Dipping my toe in the Money Market pool....

As our permanent move (9th July) creeps ever closer, I've been hanging back watching the market waiting for the right time to trade our stash of sterling, however, time is running out and the rate's been struggling to make 1.60 for weeks. So, today when it briefly broke the 1.61 mark, I decided to bite the bullet and ring my broker at Moneycorp.com. Arranging a Forward Contract for £50K to be completed at the end of June was an unnerving experience to say the least, however, they were very helpful and I'm feeling confident that our money's in safe hands. I have to pay 10% now and the remainder on completion when they deposit the dollars in my Canadian account. The spread was bang on 100 points (0.6%); basically the Interbank Rate was 1.612 and I got 1.602. I'm sure there are better deals out there but Moneycorp seem a well established, reliable company and they're affiliated to the Forces Pension Society (I'm a member) which means they cover any transfer fees (both sides of the water). Incidentally, I have an XE Trade account too and when I rang them for comparison they only offered me 1.5888 ($660 less).

This is the first major transaction I've done with Moneycorp. Up until now I've been using their online GPS account which allows me to do my own trades online up to a limit of £20K. There's a fixed spread of 1.5% (240 points) on that, no matter how little the amount (the smallest I did was £100) - again no transfer fees are charged. It's very fast too; I can make an online payment to Moneycorp from my Nationwide and it's in my Canadian account within 24hrs (sometimes the same day if I make the payment in the morning). I used the GPS account to move small amounts when we were over in January for our landing trip; it was very convenient.

One transaction down, a few more to go.

Security cleared and a date booked to enrol :)

Today an email arrived with the news I'd been waiting for:

Your security check came back on the 17 December 2010, as "No Security Objections". So your file has been merit listed already, meaning that at our end at least you are ready for a job offer.

So, there it is, the (nearly) last piece of the jigsaw puzzle. I fired up the Skype in the hotel room and had a quick conversation with my recruiting Captain to confirm what's happening next. I now have to wait until 1 April which is when the new job allocations are issued for 2011/2012. I'm being reserved a position from that list and we've settled on a provisional enrolment date of 11 July.

The light at the end of the tunnel is well and truly in sight for the soon-to-be Sgt McFarlane.

We've finally 'landed' and we're Permanent Residents

After a 6-hour delay at Gatwick we finally boarded our Thomas Cook flight to Toronto at 5.00pm. Having been up since 4.00am, and sat in Departures since 7.45am, we were all pretty grumpy to say the least. Incidentally, of the 50 odd departures listed on the info board there were 4 flights which were delayed……all of which were Thomas Cook! It didn’t get any better once we boarded the plane either; I’m 5’ 9” and my knees were wedged against the seat in front. There was no room in my overhead locker or the locker above my kids; they were full with other people’s ‘hand luggage.’ I say hand luggage in the loosest sense of the word; some people had 2 each, which were bigger than what we’d put in as hold luggage. This particularly aggrieved me as we (my family of 6) only had 2 small backpacks between us, yet there was no room to stow them. The cabin crew did make a point of complaining over the tannoy and reminding the offenders about the rules of hand luggage……a bit late for that once we’re all on board really! The flight was pretty uneventful apart from the constant queues for the ‘working’ toilets – 2 of the toilets on board were out-of-order so the 300 odd of us had to fight over what was left. Once we’d landed we sat on the tarmac in a queue for about 20 minutes because there was no room at the terminal (more about the fallout from this later). We eventually stepped off the plane at 7.45pm local time feeling absolutely buggered.

Having had to queue for a place to park the plane, it was no surprise to find that we’d arrived at the same time as ½ a dozen other planes, this was clearly apparent as we walked into the arrivals lounge. Well, we didn’t actually walk in because we were queued at the door with literally hundreds of other travellers waiting to go through passport control. It took about ½ an hour to get through before we finally got into the immigration office. Fortunately, this is where things finally got better (although there is a sting in the tail which I’ll mention later). After about 5-minutes I was called forward to process my paperwork; the Immigration Officer (IO) was really friendly and it only took about 5-minutes. I gave him a friend’s address to have my PR cards sent and he didn’t have an issue with it. My family were then called in one-by-one and we were all done in about 20-minutes in total. Upon exiting the immigration office we were given a nice bag full of useful paperwork (claiming benefits etc) before we moved on to Customs.

