Canada Seeking Investment from Big Foreign Players in Tech Sector

CEO of consultancy company MetaVRse highlighted last week during a discussion about the future of augmented and virtual reality industries in Canada that only homegrown investors can keep the profits in AR and VR industries from seeping across the border.

Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that even though Canada is seeing a resurgence in its tech sector that has caught the attention of companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google, the country’s policy makers want to encourage investment from these big-name companies, while at the same time nurture homegrown, Canadian firms.

Trudeau

The publication notes that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is traveling to Silicon Valley today, in order to promote Canada’s virtues as a global technology hub. Mr. Trudeau will be meeting with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, as well as executives from Salesforce, AppDirect and eBay, encouraging them to open up shop in Canada instead of poaching the country’s talent.

Ahead of Mr. Trudeau’s visit with Salesforce, the company said Thursday it would invest $2 billion over the next five years in its Canadian business aimed at boosting its headcount and expanding its office footprint to reflect its growing customer base in the country.

Mr. Trudeau has lamented a “brain drain” of Canada’s best tech minds, saying at a recent Google event in Toronto, “Quite frankly, we’re tired of Google poaching our best graduates from the University of Waterloo and sucking them down to California.”

Mr. Trudeau wrote to Mr. Bezos last year, asking him to consider Canada for the company’s second headquarters, because of its inclusiveness, single-payer health- care system, and an immigration system designed to attract high-skilled talent.

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