I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries.
The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship.
Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with their lives or try and innovate to build something.
All of this is propped up by rampant levels of immigration from China and India. Where US got the best talent from India, Canada got the worst, the ones who scam their way here and take the lowest level jobs.
Now all of this is coming home to roost. The next decade will be Canada's worst and if they do not learn that risk taking and entrepreneurship is the only way out of the mess they find themselves in, they will become a third world country in another decade.
Everything you write is also true if you replace Canada with Australia.
New Zealander here: much the same.
New Zealanders definitely hate entrepreneurship - one political party wanted to introduce a wealth tax if you had more than $1 million equity. Median house price in Auckland is just over $1 million! Auckland has about 30% of the population, and house affordability (price compared to income) is similar as bad as Sydney or San Francisco.
I have done okay for myself founding a software business and I notice the tall poppy syndrome from friends. Plus the relentless attack on my hard earned savings by a grifter government. And shit support for businesses to start-up or function (government incentives are mostly negative, and the positive incentives are incredibly badly run).
Fortunately we are building more houses in New Zealand (low single digit percentage growth) but unfortunately immigration is exceeding supply. We need the immigrants because we aren't breeding enough New Zealanders.
My experience of our government healthcare system is mostly positive.
I don't understand it: we should want people to save for their retirement but all the incentives to save are negative. The main taxation incentive is to gear up and borrow money for property. Then that blows up of course.
Even our right leaning government seems to want to consider a capital-gains-tax. The existing taxes screw any reason to invest in the stock market.
I'm whinging: I think it is a good place to live but I feel a comfortable retirement is becoming an unacheivable dream.
Guardian, December 2023:
$150,000 a year if you own $20 million, $0 if they somehow attacked you all the way to a pitiful $10 million, and in return tax cuts for those doing worse than you, and they did not get elected.
I’m not seeing the problem.
The problem is what is the incentive to keep working once you've earned a house and bach? Why bother save for retirement if your savings are to be taken from you at a significant percentage per year? A few percent is a huge penalty (see index funds versus mutual funds), and the wealth tax is on top of taxation of salary and dividends.
I'm not talking about Labour, I'm talking about the Green's 2.5% wealth tax 2023: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/wealth-tax-hikes-will...And incentive is to borrow money on property which is whacko, and then next thing CGT will also be added.
Houses should be for living in, not financial instruments.
lol what? That’s the same old tax argument over again. I thought you all were motivated by things other than money? You know, that entrepreneurial spirit?
The incentive is it’s still a fuckton more money. You’re not taxed at 100% and in turn you live in a country with better services. The amount of money wasted by the rich is hilarious when combined with this take.
The whole point of a business is to make a profit: I worked hard because I am middle aged and had no retirement savings - my other choice was FIRE or to suck on the government's teat. Running a "business" for status is defined as a hobby.
1 in 10 businesses survive. Why bother starting one if you don't get your 10x return? If you've got one, why bother trying to be a serial entrepreneur if it's all gonna be taxed? Do you think New Zealand should leave the entrepreneurship to the USA and we can just buy what we need from US multinationals?
It just isn't. The people I know earning way more than I don't have anything significantly better. Mostly a nice house and a nice car and if they're lucky a bach.
Marginal incentives matter. Over 50% of my personal income goes on taxes including GST.
My life is similar to most any professional worker. I have never owned a new car. I know solo-mums that didn't work for over a decade with more equity in their home than me. My biggest expense is tax, my second biggest is my mortgage.
Just the rich eh? Everybody else is so much more careful! Watch out with your stereotypes - I'm guessing you don't like them applied to yourself?
Because your business doesn’t just start earning 20m and that’s still only 150000. Are you arguing against fake numbers?
no: - I'm using the numbers in the quote in my comment, and from the link I gave you.
Taxation rules create incentives and disincentives. If you earn a salary you are usually ignorant of those incentives because you don't experience them. From what I see the attitude is "fuck everyone who is better off than me".
Our rules need to encourage people to make NZ better off. Not have the incentive to stop once you have gotten a $20m home: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/lifestyle-p...
Anyone that owns businesses worth $20m is already taxed on income. Giving a big middle finger to people that build businesses is silly.
Disclosure: I am not anywhere near the big salary or wealth numbers we've mentioned.
You're repeating bullshit - The majority of spending in New Zealand is not by the wealthy but by the rest of the majority of kiwis[1].
If people earning less than $100k waste 5% of their income, and people earning more than $300k waste 50% of their income, then the people earning less than $100k are wasting more.
