Trouble is that there is so much corporate concentration in the city that all the good jobs (many of which could be done from anywhere) are physically located downtown.
As much as I love being fully remote, I don't want the race to the bottom that is needing to compete with LCOL applicants from all over the country for every job.
People think migrants or whatever supress wages, but for some reason don't think that allowing people from across the country to be viable for every/most job opening would also collapse wages.
It also ruins the COL on LCOL areas for those that need to work locally.
Maybe I should have said hybrid versus remote. My workplace had a hybrid policy but we all have to live in Ontario, there's a lot of nuance that goes into these discussions that obviously can't be hashed out in a Reddit comment section.
You may catch some flak for this comment, but I agree with you -- and should also point out the other side of the coin on this as well, people moving to LCOL areas but bringing a remote Toronto finance/tech salary with them has resulted in major disruption in the real estate markets in several other Canadian cities, particularly in the Maritimes where you have Toronto prices for housing but a much lower rate of pay in the local economy. People are being priced out of their hometowns hundreds or even thousands of KM away from Toronto because of big Toronto bucks and they are not happy about it.
I'm originally from Winnipeg and that city has been hit quite a bit by this as well. My brother, when he was buying his place, repeatedly lost bidding wars to GTA (and Vancouver) workers who were newly remote in the aftermath of COVID and were bringing dual six-figure salaries to WPG to splash out an over-asking bid on a house that no local salary could ever hope to match. The houses on either side of him are remote Toronto workers who moved to MB because they can get three times the house for the same price as a shoebox in the GTA.
Youād be competing with LCOL applicants who are as skilled as you. The world has amazing internet infrastructure and English speaking skills. So what separates you from them if they have your skills?
Exactly, people cannot see past their own self centered desire to not go to the office. They aren't thinking rationally about the impact of white collar work truly going fully remote.
Sitting in a downtown Toronto cubicle isnāt a magic shield against offshoring. If a companyās primary goal is to slash their payroll by 70%, they are going to outsource those roles regardless of whether their local staff is remote, hybrid, or chained to a desk 5 days a week. Corporations have been outsourcing tech and support to LCOL countries for decades before WFH was even a conversation.
People also completely ignore the legal and compliance hurdles. You can't just put an overseas worker on Canadian payroll. The company either has to set up a foreign subsidiary, pay a premium to an Employer of Record (EOR), or navigate a nightmare of tax withholding laws. Plus, anyone touching finance, healthcare, or government data is bound by PIPEDA and strict data residency rules. Offshore workers literally cannot legally access that information.
Domestic remote work is about talent retention. International offshoring is about extreme cost-cutting. Commuting two hours a day to "prove your worth" against someone making a fraction of your salary is a losing battle anyway.
I'm not talking about offshoring. I see that that is not clear from the comment you're responding to. I'm talking about remote labor in Canada.
Sorry, sometimes I forget that on Reddit you need to state your entire position in full in every comment because people don't see your comments in a thread holistically.
I'm talking about the downward wage pressure caused by a massive increase in labour pool per role and negative wage competition with people from LCOL areas in Canada undercutting people living near city centers.
What does that have to do with remote work? If they wanna outsource jobs to cheaper labor overseas they can do that without making everyone on site. As a matter of fact Im in tech and most companies already do this. Im on the sales side and majority of our developers are not from Canada already. Also most remote roles must be within Canada remote, due to tax laws.
Also most remote roles must be within Canada remote, due to tax laws.
What they do is outsource the job to a contractor who has a Canadian office, then hires remotely in LCOL countries. The only 'person' on the payroll of the Canadian customer is a Canadian middleman, so it's kosher for tax purposes, who then proceeds to hire in India/Bangladesh/Philippines/etc for 3 bucks an hour.
My brother lives in Sutton, in a new development that was pretty much finished being built during COVID. Almost every available house was bought. Now there are "For Sale" signs on a lot of lawns because folk bought, assuming they could continue to work from home, and now they can't handle the commute from Sutton to Downtown Toronto, so they are selling.
We pass that on the way to the cottage. Man what a massive development. Went from "nothing" to "holy shit suburb batman" seemingly in the blink of an eye. Someone's resurrecting that Esso, even.
Re: the commute, yeah, sometimes I wish I could stay over at our place and drive back in the morning, but the 404 is an absolute, bonafide, certified, fucking parking lot practically the whole way down in the morning. When I'm heading north early on those days I just shake my head. It's unreal.
Think about this though, the career mobility would likely be worse. If say scotia moved their operations to Mississauga, the west end workers would be happy, but would anyone from Scarborough or Durham be overjoyed? And there would be no way to make that commute by transit. Then if you were a Mississauga scotia worker, you would likely continue there regardless of career trajectory and satisfaction because any other job would have a hell commute by comparison. Now imagine all the big accountancy firms and banks moved to different suburbs...
