It's not just government Canadian industry has gotten in on excessive paper work, and as an indipendent metal worker(primary income) , I have started to reverse interview clients, especialy corporate ones, and just cut the whole thing off, and state "I will do metal work, but not office work", as each of these outfits has it's own opaque beurocracy that expects to interface with another opaque beurocracy , and the worst part is that they then never actualy have blueprints or decent drawings of what they want. I also get calls from start ups, desperate for fancy laser cut, or metal 3d printing, 9 axis cnc, or whatever and have to explain that any of those capacities here, are for in house use of some major aerospace type companies that wont take a call. The real situation is demographics, from where I sit there is an area bigger than europe, east and north of Montreal, that has less people in it than greater Montreal. Further, a slight exageration, but only just,There are many chunks of Canada where you could drop ,say, Japan, or France, and not hit anybody, and Japan having an odd shape might actualy not hit one single person with a little fiddling. Anybody setting up here needs to realy grasp the demographics first, and then pay attention to those few people who can navigate all of it and get something complicated done fast, and properly.

Canadian startups can and should be much more nimble, but more critically, there just is no incentive for a venture capital ecosystem to develop within Canada - individuals with capital who could become LPs are uninterested in investing in Canadian VCs [0] and a large portion of richest Canadians [1] (especially Canadians who succeeded in tech entrepreneurship) are heavily aligned with MAGA.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46774220

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46779984

woah this article sucks

This article is most likely going to fall off the front page soon if it hasn’t already.

I was surprised YC went back to accepting Canadian companies. In the past when I’d bring up issues on HN with regards to the Canadian tech sector, people would try to refute until other Canadians stepped in to back me up. It’s ridiculous. Someone even told me I need to be less pessimistic. What in the living fuck.

My theory is that, as I have seen, YC probably internally is going to arrange for Canadian founders to relocate to the states (as they have always done). So to them, not getting a potential Canadian company like a Shopify would be a loss.

Canada has very little incentive to have a healthy tech sector in its own right. The country is a tax farm owned by bankers who put a banker in charge. YC had a chance to spell it out but oh well. We need grassroots movements and maker spaces like no tomorrow. Shenzhen is so far ahead it’s fucking pathetic.

I’m well paid but if I had to do it over again I’d join with the rest of my colleagues who went off to much, much greener pastures. The article almost mocks brain drain but it is an understatement. Lots of my colleagues are lining up for US immigration. Trump? Right-wing politics? What a fucking farce.

Money talks. Bullshit walks.