We're not in the USA with Jeff Bezos, so your point just makes no sense.
The majority of earners I know blow more than single digit percentages on unnecessary crap and luxury. For example my working class friends that spend more than 10% per week on booze and drugs - plenty of people spending more than $150 with a weekly income <$1500.
Look around you and there are obviously not a lot of superyacht stores. Plenty of booze shops doing a roaring trade and it isn't the $300k+ earners in them.
The wealthy people I know invest. If those investments are bringing foreign income into New Zealand, we already tax that and all New Zealanders win!
The government needs to get rid of the bad property investment incentives - those are where the wealthy are fucking over the non-wealthy. We have enough land and resources in New Zealand for everyone to have their own home.
Don't discourage people from investing in things that make New Zealand better off. Our taxation system discourages founding internationally competitive businesses, and it discourages owning more than $50k in overseas shares. And the majority of New Zealanders don't give a shit because the majority don't begin such businesses and they are ignorant about where their income to buy imports ultimately comes from.
Negative incentives matter, probably more than positive incentives. We all want to slowly tax the well off until they leave or until they are no longer well off.
[1] Data based on: https://www.ird.govt.nz/about-us/tax-statistics/revenue-refu...
That sounds like a terrible thing the government is doing to you.
That sounds like a terrible thing the opposition might do to you.
OK… did you at least accurately describe what was happening originally?
What leads to is no willingness to invest in anything other than bonds to ensure you have enough money to pay the tax.
150k from 20m of assets? Really? Lmao
Every bugger sees a number like 2% and then says '$150000' whoop-de-shit like its some trivial amount. $150k is a lot of money. Its easy to tell other peoples what to do with their money huh?
You've never had a bill you couldn't pay? Major assets are usually tied up in long term investments with breaking costs due to illiquidity or taxation (e.g. sell a house before the bright-line period is up and you may pay a lot extra tax). You are showing your ignorance of the issues. Have you saved enough for your retirement or are you going to live off the backs of other New Zealanders? Good luck to you.
Paying the tax bill can mean selling an investment at a loss or borrowing. Not much different from someone poorer pawning what they own or selling their car because they need the money. It costs me 8.8% at present to borrow on my mortgage - (due to bank conditions I can't borrow cheaper). The same thing can easily occur to wealthy people (managing investment risks sucks).
Many people have already paid tax - their savings are what they have left over after tax. A wealth tax can be a double taxation - another taxes on top of money that was already taxed. Plus the wealthy still often get to pay income tax on any dividends or other gains.
There's a lot of people out there that blow all their money on shit and then put their hand out to the government. I watch friends on low incomes absolutely waste money and don't give a shit about saving. Not all of them, but enough. I've seen friends get big ACC payouts - and a few weeks later its all burnt on nothing. Or inheritances and lose it all. Luckily they live in New Zealand where they can get money from family or get some living expenses from other NZers (the government). Certainly not flash living, but better than most places in the world. Some of those millions come from my tough job earning export income. I get fuck all of the money I bring into the country (after expenses, salaries risk and taxes).
I bet if we met you would have a lot of complaints about how hard done you have been with taxation. It's the same issue.
You're also a politically stable energy and resource exporter bang next to a global economic superpower and security guarantor. Oh, and access to two oceans and soon a third.
Canada has plenty of problems. But it's also tremendously blessed.
What's funny is that if we substitute Canada with Russia in your comment, every word of it still holds true.
I suppose "stable" and "stagnant" are two sides of the same coin.
Yeah, Russia is Chinas Canada
What an insane take
The US does not make a cultural claim to any part of Canada, except possibly jokingly Alberta, which might actually be "Alberta jokingly makes a threat to secede to the US" (the US does not really want alberta and its disgustingly sulfurous oil).
China is constantly threatening to invade the Russian far east and retake haishenwai
Calling China Russia's security guarantor is a stretch at best. The military difference between the two, while growing, is no where near the difference between the USA and Canada.
I would argue Russia's nuclear arsenal is a far more reliable guarantor of their security then China would ever be.
Also has China ever claimed to be Russia’s security guarantor?
The US and Canada, if nothing else, are both in NATO.
Russia are frenemies at best. They are allies today, but they have fought border skirmishes in recent times, and they are worried about Chinese moving to and eventually taking over the Russian Far East
That is the tragic part about Russia. They don't need to be Chinas Canada. They have all the protentional in the world play nice in the world sandbox and prosper.
