Tech salaries in Canada are already ridiculously low compared to the states. 10k new tech workers is not insignificant in Canada, so this will just lower them further.
Not to mention our housing is in a ridiculous bubble and our economy in general isn’t in great shape.
I suspect there may be an increase of TN visa applications / brain drain of existing Canadian tech workers.
Question: why are tech salaries so much lower? The companies are obviously competing on a worldwide basis for talent so why are they able to not pay market?
Our banking regulations kept the bubble from popping in 2008 and international capital figured out canadian real estate was a very safe bet. Housing prices never corrected and they kept growing at the same-ish rate as american housing. Add demographic (we increased our population by 3% this year, 1.2 million extra people while building 200k new houses) and geographic (most of our land is barely livable frozen rock where you can't just go park a camper) factors and you get the perfect storm.
An enormous chunk of our GDP growth comes from real estate transactions, we don't have much productive endeavours other than natural resource extraction. Canada is still very much a colony.
> most of our land is barely livable frozen rock where you can't just go park a camper
Come on now. Yes by total land mass you are correct, but if you’ve driven from southwestern Ontario to Halifax or Winnipeg to Calgary, you’d seen thousands of kilometres and millions upon millions of acres that could be developed. Practically developable land is 100% not our limiting factor. We artificially restrict both density in existing cities and expansion of cities due to zoning but this has nothing to do with being “barely livable frozen rock”.
I've crossed the country from Montréal to British Columbia on wheels three times.
The farmland you're speaking of is still relatively expensive, there isn't much economic activity other than industrial farming (do you have access to several million $ for machinery and land?) in those areas to sustain a life, and it's still frozen 6 months a year. It's also owned by someone and developing it into endless suburban sprawl hurts our already limited food production (which is strategically essential when we consider the geopolitical instability our world is facing). Crown land is for the most part either Tundra, Canadian shield or west coast mountains that is even more difficult to live on than the farm land near the US border.
Yeah my anecdote is similar. My parents lived 25 minute drive from Kanata (Ottawa suburb), a proper tech hub. The drive was over rural roads, not highways . And they had no infra. Internet was a terrible satellite. Water pump. Septic tank. It wasn’t wilderness or anything. Just farmlands, mostly occupied by non-farming owners at that point.
Interestingly, instead of resolving this important problem... the legislation they're passing is ostensibly credits to allow people to spend even MORE on housing.
Members of the Québec legislative assembly own 1.6 million $ worth of real estate on average (that's a province with much cheaper housing prices than you'll see in Ontario and British Columbia). It's likely very similar at a federal level and in every province. The conflict of interest is obvious.
Concentration in two or three cities which can't sprawl much further anymore, poor planning, policies intended to inflate house prices, and higher building and infrastructure costs due to the winter complicating construction (as well as criminal involvement in construction)
Because there isn't enough houses being built, and prices are set by supply/demand, rather than salaries vs. costs of building a house.
Looking at it in another way, if you gave every homeowner in the country a lump sum of cash equal to the amount of equity gained through mortgage payments (not including equity gained through appreciation), many/most homeowners would not be able to afford to buy their homes at the current valuation even starting with that lump sum of cash.
I guess it's good they'll ostensibly be able to attract more talent from other countries, but I think they need to fix their own brain drain problem in the first place.
It all comes down to wages. Sure, you can argue Canada has some stronger social programs or quality of life per dollar, but when you can earn 2-4x the wage for the same work by moving 200km south from Vancouver to Seattle, it's a no-brainer.
> Sure, you can argue Canada has some stronger social programs or quality of life per dollar, ...
Maybe there was some truth to that in the past, but that certainly isn't the case any longer, and hasn't been for some time now.
In practice, Canada's social programs are tremendously costly, limited, and low-quality.
The provincial public health care systems are relevant examples of this. It's typical for Canadians with the means to do so to seek medical treatment in the US or abroad, rather than dealing with the slow and ineffective Canadian systems, especially for any serious ailment.
