This article itself is a great case study. The implicit structure of this article is that Lynn got fired and became an entrepreneur because he was forced into it. They never asked him anything about what it would take to get more entrepreneurs or make his life as an entrepreneur easier.
Instead they asked 4 professors of entrepreneurship & govt. ministers who probably weren't entrepreneurs. These people mentioned twice that one of the reasons for low entrepreneurship is because unemployment is too low and jobs pay too well... the whole push for this is coming from callous bureaucrats who've never been anywhere close to entrepreneurship who apparently believe its so bad that the only reason someone would do it is if they have no other options..
What a joke.. it's hard to believe this level of stupidity , it might just be malice (a pretext to justify raising interest rates and increase unemployment)
This is what happens in a world where “experts” are merely those with “certifications at the expert level” and not people with actual knowledge and experience.
That kind of world is an inevitable outcome of large bureaucracies and over-reliance on qualifications. You don’t just get idiocracy, you get Untruths and policies oriented around expanding the bureaucracy rather than addressing problems. See also: Lysenkoism in the USSR, EU’s model of funding startups through grants.
I honestly think this one of the things the US does way, way better than other developed countries. We pay a price in cronyism and corruption, but we actually let industry experts with real experience both advise on policy and take key government positions. We don’t pretend you need a PhD in X to be knowledgeable about X to nearly the same extent as Canada and the Eu.
You can’t just stick a midwit in a university for 10 years and expect them to be anything other than a midwit, and you can’t expert an organization that values compliance and internal politics more than performance and effectiveness to produce performant or effective leaders. You can’t bureaucracy your way into a free market either.
A bunch of people with the wrong assumptions who don't understand the core mechanics of a situation surely won't improve things I agree with you on that. Calling them midwits with no prospects, on the other hand, says more about you than them.
Aye, I like to think of entrepreneurs as extreme investors. They are investing their time and effort in the expectation that there will be significant returns in the market.
The Canadian entrepreneur problem is the TSX problem: it's a struggle to convince oneself to invest in Canada, because generally the returns are lackluster. Rail, Banks, Oil and Gas are the consistent winners, all well-connected and deeply rooted, and rare is the startup that becomes a star on the TSX.
It's not that there isn't enough starving and unemployed talent, it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies.
> it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies.
On the face of it, Canada should be a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The country has full access to the US market, has a good standard of living, has capitalism with good social nets, has great rule of law, well educated residents, allows qualified immigrants...
Every major economy is aging. Surely this cannot be the answer why entrepreurship in Canada is down.
Also, I object to the metric of entrepreneurs as a percentage of population used in the article. It is about how many successful companies are being born. You could have a very high entrepreurship rate with a high failure rate or you could have a low entrepreneurship rate with a high success rate. At the end it is the product of the two i.e. sustainable, successful businesses born per year that is a better metric. We also need to take future profitability and future-impact into account. Giving birth to one OpenAI per year is arguably better than getting 100 new dry-cleaner businesses per-year.
What a joke.. it's hard to believe this level of stupidity , it might just be malice (a pretext to justify raising interest rates and increase unemployment)
The political branch of the government does not control interest rates, nor have any say in them. The Prime Minister cannot raise or lower interest rates.
This is the same in most western democracies, as such things cannot be left to political control.
I mean, they admit that they only have "considerable independence", but not "total independence":
"The Bank of Canada is a special type of Crown corporation, owned by the federal government, but with considerable independence to carry out its responsibilities."
They also add: "The Governor and Senior Deputy Governor are appointed by the Bank's Board of Directors (with the approval of Cabinet), not by the federal government."
... and the BoD are appointed by cabinet.
Does the political branch make the decisions? No. But they choose the people that do!
This is wrong. They can fire the director (which sets the policy). As the director is not that independent (or there is no strong safe guard that she is) then you indirectly set the interest rate.
The CBC is little more than crass government propaganda at this point. Canada in general should be viewed as a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks more government intervention in our lives, is a good thing.
As someone that has lived in several countries, and currently in Canada, I will respectfully have to disagree both about your opinion of the CBC and beliefs about government intervention. Some parts of Canadian local/provincial/federal government seem deeply dysfunctional, but some are extremely helpful and better than I’ve seen elsewhere.
As a person who has very close familial ties to other countries (US and Europe), and been around a decent bit, I still think life in Canada is better than in other places (for me). Sure we have problems, some of them are getting even worse than before, but comparatively we’re doing okay. It’s easy to say everything sucks here, but it also sucks in other places for different reasons.
Full disclaimer, I consider myself politically moderate/centrist and still think CBC is very valuable. And again, I understand everyone has different priorities in life and Canada might not be suitable for them. But implying “we have it the worst and nobody would want to live here if they had a way to get out” is also wrong.