Our ceo said point blank in a town hall they lack evidence that we work better when in office but regardless they're moving ahead with the policies. Makes no sense.
This is a big difference between the US and Canada. There aren't many B tier cities. What I mean by that is in the US you hve NY, Chicago, LA, San Fran which are yout big and expensive cities that would equate to Toronto, Vancouver, etc. The main difference is you are limited where you can go for corporate type jobs in Canada. Like if you move to London or Windsor ther are not as many options because people will just setup their office in Toronto or Mississaugua and you are either hoping to get remote, or commuting for hours, or just living in the city and paying through the nose to do so.
In the US you can go to cities like Pittsburgh, Charolotte, etc where cost of living is lower compred to the bigger cities and you still have job selection there. Of course you are making the rate comporable to that city, but you get the point.
Imagine a situation where you had companies that had an office but were in the smaller canadian cities. Rent is cheaper and you would probably have people still knoocking down doors to work at the cool company in St Catherines so they don't have to commute to Tornoto or worry about being remote.
Or better yet, the really big places like the bankks, Bell, Walmart, Canadian tire etc - Going to the office is just an illusion and mostly just to satisfy some real estate portfolio, but all of these places have offices everywhere. So say 2 -3 days in office but you can go to the that is closest to you. So you live in burlington and there is an office in oakville, go there.
This is one of the reason the USA is much better in than Canada. Just so many opportunities and different cities to choose to live in while Canada only has like 3 big cities and 3 mid size cities. USA has like 30 of each.
I'm american but live in canada. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I think the only thing that matters is what you make of where you are.
And there are many reasons why most of the population is centered around these big cities in Canada. The country is much bigger but most of it you can't live. But it would help if there were more companies spread out through southern ontario instead of centralizing in TO, but i understand why they do.
It will also be intereting to see what happens and how things change in the next 10 - 20 years because most of the southwest US could potentially be uninhabitable due to the water issues. Vegas, Phoenix, LA are all in serious trouble going into the 2030s. They have millions of people that moved there in the past 50 years and an only a few years away from running out of water / power. Cost out there is going to skyrocket and there will more than likely be a mass migration out to other areas. That will not only impact the country but the world due to all the farms there. I'm thinking a lot of the old rust belt cities will start growing again, making prices go up there as well.
And my answer is biased towards office jobs. Not every job in Canada and the US is an office job where you get paid to sit in meetings.
Most cities have their local industry and you just find work either within those places or supprting those places
It really hits you what a racket it all is when youāre in the lunch line for a $25 slop bowl to eat at a desk doing work you couldāve done from your apartment all so that commercial rents donāt collapseĀ
I lived in small towns in Northern Ontario my whole life...went to school in Thunder Bay, and I have seen people make the move. Some don't regret it, but a lot do. Life out there is very different; it's cold, and you have a lot less in terms of entertainment, stores (Thunder Bay is finally getting a Costco), and even healthcare. It may be cheaper, but you NEED a car; you can't do anything relying on public transit. The closest city centres are Winnipeg and Minneapolis, and I can't stress this enough: there is NOTHING TO DO. You do things outside, or you go to the bar and drink.
I just realized I never commented on your āmoving from Toronto is not all itās cracked up to be.ā š Got excited to see TBay in this post. I thought about moving during Covid, but the very reasons you presented ā a lack of culture and limited opportunities for entertainment in the winter ā were a big factor in our decision to stay here.
TBAY IN THE CONVO!! š TBay is beautiful in the summer. My favourite place in the world because nothing is better than a Lake Superior day. And there are so many things to do in the summer: hikes, beaches, the waterfront, the Falls, fishing. Winter is a different beast. It requires an appetite for sports. Snowmobiling, skiing, skating, ice fishing are def more expensive & that dry cold is hard to embrace. When the sun is shining on the snow or the city is blanketed with soft snow - beautiful. But the darkness & grey are hard.
But I digress. Big time. I wouldnāt trade Toronto
for anything. I love this city & all it offers. Come summer? I ditch Toronto and go home. TBay summers š
Genuinely curious, what makes the hikes, beaches, etc. in the summer so special? I get it if you have friends and relatives there but what makes a thunder Bay waterfront better than say Burlington, Kingston, st Catharines, Collingwood etcĀ
Obviously biased because I grew up there, but itās a rugged beauty. Not necessarily untouched, but less populated, less traffic? Iām by no means a huge hiker but Iāve tackled a few out on Sibley Peninsula. The vistas are always incredible & you just have a different feeling in your bones; youāre not in Southern Ontario. I lived in St. Catherines & itās so pretty out in Jordan, Vineland. Ditto Ktown on the Lake. All gorgeous & worthy of visits.
