[vkou]

The Canadian model for business isn't all that great.

It doesn't do a great job of serving the country's social needs, and it also doesn't do a great job of producing competitive businesses.

There's a fair number of public funds that get funneled into unproductive firms through things like innovation grants, and there's a lot of protectionism for incompetent incumbents. All of this seems to enrich a small class of elites, at the expense of the public purse. Most Canadians just shrug their shoulders at all this, and move on with life.

[nickff]

Ballard Power being a classic example of this, though there are many.

[airstrike]

Can you share more on how this applies to Ballard Power? It's a name that just came up on my radar this weekend and I was planning on doing research on them, so thought I'd ask in case you have something specific to share

[nickff]

Ballard's been getting government grants and subsidies for over 20 years, and produced very little in terms of saleable product on the other end. They make fuel cells and related products, but their business model seems to be mostly taking government and investor money, and using it to produce units which they 'sell' at below-cost to companies trying to look green by 'testing' alternative fuels.

[randaouser]

One of the worse offenders is North which is previously thalmic labs; Not a single product has reached the market with any revenue to show but remains a poster child for a successful organization.

[imtringued]

That sounds like the conventional VC model of pumping money into obviously bad companies. The only difference is that this is government funded.

[bcrl]

Canadian banks are incredibly risk averse, and programs like CSBFP have so many strings attached that make it almost useless for certain sectors. Trying to fund infrastructure (rural FTTH) has been an exercise in futility with most Canadian banks. 75-85% loan to value ratio on fibre builds makes no sense considering the assets have 30+ years of life after being paid off in 3-4 years. But hey, we love real estate!

[munk-a]

As a Vancouver-side Canadian I must say that the support for tech up here is pretty poor in a large part due to the labour laws being gutted by EA. Providing information on OT policies and OT compensation is one of the first rounds of questions you can expect to receive during hiring.

On the other hand - Canadian business expenses are still quite high, but quite a bit lower than US business expenses. Healthcare and cost of living are huge factors in labour costs.

[WalterBright]

> public funds that get funneled into unproductive firms

If they were productive firms, they wouldn't need government money. This is why free markets work better, because free markets allocate resources to the most productive uses.

[markdown]

> productive uses.

You misspelled profitable.

[WalterBright]

The role of government in a free market is to make profitable and productive congruent.