Title: PolitiFact | So you want to move to Canada, eh?
Headings: So you want to move to Canada, eh?
So you want to move to Canada, eh?
Content: However, it seems unlikely that a significant number of people make good on their threat to leave the country every four years. We don’t know for sure, though. The American government doesn’t track how many people leave in a given year. Using Canadian government statistics, we found that there was a dramatic increase in the number of U.S. citizens granted permanent resident status in Canada in the years immediately following Bush’s re-election. It nearly doubled from about 5,000 grantees in 2002 to 10,000 in 2008. Because the Canadian government doesn’t track why people are moving, we don’t know the reason behind the surge. While noting that most Americans who move to Canada go for work, not for politics, it’s possible the surge was a lagging effect of Bush’s re-election, said Jeffrey Reitz, director of ethnic, immigration and pluralism studies at the University of Toronto. There are at least a few anecdotal examples of Americans fleeing to Canada in the wake of Bush’s re-election in 2004. The Guardian talked to several such couples, including Pam and David Drucker, who made a pact that they would build their dream house in Vermont if Democrat John Kerry won, but if Bush won, they would move to Canada. They moved to Vancouver a year later.