Retiring in Cabo Saint Lucas
Retiring in Cabo
AMAR Canada: Paving the Way for Retirement in Mexico
by Dean Unger
Mexico is poised to be the number one retirement location for some 80 million U.S. retirees. Here in Canada, 12 million Canadians are expected to retire in the coming years, and Mexico is going to be the favoured destination. In addition to these stats, there are already more than one million Americans, Canadians and Europeans enjoying full or part time residency in Mexico.
With these numbers in mind and in advance of this coming trend, the Mexican Association of Retirement Communities (AMAR) is doing their part to facilitate and ensure excellent development and delivery standards. "Essentially," says Lorin Yakiwchuk, AMAR Advisory Board Member, "our objective is to lobby the governments of Mexico, Canada and the United States to educate stakeholders about the potential growth in the industry over the coming years and how it should be structured. Further, AMAR's mandate is to encourage responsible development of retirement communities and respective housing initiatives in Mexico and to offer members and patrons confidence in unsurpassed quality of life and standard of care.
To set these international standards and to meet the needs of Canadians who are relocating to Mexico, part of Yakiwchuk's job is to create standards through research. High in the top-ten things that Canadians are interested in is safety, and that they will receive quality medical care. Two issues that have come under scrutiny of late in the face of misinterpreted statistics.
Part of the challenge facing AMAR is in overcoming the fact that the public profile is higher in places like Vancouver or Seattle than in places like Mexico. To this end, AMAR is working to bring clarity to this recent statistical information that is unfortunately being skewed or misinterpreted. The reason: the media does not balance important demographic information; there is no distinction made between the various geographic regions of Mexico.
"Mexico is a large area," says Yakiwchuk these mis-interpreted reports tend to sweep up smaller regions with this overall impression that is negative by nature: it mistakenly creates a negative perspective of Mexico as a whole. In reality, it's not unlike Canada, where you have provinces, districts, cities, towns - all spread over a large land mass. To put it into perspective - the exact same is true of Mexico.
"Per capita crime in Mexico is way less than some cities in the U.S., but you don't hear about it," says Yakiwchuk. "This is, in-part, because Mexico is primarily a tourist destination - sub-tropical, warm climate, with white-sand beaches for hundreds of miles up and down the coast line; its a resort destination very much country-wide. In the end, and in terms of reputation, because of it's high profile, it will in fact stand up to this kind of misinformation and misconstrued statistical reportage."
AMAR's mandate is to ensue that information of this nature is clearly and accurately stated and to give a real-life picture of the political and social climate in Mexico. It is as safe to travel in Mexico today as any time in the past. It's doing travelers a disservice to mis-state any statistical information.
"AMAR provides a resource for travelers," Yakiwchuk says, "to give travelers a positive direction, quality, accurate information and facilitate a successful experience. Mexico is Canada's third largest trading partner after the U.S. and China, and we have an annual 20 billion dollar trade exchange with Mexico. There are 240 businesses in Mexico that are owned by Canadians; there are 240 mining and mining exploration companies in Mexico owned by Canadians and 40 of them are producing mines. If its good enough for the Canadian business community its safe for travelers," Yakiwchuk says.
There is a preconceived notion that because a reputable organization - or even a government agency for that matter - issues a press release or stats sheet, that by nature it's accurate. It is important to remember that any such interpretation may not stand up to the rigours of scrutiny. There is always a danger that this information can be misinterpreted at the receiving end... which is what seems to have happened in this case. The best advice to travelers planning on spending some quality vacation time in Mexico is to do due diligence, do some research and set your mind at ease to ensure your trip is everything it should be and that you are relaxed and the trip is enjoyable.