The provincial public education systems are similar. Canadians with the financial means to do so will send their children to independent schools, rather than public schools. Even those who don't have the means will still do what they can to make that happen.
In terms of the broader quality-of-life picture, it isn't what it used to be. Housing is prohibitively expensive. Food, fuel, vehicles, and other essential goods are expensive. There's much less variety and choice when it comes to retail, restaurants, entertainment, and so forth. The taxation is excessive, especially for getting so little in return. Government makes it far harder than it should be to start and operate a business.
At this point, Canada is coasting on past success, and has a reputation that no longer matches reality.
I’m a US citizen, but moved to Montreal a few years back. I’m earning roughly 40% of what I would be if I moved back even to Philly where I grew up, let alone the west coast. But y’a know, I fell in love with someone here, so it’s tough. I definitely enjoy this city more than any US city I’ve lived in, but on paper it’s easily the dumbest decision of my life.
Sounds like the best decision if you enjoy it and found love. I only ever hear great things about Montreal, my wife and I plan to visit from the US in a couple months on vacation, we're really excited!
True, but the US could learn a thing or two from Canada's immigration policies. As a US citizen, I'm pretty vehemently opposed to our temp worker H1B visas, and would much prefer an easier path to permanent residency like Canada has.
It's shameful that we have 6-700k people here in the US that are effectively treated as second class 'citizens' and a permanent underclass. I knew one guy who had been waiting on a green card for over a decade.
> It's shameful that we have 6-700k people here in the US that are effectively treated as second class citizens and a permanent underclass
They are either second-class non-citizens (compared to those on immigrant visas) or if using “citizen” broadly to call all those who are immigrants by intent (regardless of status) as well as actual citizens, something like third-class citizens, behind both legal citizens and permanent residents.
IMHO, the H1B should be abolished, and we should adopt a Canadian style points system that sets a high bar, but once admitted, automatically grants a green card. I think even Hayek himself basically admitted that our worker visa programs were effectively a labor subsidy to megacorps because these workers did not have the same abilities to negotiate and switch companies as others.
H1Bs are a path to permanent residency, and at the end of the first renewal, you either have a greencard or (if you are from certain big countries where quotas run out; e.g. China, India, Mexico, Philippines) are in the queue to get a greencard.
That is not like other countries. China, for example, is happy to give you a Z visa every year without any path to permanent residency. 9 years and never offered permanent residency, not that I would have probably taken it.
Just remember, Canada is geographically situated near the US but their attitudes to innovation, risk taking, rewarding talent, and merit based promotion are not the same. Even if they say that it is - the reality is very different.
A lot of folks complaining about Canadian wages make a fair point - CoL is too high.
But, they are only comparing against the US. If you start comparing against the rest of the world, Canada is the only non-declining large economy.
Wages in Canada are second only to the US. AI (industry of the future) has a base in Canada that is non-trivial. Canada is getting more internationally connected, which means more business.
Compare with UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, where else is the economy looking at the industries of the next decade?
Tech is the easiest industry to bootstrap - just get more tech people to create the ecosystem. And Canada was looking for immigrants. This move to poach h1bs from the US is no different from Meta poaching from Google back in the 00s.
This is true, however the growth isn't actually from increased productivity, per-capita GDP is flat. It's entirely driven by high levels of immigration. So the standard of living isn't increasing. Maybe that's ok, since perhaps it's "good enough", but it's not necessarily attractive versus say various Europe nations if you're privileged enough to have the latter as an option.
This is true, I moved from the UK (London) to Canada and receive a higher wage. AND in the UK I was working as a contractor which is a way of avoiding a lot of tax.
What I would like to know is what can Canada do, tangibly, to increase wages to USA levels?
> What I would like to know is what can Canada do, tangibly, to increase wages to USA levels?
Now this is a great question. Imo, they should follow the strategy of Asian countries.
Asian countries started creating competitive ecosystems when they went through the manufacturing boom in the 70s-00s. What kind of competition? They incentivized and allowed many small companies to come up. They killed large megalocorps so that competition survived. They allowed creating international linkages for their people and businesses. They created massive infrastructure to aid these companies to trade among themselves, thus building an ecosystem. Then, they invited foreign companies to open shop locally.