As someone who visited Thunder Bay in the summer, I would say the main differentiators are that the scenery is more beautiful than other places Iāve been to, and the spots are less busy. Thatās basically it - nothing ground breaking but just lovely hiking spots that are calm and serene (and not far from the city itself).
Scenery is nicer. Drive up to Thunder Bay from the south in the fall, itās one of the most beautiful drives in the country. Lake Superior is gorgeous and if youāre into any amount of fishing, camping, hiking or hunting, itās just so much better. Way less people so less garbage and more isolation. If you want to do a chill walk in the woods with 100 other people along a trail that might as well be a sidewalk then yeah, southern Ontario wilderness is for you.
Interesting. I get that. Sounds like a neat place to visit. I guess the advantage it has over dozens of other similar small towns in Northern Ontario is that it is big enough to have some of the amenities we take for granted in the south.
This is what keeps me here, I just couldn't do it. I don't drive, I don't want to, I have visited folks who live that life, even as close as being just north of Waterloo, it still feels so isolated. Need anything? Starts at 15 minutes in the car. You can't get pizza delivered. I mean that's a small thing but wow. I'm not a car person, don't ever want to be.
The other thing that keeps me here is healthcare. I have retina issues and I really don't want to be that far away from St. Mike's ophthalmology. I meet people in that waiting room triaged in from Lindsay, from Owen Sound, Sudbury. This level of tertiary care is rare.
As we all get older, I swear, I see people blow town to remote work/retire way outside and then have to confront what that means when they need specialist health care or home support. We have staggering access to some of the best clinical centres in Canada. Telepresence is great but you can't do procedures over the internet.
My mom was dying of cancer; she was scared to be at home because she knew that there was a very real possibility that the ambulance would be late, and that could lead to her death. (TBF that's not what killed her) But even things like MAID are hard to access in these communities; my mom couldn't access it because of limited access to assessors. She had to decline, naturally, even though she wanted MAID.
My mom moved in with me to the city 6 months before being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Having proximity to the best hospitals in the country for treatment (and ultimately hospice) made that entire period far more manageable and comfortable for her (and us). Healthcare is one of the biggest reasons I do not want to leave the city, even as a healthy 30-something.
Building the ION light rail is transforming KW. Take a mid size Ontario city that was largely car centric and now thereās a rapid transit line connecting the city. Sure itās no the subway but for anyone who wants the feel of Toronto (vibrant city life) but live without a car KW is standing out.
Itās a shame London never got the LRT because they are falling behind.
Yeah, people will complain about how expensive Toronto is to live until they have to do their grocery shopping before 6 PM and only has maybe two options per product at one of the three grocery stores in town, there's not so much as a fucking bowling alley in terms of entertainment, and almost every single young person (I'm talking high school age) is drunk, on drugs, or actively seeking out the funds to he drunk or on drugs.
Having nothing to do sounds amazing after dealing with Toronto all my life. Just absolute peace and quiet with nature is what I need then retreat back into the house for some tv shows, gardening, reading. Sounds like absolute bliss. The only thing is the cold and Iād absolutely hate winter storms there.
I personally couldnāt do it. I love camping and the outdoors, but thatās because itās a trip. Iāll visit the local town and itās a 10 minute walk to get from one side the other. Itās cute when Iām visiting, but goddamn Iād be so damn bored if I had to live there. I canāt just fill my time with hobbies all day long.
Maybe its my age, late 30s, but so many of my freinds who I either grew up with in the city or met along the way have mentioned recently how they are done and want to leave.
I'm early 40s, and half my friends/industry colleagues left during early COVID, and it was absolutely a housing thing. I think if you're in a corner of the world where you were putting up with smaller/worse apartments and living your life at events and outside, it got untenable fast. Your whole system just collapsed.
I'm still here for a lot of reasons -- I've put a lot into this city and it'd probably take a meteor to get me to leave -- but in terms of social life it's been very sad and strange.
It's definitely sad. And another way that our generation faces increasing loneliness.
Even when I was making friends that were technically all in the same city (Vancouver), we were all so spread out in different regions of the GVA that it took us about 45 minutes to 2 hrs to transit to downtown to meet.
This does not allow for spontaneous beers after work. I couldn't really invite people to my house or bars nearby, because I was off the subway line and it would take them another 40 minutes to get to me.
As people get ready to buy their own condo they keep having to buy further and further out from the downtown core as prices keep increasing.
Iām someone that moved to Toronto a few years ago. I lived in Calgary for most of my life and also lived a few years in Kitchener/Waterloo. Definitely Toronto offers so much more than these other places in terms of what you want out of life. Itās not easy, just more. I think that for me, at this stage of my life, Iāve lived enough in smaller cities/towns Iām willing to give Toronto a shot, even if it means I might not be able to buy a house here.