Likely the reason it doesn't need to accomplish much more to be a good place to live
to be fair most Canadians were promised this as part of their countries stratospheric growth under neoliberalist policies. that they are not capable of it is no fault of their own. that they want this is at all is not a bane.
dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile, but as an american i must acquiesce we've played that game for a long time. before hispanics it was asians, before asians it was europeans (the irish particularly.) turns out blaming immigration is a fools errand to distract from domestic class warfare.
the real question for Canada now is not "how do we punish the immigrant" but what do elected leaders in the political class do to affect meaningful restitution and corrective action in the face of what is a national crisis. Either they see clearly and will reform their own cash cow, or they will blindly ride it off a cliff in the hopes that through their own profit they can weather the coming storm.
In India when we graduated our professors would say - you are really good, you should go to the usa. you are quite mediocre, go try your luck in canada. and you, you are a C student, even canada won't take you in. go get married to some indian lady, get a nice fat dowry, raise two kids and send them to college here, maybe they will get better grades than you.
It was perhaps said in jest, but like everything else, there was an element of truth to it. For quite a while, the word canada itself became a pejorative. Many south indian films have a scene where the hero returns after studying abroad & wants to get married, & the heroine's father generally wants to make sure he is a good student & not a scamster from canada.
That sounds hilarious, do you have some example films that I can check out?
Isn't that the case everywhere where immigration is restricted?
It seems the parent is trying to imply that the grandparent is arguing that some immigrant races are good and others bad (hence his reference to US hispanics, asians, europeans, etc) even though the grandparent is very explicitly arguing that the best immigrants from India and China respectively go to the USA while the mediocre immigrants from those countries go to Canada (I'm not arguing for or against that claim, but I can understand how it is different than what the parent alleges).
our post-hart-cellar immigration policy is a tool of class warfare via wage suppression. real wages have remained flat while productivity gains have steadily persisted, due to several systemic changes since the crisis of 1973, among them flinging the doors open to dilute the cost of american labor; this and outsourcing and globalizing supply chains also go hand-in-hand with breaking union power
TBF that's the inherent insinuation in points / skill based immigration. The goal of immigration driven growth to is to maximize return potential via brain drain and wealth drain from other countries who foot the bill for talent development, or to extract wealth via foreign elites who accumulated wealth in host countries. When crisis reach critcal levels when it obviously becomes a class warfare issue, the solution is going to be punish the immigrants, before them become PRs or citizens. It's not the immigrants fault for policy failures, but until they get right to vote they are escape goats for bad politics.
This is just an entirely incorrect reading of what the grandparent comment said.
They are not saying that immigrants from some places are good, and immigrants from some other places are bad (or immigrants of one ethnicity vs. another). Regardless of whether you agree with them or not (which is a very valid thing to disagree with, if that’s how you feel), they explicitly said that the US gets “good” immigrants from those groups, while Canada gets more “mediocre” immigrants from those exact same groups.
There is no classification or separation by nationality/ethnicity going on in the grandparent comment, despite you treating it like there is.
the US divides immigrants into good and bad due to its racist Green Card country queues
As an immigrant into Canada: even if that description were true, it still would make it a lot better than the majority of other countries in the world.
Luckily, Canada is a lot better than your description.
The comment is complete hyperbole and isn't even correct. Real estate is bigger in the US than Canada.
Every developed country is running into immigration and housing issues. Canada isn't alone and isn't even the worst case.
Isn’t allowing everyone and essentially recruiting immigrants a major cause of the housing crisis and expenses in Toronto?
Sure and immigration should be stemmed, short-term, until housing reforms can be implemented.
They've already announced measures to reduce student visas which were uncapped previously.
https://www.ft.com/content/085cda38-9060-4da1-8532-1a3af9cd7...
Still. This isn't going to solve the issue. They need to build far more than they currently are doing. They need to strip local government of its veto over housing. They need to definancialize real estate.
Yep. It’s such a cancer in the US too. So many NIMBY’s. Toronto when I went was so odd like a mix of dense and then houses.
Yes, but there's Canada's climate. If you try to live in a tent outdoors in Canada you will likely die.
You can do it Vancouver. Seattle and Vancouver’s homelessness problem are remarkably similar, only differing in how Canada handles it better than the Americans do.
OP is comparing Canada to other developed nations. Canada is pretty subpar compared to most places in EU or US on all fronts: weather, housing, quality of life, innovation and salaries.
We have people renting a single bed in the same room for 600$/mo in Toronto.
