ADHD Notes:
- It is now a requirement that you can demonstrate that you have travel insurance coverage for at least the first 12 months of your working holiday permit when you apply for the WHP on entry with your letter of introduction.
- Get Travel Insurance before you go anywhere overseas
- Flight Centre travel insurance is expensive, World Nomads is cheaper
- Use this link, enter the coupon code ”Aussie3”, and get 3% off your travel insurance cost
Before you leave Australia or any other country on your way to Canada to participate in the Working Holiday Program you will need to organise travel insurance.
UPDATE (20 April 2012): It is now a requirement of the Working Holiday Permit program that you can demonstrate that you have travel insurance coverage for the full 24 months of your insurance policy. The border representatives who will process your WHP when you arrive in Canada have the authority to give you a permit matching the length of your insurance policy if it covers less than 24 months.
Here is our suggestion to cater for this, if you don't want to purchase more than 12 months of coverage:
Purchase 6 months of insurance to cover the first 1/4 of your stay in Canada, then purchase another 6 - 18 months of insurance that follows on directly from that. This means that you can show that you are covered for more than 12 months of your WHP when entering Canada and being processed for your permit.
It is then up to you whether you continue with your travel insurance for the whole period, or whether you go onto the local version of medicare (as mentioned below) and cancel your second travel insurance contract.
One thing to note: If you intend on canceling the second policy, you MUST do so within 14 days of purchase, as this is just taking advantage of their "cooling off" period. So your purchase must be made within 14 days of arriving in Canada, then cancel it ASAP when you get your work permit.
If you're renewing: The WHP folks in Sydney have indicated by email that the local version of health care is not acceptable as insurance coverage, as it doesn't cover repatriation to Australia if you get sick. When doing your renewal, it's entirely up to the person processing you as to whether they allow your local healthcare to be counted towards insurance, so perhaps try renewing relying on that, and if they don't allow you to use local health care, purchase some travel insurance (maybe using a similar plan to above) and try again.
If you intend on staying in one place and working for an extended period of time, your best bet would be to get yourself at least 3 - 6 months worth of travel insurance, as once you have been officially employed in Canada for more than 3 months you would generally be eligible for the local version of Medicare, which tends to be cheaper and easier than travel insurance. Employed is underlined as you usually have to submit a letter from your employer with your application and they won't count you if you're just hanging out skiing or looking for work.
If you intend on moving about for the whole trip and only staying in individual Provinces (local term for State) for less than three months, the it would be a good idea to get travel insurance for the whole period of your trip. You can generally extend your cover too.
Keep in mind that if you plan on visiting the ski slopes while you’re in Canada, it is almost necessary to get the extra coverage for that – we’ve heard horror stories of those who didn’t and ended up paying up front for medical costs after a fall.
We got curious and decided to see which travel insurance companies got good reviews, and we consistently came up with WorldNomads.com as a good provider. It seems that another common provider for travel insurance for Aussies is Flight Centre, so I decided to do a comparison.
This is between FC’s lowest cost insurance (Plan SM) with the extra skiing add-on and $10k of cancellation costs (to match WN), and World Nomads standard insurance, which already includes skiing:
| Flight Centre | World Nomads | |
| Medical Expenses incurred overseas | $5,000,000 | $5,000,000 |
| Medical Evacuation and additional expenses | $500,000 | $500,000 |
| Cancellation costs | $10,000 | $10,000 |
| Loss of travel documents, Standard luggage and personal effects | $2,500 | $3,500 |
| Personal Liability | $2,500,000 | $2,500,000 |
| Excess | $100 | $100 |
| Policy cost for 3 months | $1085 | $271 |
| (as at 5 October 2011) | ||
Now, the insurances seem pretty comparable for coverage, but their prices differ substantially. For a 21 year old Australian getting three months of cover from the date of writing (October 5 2011), Flight Centre charges $1085. For the same period of time, World Nomads charges $271.
Quite a difference, eh?
To top that off, CanAussie.com has negotiated a 3% discount for its users if they use our affiliate link (like this one), then plug in the coupon code Aussie3. This saves you a whole $8.07 on the above quote, and on 12 months worth of travel insurance it’s a saving of $20.97. Enough of a saving for a carton of beer, and that’s better than a kick in the chops!
Here's a cool little widget from World Nomads if you wanted to check how much your insurance would be. Don't forget to enter the promotion code Aussie3 on the "Your Quote and Policy Benefits" page for your discount though!
Global travel insurance.
Note: This discount is only applicable to those outside North America, so get it before you come here! You can extend your travel insurance while on the go if necessary, so get what you need, then top up as you go. Also, a portion of the proceeds will go towards the running of CanAussie.com, and we thank you in advance for your support!
Discuss this article in this thread on our forum.
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