Today's briefing
The daily satirical briefing from the Being Canadian app. A dry read on what is happening between the 49th parallel and wherever Washington's mood took us today.
Filed: Cross-border navigation
How long can you be away without losing your coverage?
Free tools for Canadians whose lives cross a border. We track the days, surface what is at risk, and plan your return.
Filed: All thirteen jurisdictions
The rules are not the same everywhere
Quebec resets January 1 with no grace period. Newfoundland lets you be away eight months. Ontario stopped its three-month wait period during COVID and never put it back. The territories add the Northern Residents Deduction on top. Pick yours.
PICK A PROVINCE TO SEE WHAT YOU WOULD LOSE
Map based on real geographic data. Residency rules verified 2026. Not legal advice.
Filed: How the math actually works
Two clocks ticking, not one
The federal clock
IRS Substantial Presence Test
The US counts your days against a weighted three-year average. Current year, plus a third of last year, plus a sixth of the year before. Cross 183 weighted days and you may be a US tax resident, with all the filing obligations that come with it.
The provincial clock
Your home jurisdiction's residency rule
Each province and territory sets its own threshold. Some count by calendar year (Quebec snaps off at day 183 with no warning). Others use rolling 12-month windows (Ontario, Alberta). Same number, different rule. Most cross-border Canadians get one of the two clocks wrong.
The free Scenario Planner runs both clocks together for a single planned absence. The iOS app runs them in the background, in real time, and pushes a notification before either trips.
Filed: What we make
Four tools, one companion app
Free, no sign-up
Day Counter
How many US days before the IRS calls you a tax resident. The real three-year Substantial Presence Test, with your Form 8840 way out.
Free, no sign-up
Plan a trip
If I leave for N months, what do I lose? Federal exposure, provincial and territorial coverage, dollar value of benefits at risk. All 13 jurisdictions.
Free, no sign-up
Come home
Week-by-week re-entry plan. Health card, license, taxes, benefits, the TFSA-room rule most returnees miss.
Reference
Residency rules
How many days you can be away. All 13 provinces and territories, one page, sourced from each jurisdiction's own authority.
Filed: Why this exists
Nobody writes for the rest of us.
About a million Canadian-born people now live in the United States. The number has grown 70 percent in a decade. We have spouses in Boston and mortgages in Phoenix. We pay US taxes. We drive on the right side of the highway and the wrong side of every road argument.
There is no instruction manual for any of this. There is the IRS Substantial Presence Test, which decides whether the US considers you a tax resident based on a rolling math problem most people redo by hand every spring. There is OHIP, RAMQ, MSP, the alphabet soup of provincial and territorial plans that each decide whether they still consider you one of theirs. There are seven hundred thousand snowbirds rethinking whether to fly south next winter.
The Canadian press writes for Canadians in Canada. The American press writes for Americans in America. The Northern Office writes for the rest of us.
The Northern Office, filed from our Las Vegas outpost.