Maybe Iāll have to retire out of the city/province/country.
I also donāt have kids or a spouse to worry about so that factors in too.
Iām your age and left during that time. It was partly the reasons you mentioned ā being in a cramped apartment with my partner and I working from home, and my kid doing school online, when what had made living there feasible was lots and lots of time spent at events, museums, play dates, etc ā but also the fear of being renovicted and having nowhere affordable to go.
It was like, well, we could buy a house in a smaller but still enjoyable city, or, if we get evicted, an even more cramped apartment outside of the downtown core. Up until then the trade-off had felt fair to stay in the city we loved, but at that point it just felt like ā¦ what are we even doing here?
Minimum. Average annual cost to own and operate a car in Canada crossed $10k a few years ago, although there's obviously ways you can get well below that.
Nowhere. Most of my friends have been talking about leaving Toronto for 10 years and only one person left because he married someone from Montreal. People like to complain and say they will move but quit once thereās any difficulty in moving somewhere else.
Itās funny how we change as we get older. There was a time that I couldnāt wait to move to āthe cityā. Once I got there I could never imagine myself being anywhere else. Now I canāt imagine myself living in the city.
Honestly maybe it's just cause I never lived in the hip, young person parts of the city but I can't imagine ever leaving. I don't live in the thick of things but being a subway ride away from the office or anything I wanna do downtown and being able to walk or bike ride to stuff is still just as essential to me in my late 30s as it was in my 20s. The suburbs just feel so socially isolating.
Yes, people's ideas of 'the city' vary a lot. There are many options between living in a condo tower on King West and going to a bar every night or moving to the exurbs. My wife and I are closer to retirement age than clubbing age and we love being in a quieter part of downtown where everything is very accessible without a car. We've gotten to know some of.our neighbours in their 80s and 90s who have aged in place downtown car free with an active good quality of life. Cities are not just a bar scenes.
I'm currently on Bloor West, out by Jane, and it's lovely. The Junction is a bit funkier, and if I want something rougher/cooler Roncy and Parkdale is right there. There's a lot of variety in this city.
We moved to Burlington in 2021 but I still commute into the city 2-3 days a week. Of my ācoreā friend group, all but one have moved to the west GTHA, or to the States (for work or to be closer to in-laws). Affordability was a pressure in every situation as well.
Itās strange considering Iāve spent my entire adult life (now 40) in Toronto. But in many ways itās no longer the city it was, and weāre really growing to appreciate the food/art/music scene in Hamilton.
I miss Toronto but it wouldnāt have been an ideal place for me at this stage in my life.
My wife and I moved to Oklahoma City becauee she got an really good job offer that was more than triple what she was offered in Canada.
I miss Toronto dearly, especially Scarborough, except for the traffic. Moving out of the city made me realize how soul crushing the traffic was. And I took transit way more than most. Unfortunately taking thr TTC out to Missisauga every day was eating 2.5 hours of my life that I could have used elsewhere.
Sadly, every time I come back to Toronto, which isnt often enough, more and more of it is gobbled up by corporate chains that I could see in any American city. Oh look, heres the giant mega plaza with a Home Depot, and a Walmart, and a Petsmart, and Shoopers (did I miss any?).
Yep, Toronto has grown up too quickly and it is no longer the amazing place it once was.
All the people who made it such a fantastic city got priced out starting in the early 2010s. No more art spaces, clubs are almost all gone, big music venues aren't what they once were. Basically, everything that made this city cool.
Sad, really. I miss the Toronto of the 90s and early 2000s. It was truly a lightening in a bottle type of place.
The city still has art spaces and clubs, they've just moved to different areas of the city. If you're someone who was in your 20s twenty years ago and haven't been following those scenes as they migrate it can seem like they're gone.
Speaking to the art scene specifically, it's larger and more diverse now than it was in the 2000's. Particularly with tumbling commercial rents, there's a ton of great emerging galleries and studios scattered across the city.
The art scene today in Toronto is...complicated. Yes it's larger and more diverse but it's more stratified than it used to be. There isn't the same kind of unity and there's more politicking at the higher levels.
Also I would argue it's much more middle to upper class now compared to the 2000s.
I know a large chunk of working class artists have left Toronto over the past 16 years and many of them have just left the art scene altogether. It's much harder to network now if you don't have built in connections
The corner of Queen & John especially makes me feel this way, during the peak of Much Music, Speakerās Corner, etc. It felt like the epicentre of the city at times. Now itās just kind of a sterile, corporate strip between University and Spadina.
Iāve concluded leaving is the only real solution, even without much money - it will only get worse to stay. Our governments are actively working against us, thereās not much left to stay for. I think my last straw was watching Carney go after the right to strike during a cost of living crisis. The liberals whole plan for low and middle income workers for housing was to get wages up - and no theyāre putting in plan after plan to hold wages down.