Perhaps you are being a bit cynical? There are certainly no problems that can't be solved by giving more money to government initiatives like the MaRS Centre in Ontario. These institutions also create jobs and are businesses of a certain sort, so funding them is supporting business directly.
And who can argue with the results? Several promising entrepreneurs each year take advantage of these critical programs to consult with pro-business advisers who assist in job creation by recommending they apply for 3k tax breaks.
I don't know.. before the tech boom that redefined basic meanings, entrepreneurs were known as folks who were otherwise unemployable. So yes some people start companies because they have a blinding ambition but others do so out of necessity.
It’s not only about material wealth, it’s about agency.
If you’re a corporate drone, someone else owns your time. Want to take some time off? You need permission from your employer. Want to do something differently? Need permission. Want to think for yourself or take initiative? Frowned upon at best, forbidden at worst.
Nothing wrong with one or the other, but it doesn’t suit everyone.
>ell... the whole push for this is coming from callous bureaucrats who've never been anywhere close to entrepreneurship who apparently believe its so bad that the only reason someone would do it is if they have no other options..
In all fairness, isn't that a legitimate reason? If you could make a very comfy life and retire early I think many would be entrepreneurs would take the easy way out. Of course, some want the big cash out or strongly believe in their mission, but many people are there for the money.
Of course, I can't verify if wages in Canada are indeed "too well. Seems like an outdated statement if the economy up there is anything close to the US's. Legitimate reason with incorrect data is simply a misguided take.
I know the cost of living is now a standard excuse for everything unfortunate in Canada, but I have an untypical view on this topic:
Canadians strike me as a very undemanding nation. I mean, they are ready to go through whatever inconvenience a big corp may force them into, and still be fine about it. To Canadians, it's just the way things are, inevitable evil. At the same time, an entrepreneur frequently starts by targeting a market niche and offering better quality or better service or a novel way of doing things. However, a market niche assumes that there are consumers with a niche demand. But if consumers are undemanding and are OK with keeping paying for something subpar, this leaves us with not so many market niches and thus opportunities.
At the same time, doing business is great in Canada. The tax system is simple (just 3 taxes). Reduced tax rates for small businesses. Registering a business can be done online for a small fee. The banks are OK. Abundance of decent business-related services - accountants, designers, etc. It's relatively easy to sell to the government. Finding a good lawyer is a tough problem, though. But I suspect it's a problem everywhere.
I totally agree with the “undemanding Canadians” view…so true! I moved here 12 years ago from Dubai and the demands/standards of business and service are way lower here. Pros are that it’s laid back and chill, cons are that we are unlikely to lead and innovate because we are satisfied with the status quo
The vibe I get too often in Canada is services (public and private) exist to employ workers, not to provide services, and it's pervasive. As as service consumer you are expected to enthusiastically go along with this cost on your existence, and the scary thing is most people do. This leads to the problem that no matter how much money you would throw at getting something done you will only be able to get what someone else wants to do, regardless of what you are paying for.
They are also undemanding of their government, having reelected the same government many years in a row now. The whole undemanding culture is pointing them to a direction of uniformity, which I guess would equate to more monopolies and less innovation and entrepreneurship.
Left or right, the Canadian government serves business not individuals and it shows everywhere. There is only ONE independent ISP left in Ontario and they have recently been talking to law firms who specialize in the sale of businesses. That leaves Bell, Rogers and Cogeco as the only way you can get a home phone, cell phone or internet connection. Most places you have only one option for your electrical and natural gas provider!
Canada is just 3 monopolies in a trench coat and there is nothing we can do about it.
I mean, if the government wants to buy something from you they do it relatively easily. You don't have to persuade them for months and years as frequently expected in enterprise sales. They just request a quota (RFQ), send a PO, and then pay the invoice. No elaborate RFPs or endless bidding processes.
Of course, it's not always like that. But in my experience such simplified purchases were sufficiently frequent to (pleasantly) surprise me.
Coziness is the biggest hurdle. As a programmer, I can make a really good salary at a tech giant. Even after 4 years of grinding and finally achieving product market fit and growth, my wife doesn't understand why I'm doing a startup. Life could be so much easier working for Google.
Heck everyone has a job here. The 2/1,000 missing entrepreneurs don't have an incentive to start. I'm from Ottawa and all my friends work for the federal government with big fat pensions and doing boring work (my perspective mind you). But they have great family lives, lots of vacation and great outside of work experiences. Why the hell would they jump into entrepreneurship? Worst of all, the government workforce is growing faster than that of the private sector!
What worries me most is the future - a country cannot get wealthier nor innovate without entrepreneurs. It is s a real concern indeed.
