Look, our culture, the geo-political environment, the general tolerance level of an average Canadian, all of these play a factor and when given a choice, people would easily Canada as their home base.
This is where you want to start a family and grow your kids. The tech scene has always been miniature compared to SF or NYC, but the high caliber of talent and expertise is the same if not greater than those cities.
The more reports like this come out, I believe the more of the current Canadian Diaspora living and working in the US will be swayed to move back here, bringing their talent, their money and their valley connections with them.
This country is already winning with it's social policies and adopting multiculturalism, anything else is really icing on the cake. The tech sector picking up is icing on the cake. Choosing to live here is a no-brainer for anyone given the choice.
I have two main concerns when considering a startup: access to talent and access to capital. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, Toronto falls short on both. Multiculturalism barely factors into it -- and if it did why would I pick Toronto over NYC?
Multiculturalism and the political scene is what keeps your employees happy to live in the city.
regarding access to capital, two things;
1) We have access to NYC and Chicago VC's, easily. If you slightly push your startup in the media (blogs, newspapers) it almost guarantees a call from interested US VC's within a 1hr flight.
2) Where we lack the competitive VC environment, we make up for it with Federal and Municipal programs. Incentives to hire top talent, compensation for hiring new graduates, grans for office space or R & D.
Canada rocks. more people are starting to realize this.
The other reality is, older generations, our parents or their age group, were never as globally competitive as we have the potential to be. They were happy with just having a customer base thats local, if lucky, nation wide.
But no, this new generation is fierce and competitive. We don't want to just dominate in Canada where we have home advantage, we want to compete globally. The rise of the tech startups out of the Toronto region is just a great example of that upward trend. it's just going to get better and better where as SF seems to have peaked.
> The more reports like this come out, I believe the more of the current Canadian Diaspora living and working in the US will be swayed to move back here, bringing their talent, their money and their valley connections with them.
ha, no. I want to come home at some point, but the money in the US is absurdly better. Plus I can work on some very neat stuff.
That's just a good storm. The normal day-to-day weather is very nice and usually sunny. Of course we have winter, but it is mild with the occasional extreme storm. I guess it just depends on how much you like the cold.
Ontario is not winning anything, it is circling the toilet economically, with a government hell bent on making things much worse. There is no chance any significant number of people or companies will come back to Toronto to make less money because you think "we're progressive" is a selling point. So is San Francisco, and you can get paid there.
>This country is already winning with it's social policies and adopting multiculturalism
The current trend is towards more and more people opposing those policies. Ontario, Alberta, and the federal government being hyper progressive all at the same time is resulting in a significant push back towards traditional values and people are rediscovering their Canadian heritage.
Look, our culture, the geo-political environment, the general tolerance level of an average Canadian, all of these play a factor and when given a choice, people would easily Canada as their home base.
This is where you want to start a family and grow your kids. The tech scene has always been miniature compared to SF or NYC, but the high caliber of talent and expertise is the same if not greater than those cities.
The more reports like this come out, I believe the more of the current Canadian Diaspora living and working in the US will be swayed to move back here, bringing their talent, their money and their valley connections with them.
This country is already winning with it's social policies and adopting multiculturalism, anything else is really icing on the cake. The tech sector picking up is icing on the cake. Choosing to live here is a no-brainer for anyone given the choice.