In Customs we were met by what can only be described as the most mono-syllablistic miserable b*stard I have ever met – in total he uttered less than a dozen words (I counted). I’d taken the time to produce 3 printed excel copies of both our accompanying and goods to follow lists. When I handed these over you’d have thought I’d handed him a note saying his mother was a whore judging by the reaction I got. After lot’s of huffing and wandering (in slow motion) to the office and back he finally handed me my completed copy and then wandered off without saying a thing. I had to walk after him to ask if we were done. He had no interest in my accompanying list and left the spare copies scattered on the desk.

Fast-forward and we’ve now been here 5-days and we’re settled in at the Super 8, Barrie. There were no dramas picking the hire car up at the airport (Dodge Grand Caravan) and the hotel is clean, comfortable and offers an excellent complementary hot breakfast. There’s been a fair bit of snow, which has hampered our travel, but we’ve managed to open a President’s Choice Financial bank account (free banking), we have our Social Insurance Numbers and we’ve visited 6 potential schools for the kids.

Now back to the sting in the tail I mentioned earlier. I didn’t notice it at the time but on my Confirmation of Permanent Residency (COPR) the IO has written the wrong year, i.e. he’s put me down as landing on 3rd Jan 2010 instead of 3rd Jan 2011. Funnily enough, he didn’t make this mistake on my family’s forms, just on mine. Having telephoned CiC I have been told that the date is correct on their computer system so it shouldn’t affect my PR card, however, I will have to get the COPR amended to reflect the correct date.

Not exactly the smoothest ride, but we’re getting there

One final point; I can highly recommend a Moneycorp account for moving money to Canada. I did an online bank transfer from my Nationwide account to my Moneycorp account on Tuesday and the money arrived the same day (faster payment). I then used my online Moneycorp GPS account to convert the sterling to dollars and send it to my new President’s Choice Financial bank account. When I got up on Wednesday the money was sat in my Canadian account, cleared (with no fees) and ready to withdraw.

Medically fit to enrol

Today I got the nod via email that my CF medical file's back from Ottawa. I passed the medical and I'm fit to enrol.......woo hoo! I followed up with a phone call and spoke to the Officer who conducted my interview. Everything's done now apart from my security clearance which is in progress and will probably take a couple of months. As soon as that comes through we're good to go on arranging a date for enrolment.

Canadian Forces (CF) pre-enrolment tests complete

As per the subject heading, I’m now back in Blighty having finished my whistle-stop trip to CFRC Toronto to carry out the CF pre-enrolment tests. I was absolutely knackered last night and slept for 14 hrs solid.

All went to plan apart from a small hiccup with the medical. I had some minor high frequency loss in my left ear, which I already knew about based on my last UK military hearing test. I still made H2 (H3 is the minimum for Veh Tech) but the examiner (Army WO) asked me to have another test when I'm back here and fax him through a copy. He said that their machine is new and he wants a second opinion to make sure that the result is right. He said that even with the hearing loss I passed the medical with no issues but the final decision always rests with the OC in Ottawa. I've managed to book a hearing test for Monday afternoon so I'll be able to get that back to him ASAP, which shouldn't delay things too much.

The eCFAT (aptitude test) couldn't have gone any better, which was a massive relief, although I did think it was miles harder than the practice stuff. I nearly ran out of time on the first 2 sections (Verbal Skills and Spatial Ability) but I'd cracked section 3 (Problem Solving) with 13 minutes to spare. I was the only one doing the test on Tuesday, which was a surprise; I guess that's a reflection of the lack of places available in the CF at the moment. My interviewer (Navy Lt) was more than happy to tell me I'd scored 57 out of 60, which apparently puts me in the top 99.9th percentile (that was a turn-up for the books). I needed 35 to pass entry as a Vehicle Technician so no worries there. At the end of the eCFAT there were a load of psychology questions to answer but those weren't against the clock and weren't pass/fail - I think they're designed to wheedle out whether you're a closet gun freak/terrorist etc.

The interview was very straightforward and a bit of a disappointment (in a nice way). I'd boned up to death on all things CF and I was ready to spout off a plethora of facts and figures about the First Defence Strategy, deployments of the Navy, composition of the 3 Mechanised Brigades etc, etc. As it turned out, he didn't ask me about any of it. He concentrated more on the mandatory stuff like what non-prescription drugs I'd taken (a resounding nil on that front) and then he just went through the motions asking the questions off the sheet. We did have a nice offline chat afterwards though, which was useful to pick his brain.