What are you talking about? Coziness? Are you one of those people you bought a house in the 2010s and are now well positioned to cash in and live a life of comfort with 500$ mortgages while homes out there are near a million dollar. Because then it would make sense.
Problem with Canada is the cost of living is too high. And there is more money if you move south. Easy. A job in US would easily pay you twice if you are in tech. Why would you want to live in Canada? Oh did I say the taxes. For a millennial,ife is way more harder.
Plenty of affordable homes in Canada at the $500,000 mortgage + down payment range. Go find a smaller city and grow with it because you have the same affordability problem in San Francisco or New York. Your tech salary isn't getting you a house there either. The time to buy a house in Toronto was when they cost $5,000 after the war or was the time to buy in 1975 when the property cost $30,000 or in the 90s when you could have gotten a house for $200,000. In 2012 for $500,000 you could get a house in 2021 it was 1.3 million now it's 1.1 million. In 2015 you could have purchased a home in New Brunswick for $25,000..
Your 1.1 million dollar home you buy today will be worth 5 million in 50 years at least 2 million in 20 years. Still as good of an investment as ever.
It's like bitcoin sure it would have been great buying coins for 5 cents and today and you would be a billionaire but you weren't able to make that bet. If you want to buy at the 5 cent level you need to find another coin because that opportunity passed. You weren't able to buy a home in 2010 or 1947 so you are never getting those prices again. You can buy today but don't expect the same prices on the same properties as if you lived in the past
- 2010 mortgages are not that low, unless you bought a travel trailer
- $1million actually doesn't buy you much in Toronto, Vancouver, or even a smaller city like Victoria
- a millennial working at big tech ($200k+) can still afford one of these absurdly priced homes
Yes housing in Canada is messed up. But very well paid tech workers are actually some of the few young people that can still make it work.
Heck, I know some millennials that managed to buy in the Bay Area where it's even worse (they work at Tesla).
Canada is very much a "let someone else do it" kind of place. You see that in politics, you see that in business, you see that in government.
A lot of that though is simply not wanting to be rich. Americans truly want lambo type wealth. I can't say I have met someone born here who wanted that. We are content to own a house and go to Mexico.
But isn't housing ridiculously expensive in the parts of Canada where jobs are concentrated (which I'm pretty sure are around Toronto and Vancouver)? Pardon me if wrong, I'm American ;)
For the record, I want those things too, it's just that housing in California is ridiculously unaffordable
I frequently travel to Toronto and the number of people driving Teslas there has increased 10X in the last 5 years. This could be a result of new Chinese money though and not native Canadians.
USA also has a significant amount of generational wealth to go around. Canadas is isolated to a few dozen families in Montreal and Toronto. Canada is at its core, a resource extraction economy. Generational wealth doesn’t really come from that these days.
The inefficiency of the Canadian government is nothing to be proud of though. It's insane how many people are employed there compared to doing something productive.
Implying the employees of the federal government aren’t doing something productive? And the Canadian federal government isn’t even that different in size to the American government, accounting for population different.
> Coziness is the biggest hurdle. As a programmer, I can make a really good salary at a tech giant. Even after 4 years of grinding and finally achieving product market fit and growth, my wife doesn't understand why I'm doing a startup. Life could be so much easier working for Google.
If this was a major factor then it would also apply to entrepreneurs in the US, yet it doesn't.
There are a lot of engineers in big tech in the bay area who would start a company if not for their 6-700k (or more in some cases) salaries. I personally know many and they are making a completely rational choice.
People don't make decisions in a vacuum. They make decisions amongst a set of choices.
Same problem with the imperial exam Keju[1] in China. It would recruit all talent for the state leaving civil society resourceless. The examination path to a government official position was more attractive than being a farmer, scholar or soldier.
> Since the introduction of the examination system … scholars have forsaken their studies, peasants their ploughs, artisans their crafts, and merchants their trades; all have turned their attention to but one thing – government office. This is because the official has all the combined advantages of the four without requiring their necessary toil …
We can see its effects in the long run: promoting conformity at any cost, losing ability to innovate and improve.
1 in every 4 people work for the Gov in Ontario and it is increasing. An elementary school teacher, fireman, Police officer and even some postal workers make more than most programmers. HS teachers retired with million dollar pension at 57 and collect 60-70k a year. There are regular cops making 120k a year. There are more STEM jobs in some US cities than there are in entire provinces. There is no work in Canada unless you find a Gov job. Private industry pays like shit in Canada, it's embarrassing. Everyone I know flees to the US first chance they get. Canadian private industry pays like shit and most folks are either slaves or under employed if they are lucky enough to find work.
It is an incredibly bad situation across the entire country.
