While the experience to settle to our new province has more or less gone as anticipated, we did run into a couple of snags and extra expenses that we thought we would share.
Basically, this is how the BC health and driver’s license issuance occurs. First, you go to any Service BC (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia) driver licensing location. You will need two main pieces of ID ( I used my Ontario driver’s license and passport) and must be done within 6 months of your arrival in BC. The visit triggers two key activities with the more obvious one being the transfer of your driver’s license from out of province to BC. There is a short eye exam followed by 4-5 driver rule questions that is pretty informal and laid back as well as a photo taken. You surrender your out of province license and a paper copy of your license is issued on the spot with the plastic card delivered a couple of weeks later. By physically showing up at the license office, you also start the process to confirm your id and get your health card. All in all, a relatively quick and painless experience, unless, there is a problem with your id. Kim’s passport did not have her middle name included and since her middle name was on her Ontario driver’s license, they would not accept that as proper id. To get around this problem, she was to show a. her original birth certificate, b. her marriage certificate including her official form changing her surname to the name on her passport. This caused us some consternation as the original copies were in our storage in Chilliwack and we were in Penticton at the time. After a somewhat frantic search though the storage container (yes, the documents were at the very back of the bin !), Kim was able to get the proper paper work to get her new license and check off the all important step to get her health card. Speaking of the health card, there is a second step necessary and that is to fill out an online form, using a mobile device that can take a photo of your passport. Strangely enough, Kim’s passport was accepted for this process. Now we wait, in the meantime our Ontario provincial health insurance remains valid.
The other required step is to get your vehicle registration switched over. While in Ontario this was all relatively easy to do, getting the process done in a one stop Service Ontario shop, but in BC it turned into a lengthier, and more expensive process. When we applied for our new driver’s license we were told to go to any ICBC Autoplan broker. We chose a BCAA store, admittedly due to the brand familiarity with CAA. A front desk person explained everything we needed to do prior to getting the plates switched over. They included:
- Obtaining a claims history report from our current insurance company (I recommend you simply get this done before moving). This is used to qualify for a discounted ICBC rate based on how many claims free years you had under your existing policy, capped at 8 years. If you had other companies for those 8 years you will need a letter from each one.
- An inspection report that is done at a qualified garage. (it doesn’t matter how new the vehicle is). It is a standard fee and for a truck I think it was around $170.
- Ownership paper. The process took us over 2.5 hours. You have to physically show up for this process as it can not be done online or via the phone. The first part is to obtain mandatory ICBC insurance and the second part is to get “optional” insurance which includes collision, fire and theft etc. There is no negotiation on the ICBC rate, it is a calculated fee based on certain criteria including your claims history, age, years licensed etc. You should shop around for the optional rate which we didn’t do. Anyway, the amount of our annual insurance is double what we paid in Ontario and was quite a shock. It was a good feeling to get the new plates and get one step closer to being BC residents.
Frustratingly, for the trailer, we had to physically bring it with us so they could verify the VIN. If you have a trailer you need to take this into account for which broker location you choose as they certainly don’t think about it at the broker and some parking lots could not accommodate parking. We shopped around for the optional insurance selecting a company that specializes with RVs and thus only had to pay for the plate, under $100.
***very important ***
If you bought your trailer within 30 days of arriving to BC, ICBC actually charges you the full provincial taxes on the trailer. These are the taxes you already paid so it makes little sense. They say you can claim your refund back from the province of origin but good luck with that! We had a scare because our trailer is a 2019 and the broker agent said we may have to pay the tax. When she researched it further, this is where we found out it is the last 30 days only that triggers the tax charge. Pretty crazy. Not sure if this applies to cars or trucks but I personally would not take the chance.
You surrender your old plates and they provide you with a letter to send to the issuing province for any possible refund.
So we are still waiting for our new health cards (Kim had to resubmit her change of name paper due to an error on their part) but we both have our driver licenses and the plates are done. We are ready to roll !