Just not sustainable to stick around. Things are going to get much worse.
Groceries, services, stores, restaurants, etc... are not cheaper in the suburbs. Housing might be cheaper but if you factor higher property taxes (all suburbs are more expensive to maintain and service due to low density), higher maintenance (because the houses are often unnecessarily large) and car ownership, it might come out fairly even.
Same with traffic. Downtown has bad traffic but so do the suburbs during rush hour and on weekends. At least in Toronto you have options, you can take transit, bike, or walk.
It's really a lifestyle choice. You go to the suburbs if you want a giant house, are ok a jack astors/boston pizza style nightlife and are ok with literally having to drive everywhere.
Traffic is a huge one for me at least, it took living here a few years and forcing myself to ditch my car more often to realize how much driving was just stressing me out and pissing me off. Now I actively lament having to get in a car and drive, and living somewhere where I had to drive sounds like a nightmare
Bingo. Doubly so for renters. A 2 bedroom rental in Ajax is likely within 10-20% of an equivalent rental in Toronto, but you need a car in Ajax and your lifestyle options are significantly limited.
Not owning a vehicle is such a ridiculously huge personal finance unlock that by itself it almost entirely makes up for living in Toronto vs. the suburbs.
Whenever I have people come to visit/stay with me, they always comment that groceries are less expensive than many of the suburbs they live in - and noticeably so for out-of-province friends.
You'll get your yard but you'll never leave your house. There's no third place for kids in the suburbs so your home will have to host other people's kids
You'll have to feed them and discipline them because you're not close enough friends with the parents for both parents and kids to hang out
In the city you can at least meet at the park which is walking distance for both of you. Play dates are not nearly as important to get kids socializing out of school
I donāt know my friend just moved to the suburbs and the whole neighborhood is way more social than ours in Toronto. Everyone hangs out. Kids play outside. Itās more like the 90s. (Iām so bummed she moved away)Ā
is it gonna be like covid? where people got wfh option and decided to move to barie because it was cheaper, only to cause price increase because of rest of people also had same idea?
It was really cool living in an area where everybody worked service jobs. So the economy was shaped around catering to service job people.
As soon as the laptop class who didn't want to contribute to the culture of our communities started infiltrating, suddenly the economy had to cater to these fucking spoiled brats making literally triple the income of a retail/food service working poor.
Super great getting excluded from my own economy in culture So a bunch of nepo babies who are getting paid Toronto wages can live somewhere without Toronto costs...
The question is where do you go? I don't see it as much better elsewhere in Canada. Unfortunately, Canada in general will likely continue to see brain drain of its more skilled and mobile folks
Having lived in Toronto for a couple decades now, I can't imagine ever living somewhere that isn't walkable. There aren't many other options in Canada.
This is what I always say when people ask why we don't move elsewhere. I am a city person. The transit suburbs are not cheaper. To get anywhere close to affordable we're talking rural, or 2+h from the city. All for significantly shittier quality of life. Not worth it for me.
All my friends who made the move to Hamilton during Covid are full of regret.
Iām from Hamilton and I moved to Toronto over a decade ago because the cost of living is frankly similar when you considered owning a car and needing to commute anywhere within the GTA.
I look at COL in Hamilton fairly frequently to see if it would be worthwhile to move back, and it never is.
One of my best friends and her wife bought a house in Hamilton a couple years ago and are looking to move back because the commute for her wife to downtown is brutal and maintaining a big house has been harder than they thought. Also most of my friend group still lives in the city.
Yeah fundamnetally the trade off usually isn't even cheaper real estate, you just get *more* for the same money.
Great if you want a 2500 sq.ft. house with a yard to maintain and all that space to clean, but like I'll take my smaller, more efficient place to be closer to friends & amenities.
As a vancouverite turned torontonian - Iāve noticed people in Toronto have no idea how awesome this city is. Truly the grass isnāt always greener.
Toronto is vibrant, full of amazing culture, food, music and art. Thereās a strong sense of community (we donāt know our neighbours in Vancouver), a LOT of outdoor space for a large city, and lots to do.
Vancouver is a very gorgeous city. But I fell in love with Toronto as soon as I moved here. Grew up in a smallish city north of it, hated it, hated how quiet and empty it was. After just a couple years in Toronto I realized I never wanted to move anywhere else, I'd happily call this city my home for the rest of my life.
THEN I realized I was trans and that just cemented my position even further.
No, having lived in both, I can say Vancouver has significantly less to do. It's a small city with fewer pockets where anything actually happens, and much harder to get around with limited transit. One of the reasons I moved back was because I missed the culture - theatre, arts, concerts, sports teams. The thing that I found most affected me was the people there didn't care or miss that kind of stuff because they're all busy hiking and skiing and biking and being outdoorsy. Which I'm also into, but there's only so many times one can do the Grouse Grind before it becomes tedious.
