Q: Is this enough for a family of 5 (with 3 young kids)? First issue is that the family needs to move from Dubai, UAE after the immigration papers are completed. The company by the way is issuing the work guarantee and sponsorship to the head of the family for his Canadian Immigration Application. 2nd issue is that Dubai, UAE is a tax-free City (meaning no income tax, no VAT, no state tax, no federal tax, health insurance for the family is covered by the employer, etc) By the way, the family is originally from the Philippines where the husband is an Engineer and wife is a Physical Therapist.
A: General sales tax on everything except certain food products is 13.5% (6% federal and 7.5% provincial)... by comparison Alberta doesn't have provincial taxes and only 10% flat rate on their income tax. $137,000 US these days only equals $132,270 Cdn. yet everything from books to gas to houses cost roughly 30% more in Canada than they do in the United States. Third, Vancouver is THE MOST expensive city in Canada and probably one of the top five in North America for real estate. Unless you want a nasty commute over rivers on bridges or in tunnels that are 30 years behind on their capacity, you'll want to live as close to your job (presumably downtown) as possible. With 3 kids and a wife, apartments are out which means you'll be looking at buying a house. Sadly even though in most other places $132,000 a year would go a long way toward buying you a great house, I own a 1 bedroom condo 10 minutes away from downtown that is less than 600 square feet and similar places in my building have sold for over half a million dollars. The value is all in the location and if you have land, the value is in that land. Go to http://www.realtylink.org to search for houses... use the map feature to zero in on neighborhoods. If you can afford it try to live on the west side. The east side gets kind of run down in areas and Burnaby is pretty spotty. Richmond is almost completely populated by people from Hong Kong and there is a large Iranian population in the hills of North and West Vancouver while mainly older caucasian families live down closer to the water. Again though, commuting across the harbour is horrible. There are no freeways in the city limits of Vancouver. Everything is done by city streets. It works alright but a great subway system would be required in order for people to move freely around the city. Buses simply don't function in traffic any better than being stuck in your own car. Lastly, don't expect to feel rich in Vancouver. There's a million others in the city who make boatloads more than you will on a single income. You'll probably land somewhere around middle class for the city. You'd probably go further on your dollar in the States where costs from everything like groceries and alcohol to cars and furnishings cost significantly less and wages are typically higher when you account for that. If you like the Pacific Northwest, look into cities like Seattle or Portland, OR. Best of luck. Vancouver IS a beautiful city though--no question about it. Kiss the sun goodbye though, it rains more than 200 days a year and there's really only two seasons... a dry mild summer and wet and windy 9 other months of the year.