No guessing
Zepplin :
Are you talking live and work or just commute and work ?
If you want to commute then you may do so without a work permit just the VISA requirements for a visitor. As an American you need no visitor's visa.
To live in Canada is not possible without the right to live and work ( landed immigrant ) which you must qualify for by some means ( family, sponsoring employer who cannot find Canadian to fill job etc.) you get points awarded as with other countries and the decision is made based on your overall case.
Cathay will not help flight crew with immigration matters.
Having said all that, actually taking a base in the US or Canada is a grey area with both countries, as you have stepped outside of the spirit of the crewman's Visa legislation. So you are not going to your base as much as you are picking up an a/c to fly it back to Hong Kong. Wink wink nudge nudge.
As for the logic of taking a Canadian base over a US one...? Personal I guess, but if you cannot live in Canada I see no sense in it. Even if you can live in Canada, you put a lot more in the bank on a US base.
As far as I know we are not currently and are not in the forseeable future offering any Canadian freighter bases. This is the reason most (except grandfathered crew) Canadians are US based (rostered). They did offer YVR and YYZ breifly but stopped. I could be wrong as things change fast around here. There is no system of control or staffing requirements that drove them to open YVR and YYZ why they did so is guess work at best.
Once you are on the PAX fleet you can take any base that is open, if your seniority can hold it. With the upcoming expansion I am sure that the PAX fleet will continue to offer US and YVR/YYZ bases. Although pax YYZ currently closed pending resolution of the cosmic radiation absorption limits (no jokin).
Good Luck
FG
Last edited by Five Green; 18th Dec 2006 at 11:53.
Reason: makin mistakes