Canada鈥檚 tech firms are hoping Donald Trump will help keep Canadian graduates from skipping town for Silicon Valley and perhaps even lure back some of the talented expats who have gone south for work.
Innovation hubs like Waterloo, Ont., are clamouring to put the best and brightest on their payroll, in order to build everything from self-driving vehicles to armbands that let users control drones with a flick of the wrist.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really a war for talent,鈥� said Jeremy Auger, chief strategy officer with Kitchener, Ont.-based educational technology company Desire2Learn. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got a huge and growing tech community that is just booming.鈥�
Auger has an empty loft space he hopes to fill with new hires, but he鈥檚 been worried the so-called 鈥渂rain drain鈥� will make it difficult to find the right people to add to his team of over 800 employees.
Canadian companies large and small have quietly bemoaned the exodus of talent for decades, and agencies like Communitech and the City of Toronto have been trying to woo them back.
That鈥檚 why billboards have been placed on well-travelled Route 101 in Silicon Valley promoting 鈥�,鈥� a website extolling the virtues of tech jobs in Ontario.
Communitech vice-president Heather Galt said the site has seen spikes in traffic in recent days.
鈥淧eople are reaching out and letting us know they are ready to come home,鈥� according to Galt.
Virginia Jamieson, a Toronto native working in New York, says Trump has made her nervous.
鈥淚 have a two-year-old son and I question what it is going to be like raising a child under the Trump administration,鈥� she said.
While effectiveness of GoNorthCanada.ca鈥檚 entrepreneurial opportunism and the pleas from Canada鈥檚 tech leaders remains unseen, the industry鈥檚 hunger for fresh talent and its willingness to pursue it cannot be denied.
鈥淭here is a huge talent drainage problem that has been occurring since the 1980s,鈥� said Vidyard CEO and co-founder Michael Litt. 鈥淲e are in a potential position to reverse that flow, or at least stop it to some degree.鈥�
With a report from CTV's John Vennavally-Rao
