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“If I walk around the office here and ask who has had Working Holiday experience in Vancouver, that number would be quite high,” said Alana Deghelli of The Global Work & Travel Co., based in Gold Coast, Australia (they have an operation in Vancouver). “It’s almost like a travel trend that you have to do a (work-travel) trip to Canada at some point. Canadians do love to travel, but they’ve mostly done the tourist-style of travelling.

“I think many young Canadians are very focused, coming out of school, to go straight into further studies or their careers. That can be a deterrent, and we are encouraging people to take that ‘Gap Year’ and see the amazing experience of travelling around the world while still having an income.”

Stepwest’s Prieur agrees that Canadians appear to lack the work-travel culture so prevalent in Australia, adding that, since the firm started its Step Abroad program to entice Canadian youth to go overseas using the visa program, the company has tried to engage students close to graduation to consider Working Holiday as an option.

“With the cost of living in Vancouver and the difficulty in finding a job, why not take a year off, travel the world, and come back with a stronger profile and a stronger resume?” Prieur said, adding that young Canadians’ linguistic skills may also partially explain the low uptake.

“If you are French or Spanish or Japanese, you are more than likely taught English at some point in school, so you can have some basic communications here,” he said. “If you are Canadian, you are likely an English speaker — although you’ll have some notions of French — but the number of people who speak another language that’s used in non-English places is a little more limited. So that may be scaring some young Canadians from looking abroad.”