I suppose that however if you are an immigrant from a war torn country or a developing country, Canada would look like heaven.
Weather: Canada's weather certainly isn't the best, but not really worse than other northern climate countries.
Housing: Large cities like Toronto and Vancouver are unaffordable, but so are other large cities like London, New York etc. Just like most other countries, if you want to pay less for housing, go to a smaller city
Quality of life: how are you measuring this? By most measures (life expectancy, crime etc) Canada is well ahead of the US.
Innovation and salaries: Innovation is a bit hard to define, but salaries are definitely lower than the US. But here the US is also an outlier (at least for high earners) compared to most other countries. Tech salaries in Canada for example aren't lower than most European countries.
Despite what you have “heard” the heath care system is quite nice
How quickly can you book an appointment with your family doctor? How did you acquire your family doctor?
Most times you can do walk ins same day, but finding a family doctor depends on location so my experience can be different
I’d like to strongly disagree with you. Parts of the health care system are quite nice, but other parts have completely collapsed causing multi year delays for basic healthcare services or even finding a family doctor, which is not quite so nice.
What is your experience in finding a doc?
1 million British Columbians who can't find a family doctor, and thousands who have to wait 6+ months for cancer treatment , disagree with you
Which one? Canadians I find are pretty ignorant about the health care in Canada and think it’s the same thing across the board, while it’s actually the individual provinces that each have their own setup (with pros and cons)
It’s easy to spot when people speak of healthcare in general without being specific.
That’s quite the statement, I assume you have quite the source for it.
The price-to-rent ratio isn’t that far off from the US, for example.
there's a tiktoker that compares real states prices in Canada and in various parts of Europe
it's funny to see dozens of examples of european castles (buildings with tens of rooms and bathrooms, plus huge gardens) whose cost is in the same ballpark as 2 or 3 bedroom houses in random (but well [sub]urbanized) parts of Canada
Wait until you see the maintenance and heating costs for those castles, or any old building in general. The sticker price isn’t the whole story.
Castles are a bit of a scam. The old aristocratic families that still own them, e.g. in Germany, tend to have a state subsidy for maintainance. If you didn't have the luck of being born into those families, you get all of the joys of Medieval engineering twinned to modern historic preservation bureuacracy.
but incomes are generally much lower
That's tech bias. The pay for random office jobs or trade jobs are similar.
I'd love to see the numbers that back this up that also don't include SF, LA, NYC, Miami, or Seattle.
Canada has generally had a more conservative financial industry, which is a large part of why they were able to escape the 2008 mortgage crisis, and that, in turn, has lead to a stronger real estate market. Additionally, the recent post COVID-19 influx of immigrants has driven up demand for housing like crazy. There's not a lot of question that the real estate market is hot. But...
...I'd point out that considering it's population, Canada has had an impressive number of innovative companies just in the tech sector over the years. Alias & Softimage in 3D rendering. Shopify in e-commerce. Research in Motion in mobile phones. Ecobee in the smart homes/IOT space. Certicom in cryptography. Going farther back, Corel was a software giant. There's relative newcomers to with Hopper, Imagia, etc. I don't think it's fair to say there's no innovation, risk taking, or entrepreneurship.
I'm not sure where you get that from. Canada's immigration policies have historically been more oriented towards merit/highly skilled immigrants than the US.
I'm not sure what is fueling your perspective, but there is a lot of concern about Canada's economic policy coming out of COVID-19, in particular, the big deficits and explosive immigration are putting a strain on the economy. However, there's a very credible possibility that these will prove to be effective "investments" that pay off in the long run. Ironically, given your criticisms, Canada is taking on a lot of risk!
I think the conservatism of Canada is overstated and in fact Canada is one of the most leveraged countries in the world.
The "conservatism" is of the banks, not the country. The Canadian government is quite leveraged.
But as leveraged as Canada is, Canada is well below the average for debt-to-GDP ratio of the G7 (admittedly skewed by Japan's monster debt, but still well below US debt). https://www.visualcapitalist.com/government-debt-by-country-...
It's also hard when you're spending money educating your citizens for those high paying tech jobs and over half of them go to the USA [1] [2] [3] [4].
That and lack of venture capital/funding and, I've heard, increased government barriers compared to the USA, reduce the number of local tech companies.
The one bright spot in the past decade are the AI hubs in Toronto and Montreal - but they seem to be mainly satellite offices for USA companies.
