‘They want to be in Canada’
Canadian tech industry sees increase from U.S. based job applicants
CLAIRE BROWNELL
Canada is used to worrying about the country’s brightest minds in tech leaving for Silicon Valley, but lately, the job applications have been heading north of the border instead.
A July survey of Canadian high-growth firms conducted by Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District found 62 per cent of respondents have noticed a recent significant increase in job applications from the United States. MaRS sent the survey to 42 companies it believed would have exposure to such jobseekers; 18 companies reported an increase, 11 reported no relevant increase and 13 declined to respond.
Ottawa-based e-commerce platform Shopify Inc. reported receiving 40 per cent more applications from the U.S. in the first quarter of 2017 than it did during an average quarter in 2016. ThinkData Works Inc., an open data company, reported a 50 per cent increase in U.S.-based applications on average in 2017 compared with the previous year and twice as many foreign applicants overall.
“This is remarkable for a modestly funded seed-stage startup,” said Lara Torvi, a spokeswoman for MaRS, in an e-mail.
Members of Canada’s tech community have been predicting this would happen since U.S. President Donald Trump’s election in November. The Canadian tech industry has been marketing itself as a friendlier alternative for immigrants, many of whom feel unwelcome in the U.S. given Trump’s public statements and policy stances.
In January, 150 people from Canada’s leading tech companies and accelerators published an open letter denouncing an executive order from Trump barring travellers from seven Muslimmajority countries from entering the United States. Trump has also pledged to restrict a special American visa program known as H-1B that allows foreigners to work or run businesses in the U.S. and is heavily used by the tech industry.
Toronto-based digital medical image company Figure 1 had twice as many U.S.-based applicants for a senior role posted in January 2017 than it did for a similar position posted in January 2016. In addition to the increase in such applicants at his company, Figure 1 chief executive Gregory Levey said he’s noticed more U.S. investors and Silicon Valley heavyweights making trips to Canada.
Levey said the interest appears to be based on a general sense of momentum in the Canadian tech industry in addition to political concerns about the Trump administration.
“If you ask these people, some will tell you one or the other, but for most it’s kind of a combo,” Levey said. “This is not something that used to happen a lot.”
Ben Baldwin, co-founder of the corporate innovation consulting firm ScaleDriver Inc. and founder of The Founder City Project, which provides training to entrepreneurs, said Canada could do an even better job of promoting itself as a great place for people in the tech industry to move to. Most people don’t realize Toronto’s tech sector is growing faster than it is in many major American cities, he said.
“We have people moving their companies from the Valley to be here because there’s such an opportunity,” he said. “It’s really exciting to be here right now.”
Abdullah Snobar, executive director of the DMZ at Ryerson University, said Canada is benefitting from its image as a place of stability in an unstable world. He said tech workers are looking for economic opportunity, but they’re also looking for a good place to put down roots.
“Uncertainty’s not good for any business,” Snobar said. “For building families and a working culture, they want to be in a place like Canada.” cbrownell@nationalpost.com Twitter.com/clabrow