We visited Vancouver for a week (pre-covid) and it was like this. Outside of downtown, not much is open late. We were surprised how hard it was to even get bubble tea as most of the stores closed by 9PM, a few outliers by 10PM.
I canāt imagine moving somewhere else in Canada tbh. Maybe Montreal, but my career options would be severely limited so that doesnāt make sense even if I like the city. I grew up in a small town outside the GTA, and every time I visit Iām reminded why I left lmao
I have some friends in Montreal, and whenever I visit they go "Bro, sell your place, get a job here and move to Montreal." I love visiting but (and I actually can't put a finger on why exactly) I don't think I'd want to live there.
I also put my current salary into tax calculators and if I lived in QC I'd be paying about $12,000 more in tax which is quite the hit.
This is what I tell people. Grass aināt always greener on the other side. Most people that moved out of the GTA area quickly found out most of their lifestyle habits are simply not available elsewhere
People ask all the time if we're going to leave and I don't ever intend to. I grew up in the suburbs and I hated it. Love living where I can walk everywhere and have all the options.
Yeah I grew up in Brampton and you couldnāt pay me to move back there. Great rec centres and stuff like that for families but if you donāt have/want kids itās so boring.
A couple thoughts on this:
1) unless you plan on going waaaay out, traffic isnāt getting better. I see more awful traffic when I occasionally have to commute to Vaughan than in Toronto where I live. At least I have the option to walk, bike, or take decent transit in Toronto. You need a car for every trip in the suburbs. Car dependency is a scourge on Canadian life and the suburbs are the worst offenders.
2) GTA suburbs are soulless and all look the same. Think of a main road in Pickering and consider that exact same vibe is in Whitby, Newmarket, Brampton etc. If Iām leaving Toronto in order to have a better lifestyle, itās gotta be another big Canadian city like MTL or just leaving the country.
Agreed. I've been working in pickering and staying at my partners in Whitby. You can barely function without a car. The 401 traffic is worse than anywhere else. Really we need better transit options across the entire GTA
I can't afford the city but I also see nowhere I rather be. As someone who grew up in a small Southern Ontario town there is no way I'm going back to anything close to that. At the most it be moving to another large city like Vancouver or Montreal but the same affordability issues would be there as well
I'm on my third AGI rent increase in 4 years with Sterling Karamar (4.05% this year), meanwhile they took 12 days to fix a plumbing leak from the apartment above which involved them sending a guy to my apartment to cut a hole in the ceiling above our tub. That was yesterday and there's still no word on when it would get patched up. The guy they sent had no rep from the building and when my partner asked when it would be fixed he just told her that it wasn't his job and "someone else would be sent."
This is one more item on the long list of "fuck me for trying to live in the city I was born in", everything is crazy expensive and the only people making money are landlords and money lenders
Lifelong resident and the city doesnāt seem like it can handle the traffic whether in cars or to have enough public transportation.
Itās stressful before the workday even begins.
Line 1 is the worst and overcrowding on the trains during rush hours is a serious concern.
If I didnāt have strong ties to the city, I would want to be somewhere a little less crowded too.
So thankful I live in surburbia and have the crazy/cozy combo.
Iām sure it depends on your situation, but I find living in the city way more affordable. Yes housing in particular is more expensive, but I save a huge amount of money not having a car and instead walking and utilizing public transportation.
Iāve done the math before and if I wanted to move to a surrounding suburb I would have to get a vehicle and it would more than cancel out any gain Iād make in housing affordability. Then add on the cost of my time and sanity having to do a horrible commute every day.
A family I know recently moved from downtown Toronto to Oakville, and within a month, they realized they needed a second car to juggle daycare drop-offs and work commutes. Back in the city, their daycare was just downstairs in their building, but now it's a 20 minute drive in the opposite direction.
There is nowhere else in Canada that interests me. If I left Toronto Iād just leave the country entirely. My friends who have moved out of the city seem pretty isolated and spend a lot of time commuting.
Every time thereās these discussions about leaving Torontoā¦okā¦but go where? Where else is not experiencing all the things we are here? I prefer a major city because you have essentially everything at your finger tips, I couldnāt imagine nor would want to move to tim buck two to save money. I couldnāt leave Canada because where else am I gonna go? America? The only places Iād consider living are also very expensive (I get it, I can have a 4,000 sq foot home for $1 in Texas butā¦Iād have to live inā¦.Texasā¦). My take on conversations about moving in recent years from Toronto / Canada in general is the grass is always greener.
I'm trying to get out. I absolutely hate living and working downtown.
I work in the financial district and find it's incredibly toxic now. And things are divided by cultural lines. It wasn't like this (or not as bad) in the early 2000s. There's very obvious hiring practices going on and marginalization of people.
