Kamika Sylvester and her husband accepted job positions in Grande Prairie, Alta., and said that the financial freedom it gave them was worth the move.
“We both really wanted to move out of our parents house,” she said. “But we didn’t want to be struggling financially and just working to pay the rent.”
Sylvester made the move from Brampton in June 2022 and said accepting a nursing contract in the province had changed her life. She heard of the “Alberta is Calling” campaign, sent out by the Alberta government in early August to encourage young, skilled workers to consider starting their life there.
Campaign ads on the walls of TTC subway stations across Toronto say things like “A nurse, a programmer and an electrician all walk into a province. They all get jobs.”
Another 30-second ad can be heard on the radio, where a young man’s voice details his move to Alberta, and how the province offers higher salaries, lower taxes and a lower cost of living.
“Already, you’re starting at a higher rate just working across the country as a staff nurse,” Sylvester said.
According to the Government of Canada’s Job Bank, the average hourly wage of a registered nurse in Toronto is $36, but in Alberta, it’s $45 per hour in the Grande Prairie region.
Sylvester said there are staffing shortages across Alberta and that Alberta Health Services (AHS), the governing body for health care, is willing to pay higher premiums to its staff on top of the hourly wage. It didn’t stop there as they also said they would cover the cost of a vehicle, accommodation and food.
There are similar nursing contacts in northern Ontario like the one Sylvester took in Grande Prairie, but she made the decision to move to Alberta for more than just the higher pay. Housing affordability was just as enticing.
“The cost of living in Ontario is just astronomical,” she said. “And for someone who’s young, I’ve graduated, I got married, I wanted to move out and buy a house, it just was not possible.”
Sylvester and her husband looked at a newly built house with high-end gold-coloured finishes in a brand new development. She compared it to house prices in Toronto and guessed it would cost $1.5 million there, but was listed for $500,000 in Grande Prairie.
“The housing affordability is there,” Sylvester said.
Michael Mak, a senior analyst in economics for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), said housing trends in urban areas of Alberta like Calgary and Edmonton were steadily increasing in 2020 and 2021, but is seeing a different trend for 2022.
“Interest rates are getting higher and people aren’t in that much of a rush anymore,” Mak said.
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) shows the average townhouse in Toronto costs around $990,000 and Calgary’s average cost of a townhouse is around $360,000.
Mak said Calgary and Edmonton, along with the rest of Alberta, have had more supply and construction starts than higher priced cities like Vancouver and Toronto, making homes more affordable.
“In most recent quarters, what’s interesting is that we had an extremely large (number) of Ontarians move to Alberta,” he said. “So the inflow from Ontario has doubled the outflow from Alberta to Ontario.”
Statistics Canada shows that Alberta’s population grew by 2.2 per cent last year, and about 6,000 people from Ontario moved to the province between April and the end of June this year.
Peter Navales, a computer engineering student at Humber College, said he would move to Alberta from Mississauga if there was a “better opportunity” for him.
As Alberta continues its recruitment drive, quick witted ads continue to dot Toronto’s landscape.
“What did the Albertan say to the Torontonian? You’re hired,” said an ad in the Yonge and Bloor subway station.