In the Canadian context of today, they'd need to incentivize creation of companies, perhaps through tax breaks. Build more roads, more houses, higher speed internet, create efficient ports and business laws that allow things to move faster. Dismantle some monopolies. Allow people to trade faster. E.g. a lot of Canadian businesses don't realize that they could leverage their businesses to create outposts in Dubai, Singapore, and other such financial hubs. Just opening offices there allows business to come into the company.
Easier said than done of course. But of all the rich countries (minus USA), only Canada managed to achieve anything in the last decade, thanks largely to the immigration reform.
>they'd need to incentivize creation of companies, perhaps through tax breaks
Simply making bureaucracy easier/cheaper to navigate would be enormous. The barriers to entry for services as simple as cleaning windows, mowing lawns or painting drywall are gigantic relatively to the simplicity of the services involved.
> Be sure to tell Hyundai, Samsung, and LG that their government killed them.
Chaebols are certainly a Korean quirk. Not seen as much in other Asian countries. But even in Korea, the chaebols are dependent on small Korean suppliers to these large companies. It is competition among these small suppliers that has made the economy dynamic and innovative.
New constitution and then rebuild the entire government. Federal government has way too much power and taxes and spends too much. Current combo of authoritarian and socialist policies will always keep wages down.
I guess permanent residency is better than an H-1B, but Canadian salaries are pretty low, from what I hear. I figure most people in (e.g) India would keep trying for the US
Canadian immigration is way easier and many people use it as a stepping stone. There are even companies that hire people and park them in Canada because it's easier and sometimes cheaper.
Maybe they mean it’s less random and less uncertain. The criteria are more transparent.
US immigration literally runs lotteries for various streams including H1b.
It doesn’t feel great when your work/future/life depends so heavily on a coin toss. And we’re not yet even talking about being at the mercy of an immigration officer.
> cost of living is 70%-80%, especially in the Vancouver area.
If you check housing prices, the picture gets even worse. Even with seeing how crazy Seattle housing market is, Vancouver beats us easily with their residential property pricing.
Speaking for Vancouver, it's really not. Here are the differences:
- Weather is much worse in Canada than in SF (comparing with this because Balaji tweet did)
- 20% foreigner tax on home ownership
- crime in Vancouver is about as bad as SF
- rent to income ratio is higher, so less disposable income
- lower tech in general, less fiber penetration, worse wireless telecom
- job switching is harder because of sparse job market
OP described Indians so mentioning that there is a massive backlash in the mainstream against Indian immigration. Long healthcare waits and overall poor patient experience isn't a problem since doesn't apply to emergency care in either place and Indians can get better care in Indian private system for elective.
I don't even earn 50% of the equivalent job in the US.
And I'm not even talking about jobs in huge tech hubs like SF.
Add to that ~35% taxes that are deduced from my salary plus 15% of sale taxes on everything that I buy that are already priced higher than in the US plus insane housing price plus gas that costs nearly two times more, plus, plus, plus....
Nearly everyone that was in the top 30% of my university cohord moved abroad. I'm only staying because of my family but I'm planning to leave soon if the economy doesn't turn to crap.
Canada is just a very badly managed country overall. The tech industry basically thrives off goverment subsidies and tax credits. This can't go on forever.
This is a maquiladora strategy. A maquiladora is "a foreign-owned factory at which imported parts are assembled by lower-paid workers into products for export"
What's frustrating about it is that it's an expression of contempt for Canada's nationals by a governing class whose capital is already managed globally, so in their view, what does it matter if they import cheap labour and disincentivize capital growth with new industry when they can just tax farm income from a permanent underclass of workers who bring in salaries from foreign revenue?