One thing I’ll highlight is that public sector growth has outpaced private sector during that whole time, and entrepreneurs indirectly have to pay to prop up public services only to get from a business perspective to get a worse business ecosystem than America in pretty much every way except not having to pay for employee health insurance and lower labour costs. If the idea is that the public sector’s wonderful services are supposed to help the private sector flourish, well, that whole idea doesn’t seem to be working.
The other is rents have increased that whole time, who can afford to be an entrepreneur when your lease will eat you alive before you ever get off the ground. If the argument is “aha - but Canadians could start an innovative company that relies on remote work and thus avoid such expensive leases” what is the appeal of starting such a business in Canada compared to starting one in the United States where success is far more likely due to a larger market and more pro-business environment?
Finally inequality and monopolization is just much worse than 20 years ago internationally. Why be David fighting Goliath when the deck is stacked against you? I’d be kind of surprised if the trend in the article isn’t happening internationally.
The articles suggestion that Canadians just don’t have good enough soft skills to be entrepreneurs is just insulting blaming of non-existent individual deficits that ignores systemic issues.
What evidence do you have that there is a causal inverse relationship between public sector growth and private sector growth? Isn’t it entirely possible that private sector growth has lagged because some third process has produced fewer entrepreneurs and fewer entrepreneurs results in less private sector growth? It’s possible that the relative difference in public and private sector growth is caused by fewer entrepreneurs, not the other way around. Basically, your argument is a classic case of assuming causality from a correlation.
> If the idea is that the public sector’s wonderful services are supposed to help the private sector flourish, well, that whole idea doesn’t seem to be working.
Are you implying that social programs are here to help to private sector?
"once you have universal health care and every possible social safety net, then people will be able to take risks without fear of failing and innovate like crazy"
This example is for the prior decade, but the difference is so stark over 2003-2013 (22% public sector growth vs. 10% private) that even if the comment was conjecture, it would be a pretty good one. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/times-have-changed-p...
I'd suggest a more constructive comment might be to find an example source and ask whether it is consistent with the reasoning. These "source?" comments are low effort and degrade the quality of conversation.
An easy way to explain this is increased health care and old-age care costs due to an ageing population. I haven't verified it for Canada in particular, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't the cause.
The reason seems to be the same than France. I think in the OECD only the US managed to avoid it yet (probably a mix of net immigration, retirement age being really weird, and life expectancy 10year lower than the average
), but most of the increase is in Healthcare, specifically elderly care, and in the administration, also caused by the population being older: the overall population grow, but the number of 'active' do not, or do it slower.
Education, research and policing growth slower than all other ministry (although police funding seems to be catching up).
There is also administrative bloat, mostly due to more rules, but it seems quite contained here to ecology and urbanism (except in the education ministry, which employ now more administrators than teachers)
The opportunity cost of starting a business in Canada is too high. People who have the capital to start their own business are more likely to see better returns by investing in real estate which has much lower risk and requires less effort. The federal and provincial governments would need to stop artificially propping up the real estate sector to make entrepreneurship competitive which is unlikely to happen willingly.
Many of the programs to help with housing affordability is making it easier for first-time homebuyers to get enough money for a downpayment. There is tax break for first-time buyers, the ability to borrow money from your own RRSP and most recently the FHSA (First Home Savings Account). Long term this increases home prices by injecting more money into the system.
I run a Canadian tech startup here. Funding to get going is of course an issue. The BDC (referenced in this article) is just another bank and have zero means to help a SaaS getting started.
We turned to the US to get funding (besides our own money). TinySeed specializes in boostrapped B2B SaaS. They have an incubator program that is really good and got us going.
We're at the point of getting a line of credit and again have to deal with Canadian banks. Again the BDC cannot help more than any other bank.
We also looked at government tech subsidies and grants. Honestly, there is so much paperwork that takes time away from gaining customers and growing the business. We did not pursue.
Maybe when you reach 20+ staff these things will come to help you. Especially if you have someone to manage it. But when you get started, you're on your own.
Back when I worked at a Canadian startup and had to do SRED paperwork I got the vibe that it was more about companies that could afford to hire SRED consultants than it was actual research and dev. Heard stories about web dev / media shops milking SRED, while I saw people doing actual foundational engineering struggle (nor could they waste the time filling in the paperwork).
This was over a decade ago. Did not come away with a positive impression of the tech startup scene in Canada. Yours and other comments since have only fed that.
... I want to disagree with this, but it lines up with my own experience. My work was being presented for similar grants with very flimsy justifications. Not pure web work but it wasn't exactly foundational research either.
> We also looked at government tech subsidies and grants. Honestly, there is so much paperwork that takes time away from gaining customers and growing the business.
I wonder how that compares with, for example, joining an YC batch, or talking to multiple VCs in search of financing
The severe rent seeking behaviors throughout the Canadian economy are making things too burdensome to try entrepreneurship.