[1] https://sexxis.github.io/classprofile/ , 2021 UWaterloo SWEng profile
[2] https://uw-se-2020-class-profile.github.io/profile.pdf , 2020 UWaterloo SWEng profile
[3] https://krishn.me/syde-2018-profile.pdf, 2018 UWaterloo SysDesEng profile
[4] https://joeyloi.com/SYDE2017classprofile.pdf, 2017 UWaterloo SysDesEng profile
Yes, you are correct that the USA is bigger and has more money than Canada. If you think about it globally (as one should), but it's worth noting that they're not so much moving to the USA as they are specifically the Seattle & Bay Area, and they're doing so at lower rates than for comparable Americans living outside those areas. Also worth noting, for the most part, they aren't founding companies in the US. The pattern is to go to the US, work for large tech companies, and about half return to Canada within 5-10 years, which is when they're more likely to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits.
Just looking at the financial might of Seattle & the Bay Area, it's amazing that 90% of Canada's innovators and entrepreneurs aren't in the US. It suggests that the country is perhaps more supportive of innovation than this narrative being presented.
The conservative financial system and comparative size of Canada does mean there is much less "free money" flowing around, though as demonstrated from the examples I provided, companies do procure foreign investment, particularly from the US, with comparative ease.
...and while you'll always here entrepreneurs complain about government barriers, having started up companies on both sides of the border, I can tell you that in many ways Canada has comparatively smaller government barriers. In particular, the universal health care and generally more significant social safety net also means that it's a lot easier for prospective entrepreneurs to leave jobs at stable businesses and take on greater risk. It's just one of many ways that while it is harder to get capital in Canada, you don't need as much to get going. This is probably part of the reason that a larger percentage of Canada's labour force (67.7%) [1] is employed by small businesses than the US (46.4%). [2]
AI hubs in Toronto & Montreal are more than just satellite offices for USA companies. You may recall that Geoffrey Hinton, "Godfather of AI", was in Toronto, teaching at U of T, when Google bought the startup he founded with Alex Krizhevsky & Ilya Sutskever... in Toronto. The modern AI revolution traces back to innovative work in... Toronto!
1. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/sme-research-statistics/en/...
2. https://advocacy.sba.gov/2023/03/07/frequently-asked-questio....
at least now that the king of england has cancer they can somehow negotiate their way out of having to reprint all their money? that should be more cost effective than exiting the commonwealth? ahahah
Why would they need to reprint money, old monarch's faces are still perfectly valid currency.
hmmm, so if the current king wants to see their face on money they gotta pay for it themselves? I guess this isn't that important given that governments want to push a cashless economy now
As a Canadian who has ideas of building an off grid cabin in the woods, what would be a more meaningful life?
The stereotypical poor American working menial jobs into their senior years without affordable healthcare doesn’t sound much better…
its a discussion about the economy, not the quality of life and the accuracy of the aspirations
Also as a Canadian currently living in an urban area, I want to move to the woods so I have the room to build things and innovate regularly. I don't have enough land for a workshop here. Outside of maybe software that you can pack onto a personal computer, you're not going to be able to do much innovating without much space.
As a Canadian, living in Southern Ontario, I couldn't agree more with your assessment. Somehow we are ranking #1 on so many charts for quality of life etc. I'm starting to believe these sites and reviews of Canada are paid for.
We were an incredible country before Trudeau took office. His aggressive immigration policy, no economic policy or plan, and creation of infighting on social issues, not tackling any of the core issues we face as a country, until absolutely forced to do so (in this case unlikely re-election).
We need to stop fighting over social issues and start being productive towards a stronger, healthier, and happier Canada. Social issues can't fixed if people can't afford shelter and food.
Look at sites that don't take QoL based on neoliberal metrics?
Source?
I haven't heard this claim before.
Canada currently has an issue with handing out way too many student visas to students going to strip mall diploma mills. I believe the federal government has just enforced a cap for the next 2 years.
Ok, but please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Edit: looks like we had to ask you exactly this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518, about exactly the same topic. Can you please not do this on HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Ok sorry.
Do you ever think about what you're writing and think "I'm an ass hole"?
Well, we are on HN. We have to make allowances.
I would posit that the US is headed down a similar road with christofascism in the red states. They seem to be in a race to the bottom when it comes to freedom and prosperity. Texas once moderated that but no more, I'm due to move out of this in a couple of months and probably in a nick of time. So Canada might not be alone.
Those christofascist states have been seeing immigration inflows, are recently leading economically, and generally aren’t as screwed up reproductively where families are treated as expendable resources to be exploited for labour until they burn out like in blue states and Canada.
