What Does North America Offer for Modern Day Europeans?

From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island in the New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. A very significant share of those immigrants were Europeans, and not just because of restrictive laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Quota Laws and the National Origins Act set by American politicians that kept out many Asians and Africans. Europeans were flocking to the "new" continent in hopes of a better future, which many, indeed, found in either the US or Canada, where Halifax served as the Ellis Island of the north of the steam ship era.

About a hundred years or more have passed since those times, and population dynamics in both North America and Europe have greatly changed. In 2005, Europe, not North America, hosted the largest number of immigrants, 70.6 million people, in the world. Regardless, the United States is still the top desired destination country among migrants according to polls, but the majority of people don't come from Europe anymore, but from Asia and Africa. And the top five source countries of immigrants to Canada are China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, and, yes, the United States.

Americans of Finnish descent currently number about 700,000. Most of their grandparents and great grandparents arrived in the New World in the decades between 1870 and 1930. At the same time, tens of thousands of Finns moved to Canada.

But today, the number of Canadians moving to Finland every year exceeds the number of new Finns in Canada. That's not to say that the number of Canadians moving to little old Finland is so big at all, but that the number of Finns heading to Canada is so very small. When I first landed in Toronto, the local Finnish community newspaper, apparently the last of its kind left in the entire continent, wanted to interview me and my wife. Finns travel a lot, but not very many settle permanently in Canada.

The better life - abundant opportunity, jobs, land, and religious freedom - that North America once offered in Europeans' minds is now perhaps more easily found back home in Europe. European social security systems, healthcare and education are arguably more advanced than in North America and, more importantly, within easier reach to the entire population than in the US and Canada. This is particularly true in Scandinavian countries and Finland, where healthcare and university education are free and the overall quality of life is among the very highest in the world. Newsweek's recent study of health, education, economy, and politics ranked Finland the best country in the world. While Finns themselves may question the value of the ranking and Newsweek may not be the greatest authority in the world, their list echoes the findings of the United Nations, the OECD, the global Quality-of-Life index, and others. Life in Europe, and particularly in the north-western parts of it, isn't bad. People don't leave for the other side of the Atlantic anymore.

While Canadian cities may closely trail places in Scandinavia and Finland in many global surveys, when ranked in terms of safety and overall livability, there's a difference between Canada and North-Western Europe in terms of public services, quality of infrastructure, income equality, and work life benefits such as holidays, maternal and paternal leave.

And, contrary to popular belief, Scandinavians and Finns don't even pay such high taxes for the many public services, standard of education and healthcare they receive in exchange. The 45% of total income tax that wealthier New Yorkers pay exceeds the amount of tax Finns, Swedes, and Norwegians pay for a similar lifestyle without having to work 50-70h work weeks like Americans, and while getting 4-6 weeks of vacation every year. Still, tax rates in Scandinavia certainly aren't the lowest in the world, but people there believe the taxes buy them prosperity and happiness. Denmark, which is known for higher taxes than any of its Nordic neighbors, has the lowest poverty rate in the world and the smallest income disparity between rich and poor. A 2006 study by psychologists at Britain’s University of Leicester ranked Danes the world’s happiest people.

None of this is to say that Nordic countries are a paradise on Earth. On a misty November morning "good o'le" Helsinki with its drunks, sour, pale white faces, small town attitudes and the thick wet snow that the wind blows right in the face may not feel like the most hospitable place for Finns themselves, let alone any visitors or newcomers, but the society, stability, egalitarian values and welfare that the past couple of generations have built beats the North American system a thousand times even on the darkest winter mornings.

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.

Shut up and don't drive

Finns who want to get a driver's license in Ontario need to get documents and translations, pay fees and then take tests. A Finnish license holder can't just directly exchange his license to an Ontario license. That's in stark contrast with the policy in Finland, where Canadians can get their license exchanged to a Finnish license for a one-time fee of 41 EUR.

For the first couple of months here, I could use my Finnish license to drive. I had the same rights as Canadian license holders, but now after those first 60 days I need to go get a Canadian license before I can drive again. So in December, I went to a Service Ontario Centre with all my documents and stuff, and, after some minor difficulties, the grumpy official charged me the first fee and gave me a practice license of some sort. I took a knowledge test there and passed and was good to go.

The next thing to do was to book a drive test. The system for getting a driver's license in Canada is quite different than in Finland or other major European countries. In Finland going to a driving school is mandatory; it's almost the only way to get a license. Alternatively you can get a family member to teach you, but (s)he needs to first get a driving instruction license. Either way, the only way to get a license in Finland is to practice driving with a licensed instructor in a controller environment and car fit for practice driving first before getting any kind of a license.

