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by myth_drannon 51 days ago
Canadian tech was thriving 10-20 years ago, there is a reason it was called Silicon Valley North. RIM, Nortel, Celestica, QNX... I can't explain what exactly happened. A simple explanation would be Liberals prioritized real estate growth, unlimited immigration to artificially boost GDP but I suspect the problem is more complex.
2 comments
k12sosse 51 days ago
Balsilie sold out to America what China didn't steal and undercut is what happened
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alephnerd 51 days ago
> Canadian tech was thriving 10-20 years ago...

Moreso 20 years ago, but more to that in a bit.

> I suspect the problem is more complex

Yes. The answer is the absolute growth of the US economy over the last 20 years compared to Canada.

In 2006, the market cap of the TSX and NYSE+NASDAQ was roughly US$1T versus US$26T respectively.

In 2025, the market cap of the TSX and NYSE+NASDAQ was around US$4.8T versus US$87T.

Additionally, from 2006 to 2026 the Canada's GDP grew from around $1.3T to $2.42T whereas America's GDP grew from around $13T to $31T.

Basically, there was always a US-Canada gap, but the gap turned into a chasm over the last 20 years, especially as Canada's GDP growth wasn't able to keep up to the US [0] and was tied to energy markets.

The brutal reality is Canada's economy is significantly less complex that the ambitions on Canadian HNers. Canada's export bundle is roughly as economically complex [0] as Bulgaria [1] and Serbia [2].

Real estate and immigration is the easy boogeyman, but it's never been a serious consideration for institutional investors in Canada.

Institutional investors with a Canada thesis primarily wish to invest in ONG, Energy, and Construction associated to those industries, yet bipartisan bickering such as BC+Quebec blocking pipelines and Alberta blocking renewables projects wiped out tens of billions of dollars worth of projects and dealflow, and played a role in US$1T in capital leaving Canada [3] over the past decade. Additionally, Canada's major differentiator against the US in the 2000s was it's ONG sector, but by the 2010s the US was able to take advantage of shale fracking and NatGas in order to completely upend Canada's leverage on the American energy market. Heck, fracking was subsidized by a Democrat (Obama) and green energy was subsidized by Republicans (eg. TX wind/solar and Perry or Solar Panel manufacturing in Georgia and Arizona). Meanwhile, in Canada liberal leaning parties would undermine fossil fuel dealflow and conservative parties would undermine renewable dealflow.

With such a diverge, Canadian capital basically left for the US and even Canadian companies like RIM and OpenText shifted much of their leadership and core IP to their US divisions.

[0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

[1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/124/export-complexit...

[2] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/100/export-complexit...

[3] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/688/export-complexit...

[4] - https://www.rbc.com/en/thought-leadership/the-growth-project...

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