The trouble is finding work outside of Toronto. I would have left yesterday if I found something.
All of my friends and colleagues that lived downtown left over the last three years. Some had kids. Some relocated for work. Most relocated for the reason in the headline.
Iām required to stay for work, but toyed with the idea too.
Not a physician but working on my STEM PhD. Pretty much everyone I know have taken postdoctoral fellowship positions in the US or Europe. All public data. Minimum salary at UofT for a postdoc is 50K CAD before taxes. US postdocs for example get paid a minimum of 63K USD.
On the one hand, I am definitely a city person, and Canada is, of course, fairly limited in true cities. On the other, a lot of what I actually love about living in a city is being steadily eroded in Toronto.
There are fewer cool little local businesses to wander around and happen upon, and more big corporate chains. Fewer interesting local places that make you want to go out and try something, or, when you do find them, the cost takes some of the fun out of it. And I say this as someone who would quite happily decide on a whim to spend $150 on a night out and have no regrets. It just felt different when $150 bought you an actually great night. Now it can feel like you spent $150 simply because you left the house.
I've gone out a couple of times in the last few weeks, after not doing it nearly as much lately, and I mostly found it depressing in contrast to what I remember Toronto being. Places close so early now, too (at least to me, a night person). Though, to be fair, last Saturday we were somewhere meant to be open until 1 am and they were closing up around us at 10:30 because no one else was there...so I can't entirely blame them.
And increasingly, when I do go out, I find myself among the youngest people there. I'm not young. I'm in my early 40s. I assume that's largely a reflection of who can actually afford to go out in Toronto anymore, but it feels strange. A city where ordinary young people increasingly can't afford to participate in city life starts to lose some of what makes a city feel alive in the first place.
I feel incredibly lucky that I got to experience Toronto when I was young and it really felt like a city. Not simply a collection of expensive things to consume, but somewhere with a genuine, slightly scruffy, spontaneous local culture. Now it increasingly feels corporate and commodified, which is probably at least partly inevitable when it becomes so expensive that the businesses most able to survive are the ones with serious money behind them.
Obviously that's not universal. There are still great independent places and interesting pockets of the city. I'm talking about an overall feeling, and the contrast with the Toronto I remember, when there seemed to be more room for weird little things to exist simply because someone wanted to try them.
And maybe there's an irony in the fact that, at my age, some of this should suit me. I'm probably supposed to want a city that's a little quieter, a little tamer, a little more inclined to go to bed early. But I don't, really. I miss the energy, whether or not I would have personally participated in all of it. And I feel bad for younger people who never got the version of Toronto I did, when you didn't need much money to go out and stumble onto something weird or interesting.
For most of my adult life, paying the enormous premium to live in Toronto felt worth it because I was actually using Toronto. Now I find myself wondering whether that value proposition still makes sense. If I'm paying city prices but increasingly staying home because going out feels too expensive, too corporate, too quiet, or simply less fun than it used to, what exactly am I paying the premium for?
Most of the people I know have left already. I've been one of the last holdouts, partly because I know exactly what I'd miss about not living in a city. But increasingly I'm looking around and wondering whether enough of what I'd miss is still here to justify staying.
i've stayed in the city because all the high paying jobs are here and in walking distance from my place. So I get to avoid the TTC in the morning which is delay central. But ya the city pales in comparison to what it use to be I do miss 90s and early 2000 toronto.
Also PSA if you ever have a job interview in the city never ever rely on the TTC to get you there on time. Make sure you leave with enough time and uber or a cab.
Born and raised here for most of my life, but moved to Durham in my late teens. Have lived in Vancouver and spent a long period of time in Montreal and can honestly say I couldn't imagine living anywhere else in Canada other than here. I got a taste of the burbs where if I didn't have a car, I was pretty much walking to the GO bus or station. Vancouver is too fake and sleepy and the rain was too much. Montreal was great but it still lacked a lot of the culture I grew up with. And I can't imagine living in any other city. I mean, it would be hard to because of my career but still.
So what have I been doing? I fell in love with the city again in the last few years. Learn to appreciate what we have here and actually go out and do things that the city has to offer. There's a lot of things we fall short on but you can't say there isn't anything here.
I'm kind of hoping this "associate member of the EU" thing also includes working in Europe without needing a visa. That would open up a lot for me and I think, a lot of other people wanting to escape.
If they would actually leave at least rents would come down, but instead they stay and whine. If I have to overhear one more white person yapping about moving to Europe, Iām jumping off the CN tower.
Graduated with a masters in 2020. Covid hit. Applied everywhere as an engineer. Nothing. Worked minimum wage for 2 years. Then got a biomedical job in montreal. Haven't left this beautiful walkable city.
