“I said they were the best engineers in Canada.”
(Quote from the BlackBerry movie)
Attracting strong talent in Canada is hard given the massive pay differences gained by moving south of the border.
The size of the pay difference is something you, as the prospective employer, have significant direct control of. It is within your authority to point the dial anywhere from "hard to find anybody because of the massive pay difference" to "easy to attract strong talent, while still saving money relative to what it would cost to attract the same level of talent in the US".
The Canadian business establishment will not come after you to break your knees if you offer higher wages than they do.
(Later a large part of our staff was Canadians returning home in 2016 after doing their time in Mountain View)
I've worked for many companies over the years that chose to colocate here because of the relative ease of finding talent.
And there's plenty of good talent that doesn't leave. Because we don't want to. Home is home.
There's also lots of us who work remote for US or EU companies these days.
(Blackberry movie also is garbage)
It's easy to knock Canada for its personal income tax rate, but compared to European alternatives, it's still quite low, despite offering a whole lot of baseline public goods.
That said, while senior SWE salaries here absolutely not even close to competitive with the Bay Area or NYC they are not that far off from other places in the US (like smaller midwest cities etc). While Canadian salary packages are depressed, it's also partially a result of: they're not inflated.
The bigger concern is more the lack of interesting work.
Many do similar calculations. Home is home. It's profoundly arrogant (and very American) to assume that the "best talent" moves for money and opportunity.
Americans have very high labour mobility rates, and often assume that's how the whole world works. But in most places in the world the idea of uprooting your whole life for a job is seen as odd.
Most recently I tried to use Airwallex (payments provider) for a product that does international payouts and they ONLY let you use their product if you're based in the States.
Canada sometimes has alternatives on offer, but they're usually broken and lacking features.
Which internet infrastructure is an afterthought in Canada?
I don't personally think federal incorporation is a huge benefit relative to provincial/state-level incorporation. It mainly provides name protection in every province/federally and makes it marginally easier to expand nationally in Canada. It's main disadvantage is a requirement for Canadian-resident directors which can make it a bit difficult to sell the corporation. The tax laws are the same (though for the most part, if you operate outside of Quebec, you're only dealing with one tax agency), and you still have to file extra-provincially in each province you carry on business, which itself comes with provincial filing requirements (i.e. not a one stop shop).
>The new mega-deduction recently announced [1] results in an effective 6% corporate tax rate, which is among the lowest in the world and certainly in the G-7. Things like the RTR are just one example among many of the efficient infrastructure that Canada is introducing to address a very long term productivity gap (the mega-deduction is another).
This is only for new business investment, though granted since you're discussing startups, it's valid to mention that.
>And, R&D conducted in Canada is always a current-year expense and never capitalized. And there is a refundable tax credit for R&D that works out to about 60% of engineers' salaries (in most provinces). And those salaries are lower than they are in the US (something that engineers in Canada have a right to complain about).
This is true. I do wonder how much of an comparative advantage this is now that engineer salaries are no longer capital deductions in the US. I also recall Canada had a startup visa program to bring co-founders to Canada, but that program is paused and I don't know if it really worked.
More than anything, despite all these advantages, I would imagine access to capital is more important to any startup. You can live in the best regulatory environment in the world, and it would mean nothing if you run out of runway. The investment landscape in Canada is hugely conservative overall, and despite being flagged under successive governments that there's a huge death valley between seed to commercialization, no risk has actually been taken to meaningfully address it. [1]
[1]: https://www.bdc.ca/en/about/analysis-research/canada-venture...
If they didn't have it, they could force a total shutdown of the market there.
aka someone trying to earn plenty to be okay, and maximizing the quality of life they get from the place they live,
vs your proposal (striving to do business with as many literal fools as possible as a business model)?
Canadian investors are much too risk-averse, but they will happily follow a funding round led by an American VC.
Yes, this is exactly what I was describing. The deals here tend to suck and are few. Cohere is the exception that proves the rule, if you ask me.
It's always struck me as a little weird that a company has to be within driving distance of Sand Hill road to get attention from a Silicon Valley VC. VCs can't hop on a flight to do some due diligence? Video conferencing isn't good enough for monthly status meetings?
> VCs can't hop on a flight to do some due diligence?
Asking them to operate in new jurisdictions requires a lot of effort and legal know-how; it's not just a matter of cutting a check, but understanding how to navigate the legal landscape for these financial transactions, rights of the investor, tax implications, legal recourse, etc. There's going to be a lot of friction such that they'll either: 1) not seek those opportunities, 2) ask the founders to move to the US if it's a really promising team (see this a lot; was in one startup where a co-founder moved from AUS to the US).
Melanie Perkins talks a bit about this in the Canva episode of How I Built This[0] and how SV wanted them to relocate. AUS government ended up matching some of the investment through a new program so they reached their target for their raise.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/26/971813519/canva-melanie-perki...
Economies of scale. Many investors can review and fund a standard Delaware C corporation without even passing it to outside counsel.
For Canada, not only will you probably special counsel, you may also have additional up front and ongoing accounting costs related to tax treatment, et cetera. You also know that this is potentially a hurdle that start-up will face in every sale and supply-chain contract it signs, unless it relents and just chooses a normal jurisdiction, at which point why don't they just create a Delaware entity and headquarter in Canada?
Accounting and legal stuff is going to be farmed out to licensed professionals regardless of where the company is. And you can't tell me there's a shortage of US + Canada tax or legal specialists.
There are a lot of small-shop and even one-man private investors. Increasingly as wealth accumulates and AI automates.
> you can't tell me there's a shortage of US + Canada tax or legal specialists
They're usually a different partner at a big, expensive firm. Or, if you use a small firm, it means establishing a brand new engagement.
I make personal investments. That would be a dealbreaker for me. If I really liked the company I might try to talk a cross-border friend into running a fund that makes the investment so I don't have to deal with the B.S.
Is it actually true as of 2026? Asking because it sounds like a pure cope.
I was under the impression that Silicon Valley VCs have no issues with funding tech companies based in major US tech hubs outside of SV(especially ones like NYC).
Canada/Japan/Germany/etc. is a whole separate story though, and I am not contesting that (given there are plenty of very obvious reasons for why a SV-based VC firm wouldn't want to invest in a company based in one of those places).
In Australia, the R&D credit can be up to a 100 percent of an engineer's salary.
I really wish Canada told American companies to fuck all the way off with that. I hate that we support foreign corporate profits with our tax money. It seems like such a scam. I am sure initially it was meant to help innovation and give small businesses an edge, but somehow the googles and the metas can freely take advantage of it too.
Other than that, Canada is amazing and I miss a lot of aspects.