Settling in, place by place
689 checkable facts about living here: public health insurance and when it starts, a driver’s licence, a child’s school place, and the free help for newcomers. Each one is our own sentence, with a link to the official page we read it from.
Latest check: October 21, 2026.
This is general information, not immigration advice. Your own assessment is a separate thing, and nothing here is part of it.
General information about living here, not immigration or legal advice, and not part of your assessment. Each sentence below is ours; the link beside it goes to the official page we read it from, with the date we read it. Rules change, and the official page is always the one to follow.
Global Compass receives no payment for any link on these pages, and no organization pays to be named here. If a paid referral is ever added, it will say so on the line itself.
Start here, wherever you are going
The things that are the same everywhere in Canada: your number for working, a bank account, your first tax return, renting a home, and having a qualification recognized.
Then the province or territory you are moving to
Health insurance, driving, schools and settlement services are each province and territory’s own. Where an official page does not answer a question, the page says so instead of guessing.
Alberta
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
46 facts4 topics3 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026British Columbia
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
55 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Manitoba
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
46 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026New Brunswick
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
46 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Newfoundland and Labrador
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
42 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Nova Scotia
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
58 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Northwest Territories
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
35 facts4 topics5 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Nunavut
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
30 facts4 topics5 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Ontario
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
50 facts4 topics3 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Prince Edward Island
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
39 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Quebec
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
51 facts4 topics5 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Saskatchewan
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
44 facts4 topics4 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Yukon
Public health insurance, driver’s licence, children’s schooling and newcomer services.
26 facts4 topics5 not confirmedchecked October 21, 2026Every sentence is checkable, and it stops being shown if its page changes
- Our words, their page.Provincial and federal pages do not allow their text to be republished, so each sentence here is ours, with a link to the page it reads and the date we read it.
- Checked against the words on the page.Behind each sentence we keep the exact words we read it from. Our source monitor watches every page listed here, and compares those words against the page again whenever it changes.
- A rewritten page takes the fact down.When the monitor reads a page again and the words have gone, the sentence disappears from these pages until one of our lawyers has read the new page and verified it.
- Some pages have to be checked by hand.A few provincial sites and PDFs will not answer our monitor at all, so their sentences are checked by a person instead. Every sentence carries the date it was last checked: where that date is old, read the official page itself.
- Separate from your assessment.None of this decides anything about your immigration status, and no rule in your assessment reads it. It is the practical layer beside the legal one.
The immigration guides, requirement by requirement · The credential and licensing navigator