For a Main St type business, rents, costs and regulations are too high.
Rents again come into play for the entrepreneur, being so insanely high that they discourage risk taking and encourage people to stay at their current relatively high paying company.
As with so many things in Canada it all comes back to housing lol.
We will not have more entrepreneurship until it is dramatically cheaper to live in Canada, and that means lowering one of the biggest costs that people have, which is housing.
It's been this way since colonial times. It's either rip-it-and-ship-it extraction industries... or "I got there first, so give me $$" rent seeking & monopoly.
I don't want to be a part of the US, I hate their culture and politics. But the local elites here benefit too much from having their own little closed market to monopolize and control.
This comment, and the whole thread really, is such a mind fuck for me - someone who lives in a rich left-wing American city. Canada is idolized and worshipped here as the paragon of lifestyle - the perfect balance of capitalism, civil discourse, and welfare state support (in addition to Norway). I literally have friends making comfortable $500k+ family incomes musing about how much better it would be to move to Canada.
A lot of this is simply that Canadians do not desire to be rich and prioritize not being poor. That is not aligned with entrepreneurship. Our culture is very poorly suited to it.
I know because I am one of those people.
For example, I have participated in numerous entrepreneurship accelerator programs, as have my friends. How many of us spent any time on our companies after finishing the accelerators? Zero. I know people who put the winning of 200K on their resume, went to get a corporate job, and just returned the 200K in prize money later, as the purpose of the prize was to be publicly named as winning the prize. This person now works for RBC as a software developer.
I won 20K with a friend a few weeks ago for our startup (which was generated just for the competition). We intend to hand the money back at the progress deadline, as he is a new grad and it helped him to get a job.
Canadians are also very suspicious of people who do go into business for themselves. American companies will hire entrepreneurs. Going to YC is not a career derailer. In Canada, we would assume that if you started a company that you couldn't find a job. I have been in the (virtual) room as resumes are tossed as the hiring manager assumed "Co-Founder" was just a synonym for unemployed.
Anecdotally, Canadians need more money to work for a startup, not less as in the USA. Americans take pay cuts to work for startups in the hope of a giant return. Canadians demand a pay premium to work for a startup, over say RBC.
The other issue is that Canadian consumers also do not take risks. We don't try new products or switch suppliers. Consider our high internet costs. There are tons of other options, but even when CBC went out and told people about them, they refused to switch as they didn't want to take the risk.
> There are tons of other options, but even when CBC went out and told people about them, they refused to switch as they didn't want to take the risk.
That's a 6 year old article. Most alt/independent vendors have basically been gutted or acquired by the incumbent oligopolists.
Was with 2 providers (Teksavvy and eBox) that jacked up their prices above what the "flanker" providers by incumbents were charging. There used to be quite a savings, but that's vaporized.
Coextro might be worth investigating, I'll admit. Thought they only did own-fibre to bigger buildings.
> Canadians demand a pay premium to work for a startup, over say RBC.*
Citation needed. Not only does RBC not actually pay particularly well, but Canadian startups pay awful compared to US ones. I've worked in both US and Canadian startups, and the latter was an incestuous joke, with everyone so delighted they weren't working for a crappy webdev or bank or insurance company that they were willing to put up with all sorts of crap.
Anecdotes on top of anecdotes, but this post captures the Canadian mentality well in my opinion. Though his name is _verboten_, Jordan Peterson goes off in this direction. His common words are that Canadians are suspicious of success.
I don't quite know why the culture is like this, and I'm not sure it's a problem. Useful to take a step back and realize that Canada is a very different culture than the US, and there simply is a different value system.
Summed up in:
> A lot of this is simply that Canadians do not desire to be rich and prioritize not being poor.
I imagine selection bias is a lot of it. Lots of immigrants for both, but the USA is where you go to seek fame and fortune. Canada is the nice and stable answer.
Canada is arguably also socially neutral on wealth. In the USA, wealth earns you respect, influence, straightforward political influence, etc. In Canada, wealth is just wealth. If anything, we are a bit suspicious of how you earned it and who you hurt to do that.
It's not surprising as Canada is self selected as the people who did not want to take the risk of founding a new country based on enlightenment ideals and democracy.
I mean... People fled to beCanada to not be part of the us.
Now we reap the rewards. America is a resounding success, and Canada is a success because it is next to America.
Readit News
Instead they asked 4 professors of entrepreneurship & govt. ministers who probably weren't entrepreneurs. These people mentioned twice that one of the reasons for low entrepreneurship is because unemployment is too low and jobs pay too well... the whole push for this is coming from callous bureaucrats who've never been anywhere close to entrepreneurship who apparently believe its so bad that the only reason someone would do it is if they have no other options..
