£20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day.
In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.
Well, they are for some tickets. Ryanair (like any airline, and indeed train line) is heavily dependent on people booking late and paying much, much more.
Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe.
High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.
> There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe.
America, I understand. But aren't prices in Canada generally lower than Europe when you include taxes? Sales taxes are 5-15% in Canada. They are generally 20% or higher in EU. Car insurance is perhaps more expensive in Canada, but vehicle registration/taxes are lower than Europe, so the total cost of ownership is lower.
I fell like a lot of the perception of things being more expensive in Canada is that CAD is values lower than EUR/USD/CHF/GBP. So looking at raw numbers, things feel more expensive. If you do the currency conversion, they become more comparable. Do you have any data showing things are generally more expensive in Canada compared to Europe, when accounting for currency conversion?
> For some reasons some politicians really want to keep the CAD as low as possible?
I think the value of CAD depends on BoC decisions, not politicians. They can increase its value, for example by increasing interest rates, but that would cause an increase in unemployment. I don't think there is a mechanism to increase value of CAD without also messing up some other part of the economy, e.g. employment or inflation.
Easyjet and Ryanair both regularly offer flights for roughly that price. It's very route dependent and usually a limited number of seats, but having regularly flown inside the UK and between the UK and Ireland, I've often gotten fares in the £10-30 each way.
In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.