It’s no wonder that young Canadian families are fleeing to Florida

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The third time it happened, I started getting curious. I’d be in the grocery store or on a walk in Vaughan, my suburb just north of Toronto, and bump into an acquaintance. “Hey Danielle, we’re moving to Florida next year. My husband just can’t handle this country anymore.” One by one, millennial families with young kids seemed to be emptying out of my neighbourhood.

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And it doesn’t seem to be a phenomenon confined to just my own circles. Daniel Mandelbaum, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer, has noticed it too.

“There are more Canadians interested in moving to the United States in the last 12 months or so,” he told me last week over the phone. “I’m seeing more inquiries saying, ‘We are fed up with the cost of living, taxes, Canadian politics’ and that they are moving to Florida or Texas…. Something is going on that is setting people off.”

Mandelbaum says it makes sense that it’s mostly millennial families that are moving because most Canadians who are able to go to the U.S. either move for a job opportunity or because they married an American. People in their late 20s and 30s fit that demographic.

The data also reflects my observations. According to a recent report by the CBC, Canadians are moving to the U.S. at levels not seen since the brain-drain era in the early aughts. The report cited the American Community Survey, which found that 126,340 Canadians moved to the U.S. in 2022 — a 70 per cent increase from 2012. Of that number, 53,311 were born in Canada, about 50 per cent higher than the average number that moved to the U.S. before the COVID pandemic.

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And it’s likely a large portion of them are migrating to Florida, which is now the second-fastest growing state in the U.S.

The spike doesn’t surprise me. Of my friends who have moved to the U.S., all have cited dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s and Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s COVID-era policies and the subsequent plunge in living standards.

Ben Feferman, a gaming consultant who managed to get an O-1 “extraordinary ability” visa and relocate his wife and four kids to the Sunshine State, told me over the phone in May that, “Our move was heavily motivated by COVID politics and policies. We felt there was no quality of life with endless lockdowns, restrictions and faux scientific public health policy. Especially with school closures.”

Last week, I spoke with Rachel Azagury, CEO of marketing firm The Concept Agency, who is packing up her husband and two kids this summer to head south on an L-1 intracompany visa — and knows at least five other families doing the same. She supported Canada’s lockdown measures at first, she says, and thought Florida’s laissez-faire attitude toward social distancing was “nuts.” But after a few months, she thought “there has got to be a different way.”

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“I realized we can’t have an outdoor lifestyle here. We couldn’t even go to the park,” she says. For a time in 2020, Toronto cordoned off playgrounds and fined users. The pandemic “showed all of Canada’s cracks.”

The pact that citizens have always had with this country has delivered us a safe, tolerant, well-governed place; in return, we put up with -20 C winters, high taxes, limited job opportunities, bad shopping and expensive liquor. We looked down on the U.S. for gun crime, high health-care costs and fractured politics.

But post-COVID, that pact feels broken: good governance has dissolved, from health-care wait times, to passport lines, to infant Tylenol shortages. Crime is skyrocketing — police have even encouraged residents to leave their car fobs near the front door to avoid violent interactions during auto thefts.

Millennials, now all grown up, are making a new calculation: if we cannot ensure a solid economic future for our children, if we send well over half our paycheques (after income and consumption taxes) to the government but can’t even secure a pediatrician in exchange, if our cars are stolen not once but twice in the same year from our driveways, then why are we still here?

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Instead, we figure, Florida has no state income taxes. Sales tax is only six per cent. Gas is less expensive. Under the state’s school choice program, parents get school vouchers of around $8,000, which can be put towards private school or home school. All those savings, plus the likelihood of a higher salary, means that we could afford health care, a home in a gated community and private school tuition. And we wouldn’t have to struggle to put our wiggy toddlers in a snowsuit every time we want to go outside.

In other words, middle-class millennials can simply enjoy a higher quality of life in the U.S.

Mandelbaum says that similar factors drove a Canadian exodus to the U.S. some two decades ago.

“That’s a big problem,” he says. “I get the sense when I speak to clients that it’s not a cycle, that there is an underlying problem, a fundamental problem with Canada’s economy that people are expressing frustration (over), and are actually moving.”

The biggest frustration is, of course, housing prices.

Home prices are astronomical, with property listings now averaging $1.25 million even in Vaughan. And remember, this is not in downtown Toronto — this is where people go when they want cheaper houses. In comparison, the average property price in Boca Raton, Fla. in April 2024, a prime destination for Canadian families, is roughly US$580,000 (C$800,000) — about 35 per cent cheaper.

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The Feferman family were long-term renters in Canada, but moving to Florida allowed them to become homebuyers for the first time. They paid just C$750,000 for their house in a desirable neighbourhood close to their kid’s school, and say a comparable one would cost about $1.5 million in Canada.

Another major source of frustration with Canada is navigating the health care system. It was never great, but post-COVID, Ontario health care feels apocalyptic. My own family doctor reduced the days she works per week to open a Botox clinic because she says the government doesn’t pay enough — and I don’t blame her one bit.

Azagury says that during COVID, she had to wait nine months just to see a dermatologist.

“Is (American healthcare) going to be more expensive?” she says. “Maybe, but it’s definitely better and faster.”

Plus, it’s possible that Canadians have been victims of fear-mongering about the American healthcare system. In truth, if you are employed in the U.S., you get health insurance with your job, and if you are a low- or middle-income earner, you can access government-run health coverage or a plan under Obamacare.

“When I actually looked into it and applied, it’s an unbelievable system for the middle class,” Feferman says. “You get very generous tax credits that really subsidize health care, and in many ways, my feeling is that private health care delivers a better quality of care. There is also a lot more they do for preventative care.”

The superiority complex that Canadian millennials had about the U.S. when we were growing up is officially over. Things are looking bleak here, and bright over there. Unless something changes, expect more and more of us to flee south.

National Post

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