident here and the Canadian government doesn't trust me enough even to give me a driver's license. So far we've paid the Canadian government roughly $3000 dollars in all kinds of processing fees, and we haven't got anything back yet for the money we've paid. No permits, no rights.

No matter how I or anyone else looks at it, whether it's gender or income equality, the length of holidays and the amount of wages, the fairness of the tax system, the amount of crime and police violence, the amount of transparency and corruption, human rights or the amount and quality of public transportation, education and health care systems, Finland beats Canada. And so does the rest of Scandinavia - Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark even top some of Finland's results. I look around in Toronto, I look at things like plumbing, electrical wiring and the inequality between people, the double standards and the dysfunctional politics, and some of that stuff makes me think that I'm in a third world country here. Of course that's not really so, but there's a noticeable difference in living standards.

So what am I really doing here? I haven't forgot the good things that I like about Toronto, like the generally friendly people, the great choice of restaurants and the cute, although often decaying, houses, but really, what am I doing here? If Canada doesn't want to give me permits to enable me to establish my life here at least for a while and if Canada doesn't really have much to offer me anyways, then hey, okay, I'm ready and willing to pack up and go home.

But I'm here for my relationship, I'm here because I want to be close to her family, let her be close to her family, friends and culture, and I'm here to get the experience. I don't want this to break my life apart. Why should it? I would love to be able to really like this place for the time I'm here, and have the right to live and work here. I just wish now that this experience that I'm taking has got a time limit of of 1 - 2 years. And once I'm back in Europe, I will remember that if I want to live in another country again, maybe I can just stick to the EU that gives me full rights and so many more benefits without multiple fees, processing and waiting times.

Meanwhile, my dear wife wrote a really great letter to Diane Finley, the current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in Canada. Hopefully we'll at least get a reply to the letter at some point. UPDATE: well, it just looks like we might not even get a real reply ever. Somehow I'm not surprised.