Am in the process of moving to Canada.
If you just fancy upping sticks and moving expect it to take up to 5 years for a fully open residency permit to wing it’s way to you. This is if you apply to the Canadian Consulate in the UK.
The fastest way to get out there is to get a sponsored work permit and once there apply for landed immigrant status. However the tricky part is getting the sponsored work permit. In order to employ someone from outside Canada the employing company must possess a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) which is an offical document from Canadian goverment stating that the job you are applying for could not be filled by a Canadian national. For some roles (as stated above) there is a defacto LMO as there is a skills shortage but it vaires by province. From my experience most companies are wary of looking like they are employing foreign nationals.
There is a lot of good advice (as well as the usual caveats about the internet) on this site.. http://britishexpats.com/
As for economy despite what they may say the Canadian and USA economy are closely linked; however the Canadian banks seem to have escaped the worst of the sub-prime chaos and as such (to my knowledge) none of them have needed rescuing.