The country?s tech scene is in the spotlight, but its urban policy may be key to future success The ads and billboards began going up before the election, and haven?t stopped. Sortable, an ad platform based in Waterloo, Ontario, started running an ad in March showing a picture of President Trump with the words ?Feeling Homesick",? part of an attempt to bring Canadian tech workers in the U.S. back home.
A company called True North launched in November 2016 to help tech workers, especially those on visas nervous about recent anti-immigrant rhetoric, relocate from Silicon Valley to Vancouver. In May, Toronto Life magazine ran a feature about eight Americans who relocated to Canada, including a Bay Area tech worker who found both opportunity and a better work-life balance, and provincial leaders in Ontario are launching a social-media outreach campaign targeting tech execs. In the age of Trump, Canada?s tech scene sees an unprecedented opportunity. Sure, it?s still a fraction of the size of the industry in the U.S.?while venture capital investments in Canadian companies nearly hit an all-time high of $1.7 billion in 2016, it?s still tiny compared to the $69 billion invested in U.S. companies (figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted).
But big names, such as Shopify and Hootsuite, continue to grow, Toronto is aggressively pursuing investments in artificial intelligence, and the Canadian government announced in June it would streamline the visa process so i...