I meant that a lot of the top talent in Canada is already working in the US. There's a skill gap between top talent in the US and top talent in Canada.

Well, they may lose their jobs to folks still in Canada then. You can get a seasoned dev in Canada for less money than a fresh grad in San Francisco. If the company switches to be distributed a-la GitLab, there's no reason not to do it. The reason why offshoring nearly always failed in the past is because teams weren't fully distributed/remote. If a company re-tools around distributed, it can operate just fine as long as there aren't any "hallway conversations" remote workers don't have access to.

>The reason why offshoring nearly always failed in the past is because teams weren't fully distributed/remote

That's an interesting theory. It doesn't match what I've observed where the offshore team almost always had a skill gap with the on-site team.

Remember that in this case it'd be "offshoring", not "offshore outsourcing". That is, the company would be able to maintain the hiring bar at that reduced cost.