What a joke.. it's hard to believe this level of stupidity , it might just be malice (a pretext to justify raising interest rates and increase unemployment)
That kind of world is an inevitable outcome of large bureaucracies and over-reliance on qualifications. You don’t just get idiocracy, you get Untruths and policies oriented around expanding the bureaucracy rather than addressing problems. See also: Lysenkoism in the USSR, EU’s model of funding startups through grants.
I honestly think this one of the things the US does way, way better than other developed countries. We pay a price in cronyism and corruption, but we actually let industry experts with real experience both advise on policy and take key government positions. We don’t pretend you need a PhD in X to be knowledgeable about X to nearly the same extent as Canada and the Eu.
You can’t just stick a midwit in a university for 10 years and expect them to be anything other than a midwit, and you can’t expert an organization that values compliance and internal politics more than performance and effectiveness to produce performant or effective leaders. You can’t bureaucracy your way into a free market either.
The Canadian entrepreneur problem is the TSX problem: it's a struggle to convince oneself to invest in Canada, because generally the returns are lackluster. Rail, Banks, Oil and Gas are the consistent winners, all well-connected and deeply rooted, and rare is the startup that becomes a star on the TSX.
It's not that there isn't enough starving and unemployed talent, it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies.
On the face of it, Canada should be a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The country has full access to the US market, has a good standard of living, has capitalism with good social nets, has great rule of law, well educated residents, allows qualified immigrants...
Every major economy is aging. Surely this cannot be the answer why entrepreurship in Canada is down.
Also, I object to the metric of entrepreneurs as a percentage of population used in the article. It is about how many successful companies are being born. You could have a very high entrepreurship rate with a high failure rate or you could have a low entrepreneurship rate with a high success rate. At the end it is the product of the two i.e. sustainable, successful businesses born per year that is a better metric. We also need to take future profitability and future-impact into account. Giving birth to one OpenAI per year is arguably better than getting 100 new dry-cleaner businesses per-year.
The article could have been better.
Do you reckon there is room for innovation here?
The political branch of the government does not control interest rates, nor have any say in them. The Prime Minister cannot raise or lower interest rates.
This is the same in most western democracies, as such things cannot be left to political control.
"The Bank of Canada is a special type of Crown corporation, owned by the federal government, but with considerable independence to carry out its responsibilities."
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/about
They also add: "The Governor and Senior Deputy Governor are appointed by the Bank's Board of Directors (with the approval of Cabinet), not by the federal government."
... and the BoD are appointed by cabinet.
Does the political branch make the decisions? No. But they choose the people that do!
Full disclaimer, I consider myself politically moderate/centrist and still think CBC is very valuable. And again, I understand everyone has different priorities in life and Canada might not be suitable for them. But implying “we have it the worst and nobody would want to live here if they had a way to get out” is also wrong.
I don’t see people getting shot nearly as much in Canada.
I don’t see as many exploited illegal immigrants in Canada.
To fight corporate greed and capitalistic cynicism we do need government.
‘Government intervention’ isn’t the same as a government who works to support the needs of citizens.
And who can argue with the results? Several promising entrepreneurs each year take advantage of these critical programs to consult with pro-business advisers who assist in job creation by recommending they apply for 3k tax breaks.
It’s a lot of work and there’s plenty of money to be made as a corporate drone.
If you’re a corporate drone, someone else owns your time. Want to take some time off? You need permission from your employer. Want to do something differently? Need permission. Want to think for yourself or take initiative? Frowned upon at best, forbidden at worst.
Nothing wrong with one or the other, but it doesn’t suit everyone.
In all fairness, isn't that a legitimate reason? If you could make a very comfy life and retire early I think many would be entrepreneurs would take the easy way out. Of course, some want the big cash out or strongly believe in their mission, but many people are there for the money.
Of course, I can't verify if wages in Canada are indeed "too well. Seems like an outdated statement if the economy up there is anything close to the US's. Legitimate reason with incorrect data is simply a misguided take.
Canada has a cost of living crisis, and an entire generation has been priced out of the possibility of owning a home.
One can survive better than in the US at the extremely low end, and being sick won't kill or bankrupt you.
But nobody is living a "comfy" life without busting and hustling.
Canadians strike me as a very undemanding nation. I mean, they are ready to go through whatever inconvenience a big corp may force them into, and still be fine about it. To Canadians, it's just the way things are, inevitable evil. At the same time, an entrepreneur frequently starts by targeting a market niche and offering better quality or better service or a novel way of doing things. However, a market niche assumes that there are consumers with a niche demand. But if consumers are undemanding and are OK with keeping paying for something subpar, this leaves us with not so many market niches and thus opportunities.
