9 months of forced unemployment

Well still no resolution to the major issues for my family. It has been 9 months since I was able to work. 9 months is a long time to be forced to be on the bones of your ass living in poverty. Struggling week to week to provide the basics for your family. I mean to put this in perspective in comparison to now I lived a wealthy lifestyle when I was a university student.

110 days have passed since CIC received my application for an open work permit under their pilot program. Three weeks ago the processing time was 100 days. Now they say check back in 6 days time. I can just imagine the advertisement for a job processing CIC applications: "Must be able to delay things as much as possible and do the minimum possible amount of work", I mean come on, my application must have been one of the first received when the pilot program started, yet it takes four months to process an application....An application where all of the answers they need are right there in the computer in front of them. " Yes I see a PR application in process, yes this guy has legal status in the country", stamp, done go find a job. Four months, come on. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that Canada is still trying to make it as unattractive as possible to apply for residence inland.

So what doesn't Canada know? They don't seem to know how much they are shooting themselves in the foot. They open an express entry program to get desirable professionals, including programmers such as myself, into the country to work in professions where they are short of bodies and brains to fill them, but there is a delay even with that. We need you, come to Canada please...oh but you can't work when you get here. I have had several programmers looking for a life change ask me if they should come to Canada to work, could I in good conscience say tell them it is a good idea when my experience would, and has, steered even the bravest of them to another country that would actually let them work and not force them to live in extreme poverty for an extended period of time. The fact of the matter is there is no way on gods green earth that I would still be here if there was any other choice for my family. Don't get me wrong, I love Canada, it is every bit as beautiful as my homeland, New Zealand, and I have met so many nice and amazing people over here. But with the dust gathering on the university educated mind that I spent $50,000 dollars on and no potential way to put it to use I would have taken my family somewhere I could make use of it rather than living in the exact circumstances I aimed to avoid by putting myself through university in the first place.

So not only will one department of the government will not let me work, but another has demanded the child care tax benefit back from Jenn from the year before we were even together based on my income in New Zealand. Let me really stress this, they want thousands of dollars back for the year BEFORE Jenn and I were a couple, when we had two separate households to run, I obviously contributed nothing at all to her household. Every other government department considers that it takes a year of living together before being considered a common law couple, apparently this one considers it a year before we had ever even laid eyes on each other.

The situation is grim right now. I mean the only ones prospering in our house hold are the god damned mice in the basement because we can't even afford traps and poison to deal with the issue let alone an exterminator to come and properly take care of the issue. Maybe things will start getting better for us soon, maybe this time CIC will stick to its own time line instead of endlessly extending them, maybe within another month I will be working again, but so much damage has already been done, we are at least $20,000 in debt that could have been avoided and it has already cost me one very good job that I hoped to build a long term career in.

Its time for a change Canada, stop shooting yourself in the foot, stop making every other country a more desirable option for the professional people that you want here who can actually contribute to your economy. Wake the f*#k up, and while you are at it stop scamming all of your citizens by charging them tax on sales of second hand vehicles, I mean seriously, how many times do you need people to pay tax on the sale of the same item, its just plain wrong.