Here things are a bit different. The idea is that practicing is done in real traffic. Ontario has a 2-3 step program called the graduated licensing program. By passing the knowledge test (equivalent to the "kirjallinen koe" in Finland) you get a practice license that lets you drive a car with several restrictions, such as having another person, who's a full license holder, in the car with you etc. The age limit for a driver's license in Ontario is 16 as opposed to 18 in Finland.

But enough of explaining the system. What I did after passing the knowledge test and getting my practice license was that I booked a drive test. The frustrating automated phone reservation system at the drive test center gave me a time that was nearly two months apart from the day I called, in the middle of the day and the drive test center, for me, is in the middle of nowhere. I didn't have much of a choice, so I booked the appointment.

Here you need to bring a car for the test yourself. Drive test centers don't give you a car for the test, and since I didn't go to a driving school here, I didn't get a car from there either. So I paid for a Zipcar.

The people at the drive test center were a half an hour late of their schedule, so my test, which was scheduled to start at 2pm, started at 2.30 instead. I was already skipping work to do the test, and didn't like getting a further delay. As soon as the test started, before I even started driving and got in the car, the test inspector was acting a bit weird. "Hello, how you are?" I said to the guy in the beginning of the test. "Yeah," he grunted. When I started driving, the same attitude continued. He grunted at me for every move I made. He first told me that he won't give me any further instructions or have further conversation, other than necessary, with me, and I told him that's okay, I understand that, and then he started asking me questions, talking to me.

When I was merging on to a highway, he told me to speed up faster, actually asking me to go over the speed limit, which was 100 km/h on the highway, and drive 120 km/h to keep up with the rest of the traffic on the quiet highway. I told him I won't drive faster than the speed limit, because that would be a violation of the traffic law. "Shut up, don't argue with me," he said.

By that point I was just totally bummed out by the whole situation, and started to realize that, for some unexplainable reason, this guy had decided to not let me pass the test, no matter what. So I started wishing that the test would just end and the guy would get out of my car.

At the end of the test, he told me that I had failed, because I didn't speed up quickly enough when merging on to the highway, and because I started moving again after I had correctly stopped at a stop sign and didn't look like I was going to wait for an elderly person on the other side of the intersection who was going to jaywalk across the street where there was no crosswalk.

I told the guy that his decision was his and that I had to put up with it because this is the system here, but I told him that I've had a Finnish driver's license for 13 years that enables me to drive anything from passenger cars to trucks and small buses in 27 countries in the European Union. I said I find it senseless and extremely frustrating that Ontario treats Canadian driver's license holders this way, while Finland lets Canadians to exchange their license.

Of course this poor inspector guy is just doing his job, and he can't change the system, and therefore I have sent letters to the Ontario ministry of transportation since last fall, and to the Finnish embassy in Ottawa. A few EU countries, like Germany, Austria, France and Belgium, and countries like Japan (where they drive on the other side of the road than in Canada) and Korea have got reciprocal agreements with Ontario to enable people from those countries to get an Ontario license without any testing. The Finnish embassy and the ministry of transportation say that they are currently working on a reciprocal agreement with Québec and then Ontario is next. The process is likely to take some time, like 6 months to a year, still. I don't know exactly what Ontario wants for a reciprocal agreement, other than paperwork, but I've heard rumors that they actually ask for a payment to settle these agreements. Whether that's true or just a blatant rumor, I think Ontario should respect the fact that Finland gives Canadians licenses without testing and honor Finnish licenses the same way that Canadian licenses are honored in Finland. Canada has signed the same Vienna Convention on Road Traffic as Finland has.

I never claimed I was a perfect driver, and I understand very well that different countries have different rules, but Ontario's system makes no sense. The failed test cost me about $150 dollars in fees for the test and the Zipcar, and I still need to pay more, if I want to take another test to try again to get a license. So what is that you want, Ontario - my money? How poor and hungry for money is the system here, really? I don't even like this place enough to care for getting a license or any of the papers that cost me so much time and money, but since we are gonna stay here for a little while longer still, I need to try and get something done.

At the end of my test, when the guy left, I said "thanks, have a nice day." "Yeah," the guy grunted in reply. When I got home and googled "Ontario drive test", I quickly found other people with similar experiences and frustrations, and a couple stories about scandals surrounding driving instruction in Ontario. Scandals, of course. After all, this is Canada.

Ontario's "strictness" could make a bit more sense to me, if Canada had a fabulous record in road safety. But it doesn't. I could tell that just by the way I see a lot of people driving here, how often they ignore using the signal and some other basic rules, but of course one man's observations don't qualify as proof. So let's pull out the statistics:
Selected risk values for the year 2006 in the International Road Traffic and Accident Database
Canada meets road safety challenge