It would be great if the H1-B's were coming here to do startups, but startups are the artifact of a uniquely American capital ecosystem that just doesn't exist anywhere else, and you can't reproduce something that was the effect of factors that were a moment in time. The strategy is just another expression of contempt of the citizenry by Ottawa. This cohort of government always goes on about how "diversity is our strength," but the emphasis has always been on the our part, meaning theirs, and increasingly at the expense of everyone else.
... they gonna make it easier for US citizen remote tech workers to pursue PR status without having to find a Canadian employer first (and, so, take a big pay cut)? I'd love to move my family there and start paying our way-above-median-income taxes to Canada instead of the US, but struggle to make the minimum score for immigration in any Canadian province despite having the advantages of the right kind of career and degree (and, actually, I think we've aged out of making the cut in any of them, now, as of the last year or two).
[EDIT] To be clear, I get why this narrow slice of the population isn't one they're worried about bending their immigration system to accommodate, and I'm not mad about it, it'd just be really cool if we accidentally got helped by some other, larger reform.
They do not want US citizens because you all have a strong exit path when you realize the marketing does not match the reality.
When people lift and immigrate from across an ocean the proposition for going back is not as strong or easy. There are a lot of 'sunk cost' issues and 'image' that come into play.
But where will these new people stay? There is not enough housing being built for people, you are going to see people come here only to leave when they realize that they can't afford the housing for their families there.
Net migration is probably pretty high in Canada right now and will increase once people figure out that there is not enough density or proper housing for them.
I am waiting to see what the cabinet shuffle looks like, but we are probably going to run some billboard campaigns or do some fundraising soon to address the housing crisis if the government is not tackling this properly. If you are Canadian or have interest in this space on addressing these social issues, hit me up.
If you are in a TN-1 visa, I strongly recommend doing the math to see if you want to spend a significant amount of your income on rent, definitely do your research.
99% of "software engineering" is about as much "engineering" as laying out and installing the plumbing for a house or smallish apartment building. To the extent that it's more challenging, it's mostly because we're running around trying to hammer nails with screwdrivers and cut copper pipes with butter knives and constantly changing standard pipe & fitting diameters for no good reason.
Canada is in a strange moment where most professional engineering bodies are taking the position that any use of the term 'engineer' by a non-professional engineer (someone with a P.Eng degree) is illegal but US tech companies, which have a lot of influence into Canada's market and aren't affected by the same laws, don't really care. This means it is often used in Canada despite the position taken by the engineering bodies.
The law is sort of vague on it. It says that you aren't allowed to mislead people into thinking you are a professional engineer or use terms that would lead people to think you are a professional engineer if you are not. Whether or not 'software engineer' does this can depend on your viewpoint and whether you're building software for web stacks or for airplane control. But the engineering bodies have tried to make examples of companies or individuals that don't have big enough legal resources to want to go to court over it.
IMO I understand the professional bodies wanting to ensure nobody is misrepresenting themselves as licensed P.Eng holders but claiming a monopoly on the engineering mindset is a bit of gatekeeping and nothing else.
P.Eng is not a degree. You get it by writing a pass/fail ethics exam for the local regulatory board after completing an actual Engineering degree (BASc/BEng), and paying yearly dues.
P.Eng is not required for most engineering activities. One notable exception being civil engineers, since there's so much signing off on blueprints for infrastructure.
Yah, by 'p.eng degree' I meant 'one of the degrees that qualify for a p.eng license'. Thanks for clarifying.
The engineering bodies categorically take the position that you can't use the word 'engineer' anywhere in your title, say that you do engineering, or do engineering under their definition of it without their license. See this recent letter for example [0] or their FAQ on it [1]
So, on one hand we have that "Tech Talent Strategy", which I assume comes from the demand for more IT workers globally. On the other, we have Canadians such as yours truly who would like to upgrade from a Helpdesk position sooner rather than later. I realize that sample size=1, but why don't we properly train permanent residents instead?
(Also don't forget the IT job market which has slowed practically to a halt, as a direct opposite of that Strategy)
Not to mention our housing is in a ridiculous bubble and our economy in general isn’t in great shape.
I suspect there may be an increase of TN visa applications / brain drain of existing Canadian tech workers.