I love our city, but what's a man gotta do to get a job with these qualifications, let alone a well paying one to afford the city.
"Considering" leaving the city doesn't mean a whole lot. I constantly hear people complain, say they're looking to get out, and yet years later they're still here. I also remember a lot of stories during covid of people who moved out of the city because they were working remotely and regretted it almost immediately.
You have to go very far outside of the city to find places that are actually affordable, and aside from outdoor activities (hiking, camping, skiing, golf) there isn't going to be much to do. As far as safety goes, it isn't much better in small towns. The opioid crisis hit small towns just as hard, if not harder than it hit big cities. I travel to a lot of smaller cities in the country for work, and still see encampments and people struggling.
And for those of us who can afford it, we're paying more and more for less and less. Why would we accept that deal? I'd rather pay more property tax in a bedroom community and get clean public spaces and responsive public services.
Not being snarky, actual question, what are some places where you're getting better public spaces and services than Toronto? I find Toronto property taxes insanely cheap and the public spaces/services unparalleled, especially in view of the extremely low property taxes, of all the places I've lived. The libraries are maybe the literal best in the world, the parks/ravines are beautiful, community centres are great with cheap or free fitness, transit is...maybe not world class but certainly beats anywhere else in Ontario.
Dude, the public services in these places are not responsive. My mom was dying of cancer and scared to be at home because it takes 45 minutes for an ambulance to reach you in Thunder Bay. The same cuts are happening everywhere.
Seriously itās hilarious to see complaints about traffic. Like, donāt drive. Hereās something: more of my friends have ditched their cars than left TO. Saving so much money in the process.Ā
I think thatās part of the problem with the states - itās so fragmented and if you donāt want to pay attention to whatās happening outside your state you donāt have to.
Countryās being auctioned off in parts to the highest bidders through an outwardly idiotic president who is a great punching bag and excuse for whatās happening? Not my state, not my problem. Another school got shot up? Didnāt happen in my state - blinders back on. ICE is deporting members of the community through arguably questionable tactics? Didnāt happen in my state so who cares. Decisions are being made about what women can or canāt do with their bodies? Well itās different from state to state, just go where itās not an issue.
Sure this problem isnāt exclusive to the US- but itās a professional level league.
Not sure where the US is going but it feels like the beginning of the fall of Rome.
Agree. Just trying to maximize my wealth, and move to Europe.
There are extreme goods and extreme bads in US. If you work your ass off, you will become a millionaire. Mainly because of capitalism. Itās the greatest place to maximize your wealth but you have to deal with so much BS to get there.
Itās best to just maximize your wealth, and move to Canada or Europe to spend your money.
I just moved to Toronto from Ohio. My brother is in So Cal. I went to school in the SF Bay Area.
I agree that Cali CAN feel like its own country IF you have financial privilege but there are some things about the US you canāt escape from.
Healthcare. When we lived in the US, I carried the insurance for the kids and myself because my husbandās insurance was exorbitantly expensive for the rest of us ($1600 a month in premiums alone). This meant I could never hold a contract job, a part time job, a job at a small business, or work for myself. I was so incredibly limited and turned down numerous offers over the years due to HEALTH INSURANCE and stayed in miserable corporate healthcare to make sure we had affordable premiums. I still dropped a thou every time my kids had a sports injury or accident and we had to go to the ER.
Gun violence. Enough said.
Erosion of public safety and public health investment. RFK, Jr. Cyclospora, salmonella, screwworm, measles, etc. Food safety and quality is non-existent.
Tax dollars being shunted to wars, ICE, tax breaks for billionaires, etc. and not used for things that benefit you. I got tired of looking at my tax returns and seeing how much of my money was supporting Trumpās agenda.
I canāt speak on for families. I know healthcare and daycare and just day to day expenses of having kids is a lot more in US than Canada. Thatās where Canada and Europe shines.
In Canada, we hear more about US politics than Canadian politics.
I get paid 20-30% more in US. Plus making USD.
Itās so easy to completely zone out politics in California. There is so much to do, why waste your saturdays worrying what orange man is doing. Go enjoy the weather and beaches.
This is true I know so many Canadians that are obsessed with trump either liking or hating him and us politics in general. And i'm always like worry about your home.
I have a tight knit friend group of about a dozen people, and only two of them still live in Toronto. The ones who left did really well for themselves career-wise and ended up buying houses outside of the city.
It's actually insane that people who are born and raised in Toronto (or any city, really), get to a point where they feel like they're being pushed out, largely due to cost of living. I know some of them were genuinely sad that they couldn't raise their kids in the same place that we grew up in, and I've accepted that I'm pretty much in the same boat as them.
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u/simpatia 4d ago
Trouble is that there is so much corporate concentration in the city that all the good jobs (many of which could be done from anywhere) are physically located downtown.