Immigrants to Canada are increasingly leaving this country for opportunities elsewhere, according to a study(opens in a new tab) conducted by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada.
In fact, the number of immigrants who left Canada rose by 31 per cent above the national average(opens in a new tab) in 2017 and 2019.
According to the study, factors that influence onward migration include economic integration, a sense of belonging, racism, homeownership, or a lack thereof, and economic opportunities in other countries, the report revealed.
Canada got its key industries stripped away by the US (Boeing to Bombardier) and China (Huawei to Nortel). Now? All the jobs are fleeing South of the border and people are fleeing with it.
At least Huawei still employs a fuck ton of Canadian tech workers and is rapidly expanding. Huawei is footing the bill for a ton of big tech conferences in Canada. They’re sponsoring a bunch of projects for Canadian undergraduate engineering students. They’re hiring a sizable chunk of the graduates from Canadian universities in their focus areas and are happy to foot the bill for technical training. Frankly, Huawei is doing a better job of creating and keeping Canadian talent within Canada than most Canadian companies. They relinquished any IP control over research done in conjunction with Canadian universities.
Meanwhile, Microsoft uses it’s Canadian offices as visa waiting rooms before shipping them off to the US.
Microsoft’s game division includes Canadian studios like The Coalition and Compulsion Games. The latter literally relied on being acquired by Xbox in order to publish their 2nd (and 1st major) game, now they have grown from 40 to 80 since the game was published. Those studios are still located in where they were founded even after acquisition. In general, Microsoft has a hands-off approach with the studios, allowing them more freedom to develop games.
Sure, the game industry has its own problems and salary issues, which is something people in the industry are trying to improve, but at least the creative & technical talent stays here in Canada rather than being relocated, and many people can work in game studios for a few years before easily moving into other areas of software development.
Yeah, you’re right about that, my bad.
I was thinking more in terms of the core tech teams - there’s a decent EA presence here as well.
Yeah it’s unfortunate they don’t have more core development in Vancouver. For instance, a major part of the Chrome team (and previously Stadia) was in Montreal. Microsoft should have been doing something similar in Vancouver (esp. considering the time zone too).