Canada

No retirement visa. Options: parent/grandparent sponsorship (if your kids are Canadian), super visa (long visits), Express Entry (age-penalized at 50+). Snowbird-in-reverse (6-month visits) is the common fallback.

Foreign-buyer ban on residential property extended through 2027 (recreational/exempt categories aside) — check current status; provinces add foreign-buyer taxes.

Universal for residents (waits are real); visitors need private insurance.

Excellent in cities; expensive by global standards; rural gaps.

English (and French in Québec).

Toronto/Vancouver rival US coastal metros; smaller cities (Halifax, Winnipeg) more humane.

Very safe throughout.

First-world everything, if increasingly expensive to build.

Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver transit is good; the rest of the country is built around the car.

Like the US with more moose warnings; winter tires mandatory in spots.

UTC-5: ~8h of a 9–5 Pacific workday falls in local waking hours.

Rabies cert at the border, welcome to Canada.

Stable, institutional, polite even when angry.

Strong parks/values; oil-sands asterisk.

Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver scenes are serious; CBC culture runs deep.

Toronto and Vancouver are arguably the most diverse food cities on Earth.

Toronto/Vancouver are affordability disasters, and foreign buyers are banned from most resale housing anyway.

Drive across. Enough said.

Citizenship 3 years after PR, dual fine — but getting PR at 50+ without family ties is the hard part.

Americans blend in instantly; snowbird-in-reverse networks everywhere.

Marriage equality since 2005, legal cannabis, institutionally progressive.

Wildfire smoke seasons growing; BC has quake exposure; otherwise calm.

Fully legal nationwide since 2018 — mature retail market, no registration needed. The gold standard for Amy's filter.

Residents taxed on worldwide income at high-ish rates; US-Canada treaty is mature and handles pensions/Social Security cleanly.