51–60 of 82 posts
It's the pay, it's always the pay. If our salaries were closer to the U.S. this wouldn't be happening.
It’s more than that, right? Canadian real estate is bonkers for example, and would still be even if we magically elevated Canadian salaries to US levels.
It's the pay, it's always the pay. If our salaries were closer to the U.S. this wouldn't be happening.
It’s more than that, right? Canadian real estate is bonkers for example, and would still be even if we magically elevated Canadian salaries to US levels.
>ROGER: Okay, how does this compare to the ’90s when we saw a brain drain then? Is it larger? Different sectors? >FRANCIS: No, I think, Roger, you pointed to it correctly. This is not an issue that is brand new for Canada. oh, okay then. so, the same thing is happening as has always happened. the only interesting thing about this article is trying to determine if it's motivated by the opposition party trying to score…
Literally the next sentences: > It’s one that we’ve been facing for quite some time. The reason we wrote this report, however, is to highlight the fact that we’re sort of in this moment in time right now, with our relationship with the U.S. deteriorating and us trying to diversify our trading partners, to highlight the fact that we are still not really all that competitive. Our productivity growth is quite low and ha…
Even if the US was still benevolent (ish), Canada needed to up its game. I have heard Canada be described as "European wages with American working hours".
It's a great country with good people and lots of beauty, but they need an economy and job prospect beyond real estate, mining, banking, automotive, and government funded. The country seems to lack diversity in prospects and relatively uncompetitive wages.
For those leaving after completely undergraduate schooling that is taxpayer subsidized, there should be both carrots/sticks to discourage it - carrots would be to substantially juice tuition tax credits to give young people a better shot to save coming out of school. Sticks would be that if you are leaving soon after graduating, you are maybe on the hook for paying back some of that subsidized education. I'm not married to the exact carrots and sticks, but the country probably needs to do something short term while they also sort out future economic growth sectors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s more than that, right? Canadian real estate is bonkers for example, and would still be even if we magically elevated Canadian salaries to US levels.
US real estate in many desirable metro areas is bonkers too. And yet, Canadian engineers want to move to the SF Bay Area...
Is this new? I thought this had been the case for decades.
Over 150 years: > Colonial administrators in Canada observed the trend of human capital flight to the United States as early as the 1860s, when it was already clear that a majority of immigrants arriving at Quebec City were en route to destinations in the United States. Alexander C. Buchanan, government agent at Quebec, argued that prospective emigrants should be offered free land to remain in Canada. The issue of at…
One time offers will often only get temporary results.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigrant intent on a TN is a big no-no
Plenty of people have filed an I-485 and been awarded Green Cards on a TN status. That was a completely acceptable path until last week. Peter Roberts the immigration attorney that regularly posts here can validate that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36913448
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of people have filed an I-485 and been awarded Green Cards on a TN status. That was a completely acceptable path until last week. Peter Roberts the immigration attorney that regularly posts here can validate that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36913448
“Completely acceptable” is not accurate. I’d wager that for any success story there are many stories of heartbreak due to timing and travel for TN renewal. A risk I wouldn’t advise a friend to take. But, yes, doesn’t matter anymore after last week.
EAD/AP shows up in around 4-5 months for most people and those restrictions are then no longer a concern.
The first thing to consider here is that Canadians are in an unique position to move to the US.
They are more likely to have family, friends, travel for leisure and business, easier work visas (TN), Canadian universities are recognized in the US, and so on.
Second thing is that for the people that have the means, moving early in life to the US might be the factor between affording the life you want with ease vs having to compromise.
Many of my friends in tech that moved are saving 1.5x to 2.5x compared to the ones that stayed.
So I don't see a way for Canada to not be a source of talent to the US market. But I also don't believe that is the most interesting question.
The question that I believe matters most here from a society/economy perspective is: is Canada's economy providing the right incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship?
From that perspective the first thing that needs to be addressed is that we can't compare only taxes rates and income.
Canada has a very different tax system, where being able to maximize your TFSA and RRSP will probably set you up pretty well for retirement. Cost of housing is high, but cost of borrowing can be much lower than similar US mortgages. Canadian taxes also include healthcare that is more efficient (cost wise) than the American model.
So while you can get rich faster in the US, the reality is that you will need a lot less income to achieve similar quality of life depending on the cities you are comparing.
My personal notes for Vancouver, BC vs Seattle, WA concluded that for a family of 2. The gross income required to live a fair life that includes: - owning a decent property - be able to retire with no need to reduce cost of living - taking vacations and going out often - hedging health costs You are looking for around 200k CAD vs 250k USD of steady yearly income.
Those incomes are very achievable in both places for people that are considered top talent and companies can provide such income locally.
On the tax side, Canada could improve, but I don't believe that lowering taxes will bring much value.
Where Canada seems to struggle is on the regulation side. Canada is aligned with the US, which means that when addressing the Canadian market, your business is most likely also able to easily address the US market. This means that you will probably be better of setting up your center of operations in the US and not in Canada.
At the same time, big Canadian focused corporations operate mostly in an Oligopoly way. Smaller companies need to fight both regulatory requirements that didn't exist before and have a harder time getting the money they need to scale operations.
Adopting European (and Asian) standards could severely improve competition as companies could more easily extend operations into Canada without having to also support the US market, while in the long term Canadian companies would be able to choose the regulations that give their products the access to the most appropriate markets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm sure a lot of Canadian tech workers would repatriate and foreign workers would immigrate to Canada if they could lower taxes across the board and make life easier for tech companies and workers I'm not sure that Canadian taxes compare that unfavourably to combined California plus federal taxation. A deeper, more structural limitation appears to be the venture capital environment, namely that Canada doesn't have…
You think tax incentives are what makes VC work in California but not other places in the US let alone Canada? It's concentration of nodes in the graph that makes SV unlike any other place on earth. Other places that want to be SV need to solve the cold-start problem to build up their local node set, not emulate what SV is like today.
I believe that my comment above was aligned with your premise here. I say that the tax difference is not sufficient by itself and that Canada reportedly has a very non-SV-like venture capital ecosystem.