Yahoo Finance Canada’s tech industry hopes Trump effect could counteract ‘brain drain’
An estimated 350,000 Canadian ex-pats are living and working in California, some of whom are likely employed in the region’s thriving tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, San Diego and Los Angeles.
But Canadian employers are hoping to strike back against the so-called “brain drain” that many believe is plaguing the nation’s tech industry and capitalize on the many Americans who fear the consequences of an impending Donald Trump presidency.
Go North Canada, a website that helps connect job seekers with opportunities in the sector north of the border, has placed billboards on Route 101 in Silicon Valley.
Heather Galt, the vice-president of Communitech a Kitchener, Ont.-based non-profit that focuses on growing the tech industry in Canada, told CTV News that their website has recently experienced a spike in traffic.
“People are reaching out and letting us know they are ready to come home, “ Galt said.
That sentiment was echoed by Virginia Jamieson, a Toronto native working as vice-president of public relations at education software company Desire2Learn in New York.
“I have a two-year-old son and I question what it is going to be like raising a child under the Trump administration,” she told CTV News.
The Desire2Learn’s chief strategy officer, Jeremy Auger, said that Canada’s tech industry is engaged in a “war for talent,” with Canada’s own innovation hubs, like Kitchener-Waterloo, where the company is based, offering plenty of promise.
“We’ve got a huge and growing tech community that is just booming,” he told CTV News.
Michael Litt, co-founder and CEO of Vidyard, a software and analytics company based out of Kitchener, also stressed the potential of reinvigorating the tech sector by attracting new talent and preventing it from fleeing south of the border.
“There is a huge talent drainage problem that has been occurring since the 1980s,” Litt told CTV News.
“We are in a potential position to reverse that flow, or at least stop it to some degree.”
