Moving from Lebanon and seeking a job in Canada

I have no reason to doubt it is in fact hard to find jobs in most areas.
IT and telecommunication seem to be the exceptions where there are opportunities.

Dear Ahmad:

Many jobs offers in IT are are shown in the usenet groups, but you will need to be sure they are available to Canadians.

So many U.S. jobs and other business offers do not state clearly and up from that they are held for Americans.

Being Lebanese, I would expect you speak both French and Arabic, but for each, to what degree? Often the expression (e.g for French)"functional French" is used to describe a degree of language competence enough to do most practical and/or jobs, but not at enough to do jobs requiring a lot of language diplomacy, such as some sales and marketing related jobs (but not all in this category.)

Have your qualifications authenticated in Canada:

[b]Job boards:[/b]

jobboom and Monster are the bigger ones, but also very automated and impersonal. They make their money by charging employers to post job offers, but as such convenience will be aimed to the employers as much as possible without alienating large numbers of applicants.

Specialized agencies, and departments of larger agencies also abound, but again, they are employer paid. Unlike the U.S. it is illegal in Canada to charge an applicant for finding him a job.

Language laws in Quebec:

Language (AKA "The Quebec-Canada Problem" has sorrowfully been a target of sour political controversy for many years. The history of the conflict is long and arduous, so I will spare the details for now, save that it has resulted in Bill 101, which imposes a lot of language demands which leaves many with sour concerns.

One of these is that many professions, in order to have the right to practice, one is forced to pass government language tests in French, the true fairness of which may easily arouse concern from many.

This, and much more, has imposed a lot of "virtual socialism" on the Quebec economy, however other provinces are each a different story, diverse amongst themselves.

Travel and geographic size are factors in working in Canada.

While the land area of Quebec alone, if it could be superimposed on top of Continental U.S.A. would cover more than half of it.

Flying from Heathrow in the U.K. to Montreal's Trudeau airport takes less flying time than to fly from Trudeau to Vancouver BC!

Yet for all that huge land area, some 90% of Canadians live in a wide ribbon within 100 miles of the U.S. border!

Weather:

Temperatures are subject to extremely wide variations, both seasonally and with regard to time of day/night. so, you can ext that, depending on where and when, you could experience anything from 37 degrees C. to -75 degrees C.

and so will that be for an arctic suit or a bikini!!

Other than that, in Montreal, there are some 80 or more languages spoken in a day, and there are lots of Lebanese here. Many of them work in occupations that deal directly with the general public, such as taxi drivers, bus drivers, restaurant franchisees and employees, and an endless variety of more.

Women in the Canadian Workplace:

Also, being a country which legally respects womens' rights, you will find women of every heritage working "hand in hand" with men in all kinds of occupations, and with no social concerns as one might find in many older cultures.

More and more women now a graduating university in subjects like engineering, I.T. etc., so both you and your wife and family can well expect that you and your wife have a high probability of ending up working in teams of mixed gender, with minimal attention even given to that thought.

I could say a lot more about working life in Canada, but I would be typing for a LONG time!

One more note: while most North Americans are somewhat "addicted" to Microsoft's windows, etc. I, for one, prefer open source, and, to be sure there's no "Microsoft" in Linux.

But even for Windows, using the basic Word Processing software, free and legal, supports some 92 languages. For those right to left languages derived from the ancient Arameic, one downloads and installs an added patch, then the fonts they need for any of these languages, however if you prefer a keyboard with physical Arabic keytops, bring one with you, otherwise you can set up the electronic part of the layout with a North American "qwerty" keyboard.

Hi Alexell,

Are you going to go to Tripoli or do you expect Ahmad to come all the way to Montreal for this little meeting?

  Cheers, 
  William James Woodward – Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team