At the same time, doing business is great in Canada. The tax system is simple (just 3 taxes). Reduced tax rates for small businesses. Registering a business can be done online for a small fee. The banks are OK. Abundance of decent business-related services - accountants, designers, etc. It's relatively easy to sell to the government. Finding a good lawyer is a tough problem, though. But I suspect it's a problem everywhere.
PS. I run a technology company based in Canada.
Dead Comment
Canada is just 3 monopolies in a trench coat and there is nothing we can do about it.
Of course, it's not always like that. But in my experience such simplified purchases were sufficiently frequent to (pleasantly) surprise me.
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Coziness is the biggest hurdle. As a programmer, I can make a really good salary at a tech giant. Even after 4 years of grinding and finally achieving product market fit and growth, my wife doesn't understand why I'm doing a startup. Life could be so much easier working for Google.
Heck everyone has a job here. The 2/1,000 missing entrepreneurs don't have an incentive to start. I'm from Ottawa and all my friends work for the federal government with big fat pensions and doing boring work (my perspective mind you). But they have great family lives, lots of vacation and great outside of work experiences. Why the hell would they jump into entrepreneurship? Worst of all, the government workforce is growing faster than that of the private sector!
What worries me most is the future - a country cannot get wealthier nor innovate without entrepreneurs. It is s a real concern indeed.
Problem with Canada is the cost of living is too high. And there is more money if you move south. Easy. A job in US would easily pay you twice if you are in tech. Why would you want to live in Canada? Oh did I say the taxes. For a millennial,ife is way more harder.
Your 1.1 million dollar home you buy today will be worth 5 million in 50 years at least 2 million in 20 years. Still as good of an investment as ever.
It's like bitcoin sure it would have been great buying coins for 5 cents and today and you would be a billionaire but you weren't able to make that bet. If you want to buy at the 5 cent level you need to find another coin because that opportunity passed. You weren't able to buy a home in 2010 or 1947 so you are never getting those prices again. You can buy today but don't expect the same prices on the same properties as if you lived in the past
Yes housing in Canada is messed up. But very well paid tech workers are actually some of the few young people that can still make it work.
Heck, I know some millennials that managed to buy in the Bay Area where it's even worse (they work at Tesla).
A lot of that though is simply not wanting to be rich. Americans truly want lambo type wealth. I can't say I have met someone born here who wanted that. We are content to own a house and go to Mexico.
But isn't housing ridiculously expensive in the parts of Canada where jobs are concentrated (which I'm pretty sure are around Toronto and Vancouver)? Pardon me if wrong, I'm American ;)
For the record, I want those things too, it's just that housing in California is ridiculously unaffordable
Possibly because the ambitious people moved to the US.
By what metric are you making your claims?
If this was a major factor then it would also apply to entrepreneurs in the US, yet it doesn't.
People don't make decisions in a vacuum. They make decisions amongst a set of choices.
> Since the introduction of the examination system … scholars have forsaken their studies, peasants their ploughs, artisans their crafts, and merchants their trades; all have turned their attention to but one thing – government office. This is because the official has all the combined advantages of the four without requiring their necessary toil …
We can see its effects in the long run: promoting conformity at any cost, losing ability to innovate and improve.
[1] https://aeon.co/essays/why-chinese-minds-still-bear-the-long...
1 in every 4 people work for the Gov in Ontario and it is increasing. An elementary school teacher, fireman, Police officer and even some postal workers make more than most programmers. HS teachers retired with million dollar pension at 57 and collect 60-70k a year. There are regular cops making 120k a year. There are more STEM jobs in some US cities than there are in entire provinces. There is no work in Canada unless you find a Gov job. Private industry pays like shit in Canada, it's embarrassing. Everyone I know flees to the US first chance they get. Canadian private industry pays like shit and most folks are either slaves or under employed if they are lucky enough to find work.
It is an incredibly bad situation across the entire country.
The other is rents have increased that whole time, who can afford to be an entrepreneur when your lease will eat you alive before you ever get off the ground. If the argument is “aha - but Canadians could start an innovative company that relies on remote work and thus avoid such expensive leases” what is the appeal of starting such a business in Canada compared to starting one in the United States where success is far more likely due to a larger market and more pro-business environment?
Finally inequality and monopolization is just much worse than 20 years ago internationally. Why be David fighting Goliath when the deck is stacked against you? I’d be kind of surprised if the trend in the article isn’t happening internationally.
The articles suggestion that Canadians just don’t have good enough soft skills to be entrepreneurs is just insulting blaming of non-existent individual deficits that ignores systemic issues.
You're saying the government saw there are no entrepreneurs so they increased government jobs???
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Are you implying that social programs are here to help to private sector?
