I've got every sympathy with your plight as if I were based at Manchester, I would certainly prefer a move south than one up here. Even better would be staying put.
However, one thing puzzles me about the much emphasized moves to Canada - why, if uprooting a couple of hundred miles north to do the same job with some shiny new equipment is such an upheval, are people moving 3-6000 miles to learn a completely different way of doing things? Much more of an upheval, surely? Could it just be an excuse and those people would have moved to Canada anyway?