How do I transfer money back to Canada [chealy and quickly]?

Your #2 option is going to have three potential fees, plus the banks premium.
1. the non-brank atm fee of $2.50 or % depending on your AU bank.
2. the international ATM fee - about $3.00.
3. the Canadian bank's use fee of $2.50 or whatever.
4. premium on the exchange rate.

That's $8.00 minimum for EACH use of the ATM. and don't forget if you need to take out a lot of money, you could find that the ATM will only allow you to withdraw 800 or 1000 per transaction. So to withdraw $2500 you need to pay the ATM fees 3 times, once for each transaction.

I go into a branch (standard chartered bank), and make a cash advance for the full amount usually over 3 times what i can take on a single withdrawal, i end up with 1 fee locally of 402.50 taka (about $8.00) and 1% of the total as the Internation cash advance fee, the premium on the exchange rate is unavoidable, but better than the exchange rate offered at the money changers.

main problem i can see for you: i have to be there to sign the cash advance transaction. (no pin # needed).

td bank does not charge an atm fee when i use my visa debit card from nationwide, which is a uk building society that has no special ties with td. i therefore presume that td will not charge an atm fee (that's fee number 3 above) for australian cards either.

i haven't yet found an atm at either pearson airport or kipling ttc station that is free though, not that these will be especially relevant for ottawa!

ian.

Ask whoever you send your card to to buy groceries with your card, and get a cash advance, see how that works out. Most grocery stores offer cash advance, drug stores and in Nova Scotia the Liquor store.
might save you money as it's not "cash advance" it's "debit payment".

None of the five major Canadian banks (TD, RBC, CIBC, BMO, Scotiabank) charges an ATM fee when you use a foreign card. Only the white label machines charge their own ATM fee - a general rule (even for people living in Canada) is to always avoid the white-label machines, not only because of the additional ATM fee, but also because you have no idea who really controls them.

Also, Westpac and Scotiabank are both part of the Global ATM Alliance - if you use one bank's card on the other's ATM, there are no additional non-bank ATM charges (other than the foreign exchange % on the amount withdrawn).

Did the Citibank accounts work? I am in Canada and looking to send money back home to Australia and have just started looking for the cheapest options. I didn't know about the Citibank international account - were there any hidden charges or fees?
Thanks

All,

Yes, the citibank option works for sending money FROM AUSTRALIA TO CANADA. I have it all setup and it's as easy as pie to setup. I haven't actually completed a transfer, but the rates didn't look any worse than other institutions posted rates. I'll post the transfer rates when I actually go through with my first transfer.

Goose: Unfortunately, Citibank does charge a fee to transfer from Canada to Citibank in any other country. it's $10 or $20 / transaction.

Just so you all know, this works like a champ. I've been happily transferring money for months now. The money is transferred immediately, so you can pay your bills with no delay.

The first transfer must have been at an introductory rate or something, because it was only .5% above the bank of Canada rate (ie, if the rate was 1CDN = 1.23 AUD, I transferred at 1.236AUD). Since then, it's been pretty consistent at about 2%. As far as I can tell, this is still the cheapest way to transfer money. Your total cost to transfer is subject only to a 2% "we sell at/we buy at" rate, which is better than most places I've seen.

Hope this information helps someone.

I called ING and they say there are no fees to transfer from Cad to AUS account and vis-versa.
All u have to do is open an account in each country.

Just phoned both Canadian and Australian ING, they said there is no direct link between them...
so you can not transfer $ ...

As an expat making regular GBP / CAD transfers - I came across a really interesting concept of FX comparison. One such site MyCurrencyTransfer basically aggregates all the different currency brokers and let you base a rather objective decision. Used it and certainly saved a few hundred quid, particularly on the larger transfers. Well worth taking a look