...so the logic goes
Interesting, do you have a source for this? Would love to read more about it
Sept 2023 - Public sector employees: 4,291.7; Private sector employees: 13,293.4; Self-employed: 2,685.1
Sept 2003 - Public sector employees: 2,945.8; Private sector employees: 10,298.9; Self-employed: 2,430.0
Difference - Public sector employees: 1,345.9; Private sector employees: 2994.5; Self-employed: 255.1
% growth - Public sector employees: 45.7%; Private sector employees: 29.1%; Self-employed: 10.5%
I'd suggest a more constructive comment might be to find an example source and ask whether it is consistent with the reasoning. These "source?" comments are low effort and degrade the quality of conversation.
Education, research and policing growth slower than all other ministry (although police funding seems to be catching up).
There is also administrative bloat, mostly due to more rules, but it seems quite contained here to ecology and urbanism (except in the education ministry, which employ now more administrators than teachers)
That isn't the idea. The services are for the people, not to help you line your pockets.
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We turned to the US to get funding (besides our own money). TinySeed specializes in boostrapped B2B SaaS. They have an incubator program that is really good and got us going.
We're at the point of getting a line of credit and again have to deal with Canadian banks. Again the BDC cannot help more than any other bank.
We also looked at government tech subsidies and grants. Honestly, there is so much paperwork that takes time away from gaining customers and growing the business. We did not pursue.
Maybe when you reach 20+ staff these things will come to help you. Especially if you have someone to manage it. But when you get started, you're on your own.
This was over a decade ago. Did not come away with a positive impression of the tech startup scene in Canada. Yours and other comments since have only fed that.
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I wonder how that compares with, for example, joining an YC batch, or talking to multiple VCs in search of financing
For a Main St type business, rents, costs and regulations are too high.
Rents again come into play for the entrepreneur, being so insanely high that they discourage risk taking and encourage people to stay at their current relatively high paying company.
As with so many things in Canada it all comes back to housing lol.
We will not have more entrepreneurship until it is dramatically cheaper to live in Canada, and that means lowering one of the biggest costs that people have, which is housing.
I don't want to be a part of the US, I hate their culture and politics. But the local elites here benefit too much from having their own little closed market to monopolize and control.
The grass is always greener!
I know because I am one of those people.
For example, I have participated in numerous entrepreneurship accelerator programs, as have my friends. How many of us spent any time on our companies after finishing the accelerators? Zero. I know people who put the winning of 200K on their resume, went to get a corporate job, and just returned the 200K in prize money later, as the purpose of the prize was to be publicly named as winning the prize. This person now works for RBC as a software developer.
I won 20K with a friend a few weeks ago for our startup (which was generated just for the competition). We intend to hand the money back at the progress deadline, as he is a new grad and it helped him to get a job.
Canadians are also very suspicious of people who do go into business for themselves. American companies will hire entrepreneurs. Going to YC is not a career derailer. In Canada, we would assume that if you started a company that you couldn't find a job. I have been in the (virtual) room as resumes are tossed as the hiring manager assumed "Co-Founder" was just a synonym for unemployed.
Anecdotally, Canadians need more money to work for a startup, not less as in the USA. Americans take pay cuts to work for startups in the hope of a giant return. Canadians demand a pay premium to work for a startup, over say RBC.
The other issue is that Canadian consumers also do not take risks. We don't try new products or switch suppliers. Consider our high internet costs. There are tons of other options, but even when CBC went out and told people about them, they refused to switch as they didn't want to take the risk.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1196815939737
That's a 6 year old article. Most alt/independent vendors have basically been gutted or acquired by the incumbent oligopolists.
Was with 2 providers (Teksavvy and eBox) that jacked up their prices above what the "flanker" providers by incumbents were charging. There used to be quite a savings, but that's vaporized.
Coextro might be worth investigating, I'll admit. Thought they only did own-fibre to bigger buildings.
Citation needed. Not only does RBC not actually pay particularly well, but Canadian startups pay awful compared to US ones. I've worked in both US and Canadian startups, and the latter was an incestuous joke, with everyone so delighted they weren't working for a crappy webdev or bank or insurance company that they were willing to put up with all sorts of crap.
I don't quite know why the culture is like this, and I'm not sure it's a problem. Useful to take a step back and realize that Canada is a very different culture than the US, and there simply is a different value system.
Summed up in:
> A lot of this is simply that Canadians do not desire to be rich and prioritize not being poor.
I imagine selection bias is a lot of it. Lots of immigrants for both, but the USA is where you go to seek fame and fortune. Canada is the nice and stable answer.
Canada is arguably also socially neutral on wealth. In the USA, wealth earns you respect, influence, straightforward political influence, etc. In Canada, wealth is just wealth. If anything, we are a bit suspicious of how you earned it and who you hurt to do that.
I mean... People fled to beCanada to not be part of the us.
Now we reap the rewards. America is a resounding success, and Canada is a success because it is next to America.