The left has done many nice things to ensure human rights and hedonism (not saying that negatively) but in the process all the values and traditions they deemed unimportant in the name of progress are catching up with them and I only seeing this intensify over time unless blue states and Canada have a serious come to Jesus moment. The current reality of blue states is they can ONLY exist in a world where places even more regressive than the red states exist and supply them with a constant supply of population to burn through and oddly nobody on the left seems to be all that concerned with this even though it will collapse blue state values and economics in less than a century as global population plateaus.
The American red states don’t strike me as a paragon of morality but they do strike me as one of the most relatively sustainable and affluent and “normal” cultures in the developed world, and affluent goes a long way.
If you’re expecting Canada to be a refuge from a conservative wave you’re likely to be disappointed because it and the blue states have much of the same systemic problems and it will be pressured to reform in much the same way.
I worked with an Indian migrant to Canada. He was very good at his job, a great team player, and overall an amazing guy.
Your description is unfair.
that's funny because they sure love to rub their free healthcare in Americans' faces often
This is so true it hurts.
And while there's some numbers that outsiders can look at and gasp[0] at how absurd it's become, there's a whole lot that isn't being tracked or documented. Official immigration numbers are ~0.5mn for 2023, but (and I've seen it elsewhere, but I can't find it right now) if you use a common sense definition that includes all inflow (e.g. asylum seekers, tfw, foreign students, etc) then it's 1mn+. It's insane for a country of <40mn, with highly socialized services.
The quality of life in Canada is horrid in a way that's not comparable to anywhere else other than maybe australia. Everything is silly expensive, with low salaries, and it's not like in europe where you can travel 3 hours to go somwehere with cheaper services. It's crazy. Or what about crime, the right wing, tough on crime party leader yesterday said that if someone has 3 convictions for car theft that it should mean 3 years. It's no wonder that I know some crazy personal stories about people getting their cars stolen and the police doing nothing.
Anyways, I don't want to rant even more, all I can hope is that for younger people in Canada to realize that the best thing they can do is hop to the US or something.
[0] https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-if-the-u-s-housing-mar...
This could be true of any country that's accepting immigrants. Inviting countries must be selecive of whom the let in, what they bring with them, and whether and how well the inbound population assimilate, thus retaining the essence of its extant values. When a country has no control of its immigration (whether by choice or otherwise), or is lax about it, all kinds of birds come home to roost. Some birds lay eggs; others just poop.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the role of petrol in Alberta and hydro power in Quebec. They play a key role to sustaining the economy and social services. It's not just that though.
People are definitely less risk-taking, workaholics, despite having a social safety net, or maybe because of it. It's just maybe less in our culture to "go big or go home". Having a cabin in the woods and free time to live your life is nice.
Maybe because I live in Quebec, and language is definitely a barrier (requires immigrants to be trilingual), but I haven't met many shady people from China or India, on the contrary. My ancestors came here by accident from different countries, taking a random boat in a port, worked hard and made it. I hope we can give that opportunity to others too.
Canada is Australia, an relatively affluent bureaucracy that sells rocks and houses. We have too many people to be Norway, where less people, a few high tier sectors and plundering the land for other markets can sustain developed QoL. But we could do ok on that model if we keep population down and build up a few strategic sectors. Except or interests are more subsumed by US foreign policy so we can't sell all the rocks we want. See the foreign NGO meddling that repeately killed Canada fossil expansion plans. Meanwhile US gets first dibs on global English talent, and Canadian English talent. And ultimately Canadian giants get cut down to size - Nortel, Bombardier due to sheninangans. But being US neighbour/sphere is better starting condition than most, but it's still hard map to play on.
Nah, have you seen what comes out of Waterloo and University of Toronto? Canada will be fine.
Canada is the way it is because it is next to the U.S. The Canadian brain drain was never entirely the fault of Canada; the gravitational pull of U.S. neoliberal capitalism (what you uncritically and a-historically call 'risk taking') is a nontrivial factor. Canadian protectionism would not go over well with its world power neighbour, which seeks to exploit intellectual and social capital.
It's annoying that the top comment isn't related to the article but just a self-hating Canadian ranting about the current woes of the country. It's also classic Canadian behavior.
as a canadian, you're not wrong.
As opposed to most Americans, at least those that have been in the industry for a decade or more, who would rather be as far from tech as possible, in whatever direction.
See also: https://imgur.com/vbFNbON