I wasn't flying until Wednesday night so I took a drive right up to Wasaga Beach and all round the Barrie area. I managed to get hold of my recruiting Captain and I drove up to CFB Borden for a face-to-face 20-minute chat (would have been longer but he was due in a meeting). He's a really nice bloke and it was great to put a name to a face after all this time. He said that he hopes to give me my T&Cs for my job offer by January, which coincides with our PR landing trip (3 - 13th Jan) - I'll keep pestering him on that one and I said that I'd drive up to Borden and collect them myself. I need to keep things rolling because I'm more than aware that I'm lucky to still have an offer. The picture he painted is bleak to say the least. He's got 1/2 a dozen trades that are fully recruited already this year (Veh Tech being one of them). He's reserved me a slot but even that is putting him over the numbers. Fortunately, I'm the only foreign Veh Tech on the books so he doesn't think it will be too much of an issue. He did warn me however that he doesn't make the rules so nothing can ever be guaranteed. The only time I can breath easy is when I'm taking the Oath, which is why I'm going to keep myself in the spotlight and keep pushing my case until that happens.

So there we go, another hurdle done and dusted.

Visas collected.........but a sting in the tail

Today, the long wait was finally over and by 2.10 pm I was sat on a park bench outside CHC London with our visas in my hand and a premature look of satisfaction on my face.  I say premature, because I then delved into the envelope to have a read of the Confirmation of Permanent Residency (COPR) paperwork only to find mine had a nice letter stapled to it saying that I have 'Inactive Tuberculosis (TB)' and I need to register with the local health authority within 30-days of landing in Canada to arrange further monitoring.

A classic WTF moment followed, before I rang my DMP to see if she could shed any light on the matter.  You may recall that I'd taken a CT scan with me to my original medical to show that I'd had a chest infection in the past and there was some evidence of calcification in my lungs.  The DMP had written no evidence of TB on my med report and included the scan/report as evidence which was then forwarded to CHC.  Although my medical chest x-ray had come back all-clear, CHC subsequently sent me for follow up tests just to make sure.  The follow up x-ray came back all-clear too, as did the sputum TB test which had to be done over 3 consecutive days and cultured in a lab for 8-weeks. Nowhere was there any proof that I had ever had TB or indeed have ‘inactive TB.’

Anyway, 10 minutes later the DMP rang me back and said that based on the CT scan I provided, the CHC medical team had decided that due to there being evidence of a past infection (no mention of TB) they wanted to air on the side of caution and monitor me upon my arrival in Canada. To that end, I get a letter saying that I have ‘inactive TB’ when there’s no evidence to suggest that I do.

I wouldn’t have a problem with any of this if it wasn’t for the fact that I have my Canadian Forces (CF) pre-enrolment medical in less than 2-weeks and it’s not exactly going to help my cause when I have to tell them that CHC suggest I have a dormant and potentially highly infectious disease, when it’s been clearly proven that I don’t.

In the meantime, I have made an appointment for next Tuesday with my military doctor here. The nurse seems to think she'll be more than willing to put together a letter stating that from her (the British army's) perspective, I am fully fit and have no underlying medical concerns.

From what I have read, even if a CF applicant did have 'inactive TB' it is not neccesarily going to be a show-stopper, but it's certainly something I could do without. I guess in 2-weeks time we'll know one way or the other........

Dropping off the passports at the High Commission

Fortunately, there are no dramas to report. I set off from Bristol at 9.40 am and arrived on time in Victoria. I took a casual stroll to the High Commission, arrived early, and started queuing at about 1.10 pm by which time I was 3rd in the queue. By around 1.50 pm there were probably around 35 (less than I was expecting) in total waiting. A man came out and separated us into 2 lines; those 'collecting' and those 'dropping off'. At about 1.55 pm he started calling forward the 'collectors' 5 people at a time. As soon as they were finished we (the 'droppers off') were called forward in the same manner. Once inside I met a man at a desk who asked for my File Number, which he then wrote on a check sheet. He then took my Updated Information Chart, passports and photos and put them all in a resealable plastic sleeve along with one of two identical raffle tickets. Finally, he stapled the duplicate ticket to an information sheet which he gave back to me as my receipt. This is what I must bring back with me when I collect my visas. I was done and out of the building at 2.05 pm.

Roll on 2-weeks, when I return and finally get the visas in my mitts :-)