Canadian expat here. You missed one thing: a dramatically smaller talent pool.

The brain drain for coders from Canada to the USA is immense. It's not a trickle, it's a full-on broken dam. I'm making easily double here what I would in Canada, even if you account for tax and cost of living. Software engineers, in general, simply don't get paid well in Canada. The ease of securing a TN visa also means that there is effectively very little barrier to anyone who wants to bail to the south side of the border.

I can't speak for everyone - but amongst myself and my other Canadian expat colleagues, a very large portion of the Canadian coder population that have the chops to get hired have left. What does this say about the talent pool that remains?

That's not a great position to work from.

Disclaimer: I am not at all claiming there aren't masterful coders in Canada, but rather that a lot of the wheat has left the country, leaving an extra heaping serving of chaff.

The funny thing is, among my Canadian colleagues here in the US, it's almost universal to want to return to Canada. The health care is sane, society is more peaceful, and the quality of life is noticeably higher than just about any US city I've been to.

Those conversations inevitably, and always, turn into us sitting around nursing beers, and wondering where in the hell we'd work in Canada that'd satisfy us professionally.

Biggest software names in Canada? EA? SAP? RIM?!

This is somewhat OT from the entrepreneurial side of the question, but also relevant. The job market in Canada has a lot of code monkey jobs, and not a lot of meaty software jobs that hackers crave. Much of the reason why there's such a huge drain of programmers from Canada to the US is not just the pay difference, but also professional satisfaction. I can't move home because almost nothing in Canada will present the level of challenge, the level of impact, that I can have here.

Do you have any idea why coders are paid so much less? Is it because all professionals are paid less (ie., are lawyers, physicians, etc all paid less in Canada)? Or is this more of a regional pattern combined with a cost of living (ie., coders are paid less in Wisconsin than in California, but might live better on what they do earn)? Or is it maybe related to productivity, that coders in these concentrated areas are able to be so much more productive than they are elsewhere that they're simply creating more wealth...

Anyway, would be interested in hearing the thoughts of a Canadian expat on this one.

I have some theories, but not a lot of proof - as is the case when arguing the effects of policy.

If you look at the job openings in software in Canada, you will find a lot of US satellite offices hiring. Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, et al all have significant presence across Canada, but the pay for Canadian positions is inevitably far, far less than their American counterparts.

Part of it is the lack of entrepreneurialism in the field, I think. Because of the lack of startups, and the lacklustre VC scene, the industry doesn't have lot of domestic legs to stand on. A huge part of the software industry's identity in Canada is "like America, but cheaper" - there aren't enough homegrown companies to counter this trend.

The software jobs are also dominated by fields where it's a cost centre, not R&D. The biggest employers of software engineers in Canada are banks and telcos, not "pure" software companies. In this environment, the majority of openings are IT monkey jobs, not high-level engineering positions.

There's a lot of talent coming out of Canada, the majority don't stay though, and they won't so long as the US offers more interesting jobs that pay double, triple the Canadian rate. More professional satisfaction, way more money? I'm not made of stone!

I can't answer this question with a very high level of confidence for all of Canada (I'm based out of the prairies) but my current feeling is simply that the quality of the positions are lacking, as the parent has pointed out.

There's a view that programmers are code monkeys. If looked at from the perspective of a manager within the manufacturing industry (Many of Canada's high net worth individuals, especially in my city, have some sort of manufacturing/hard goods background) programmers are high level production staff.

As a result the jobs generally aren't very exciting and don't pay much. Mechanical Engineers are more sought after in my city, at least.

Six figure jobs seem to be within smaller boutique firms and a few of the big companies but it is far from the norm and there aren't many of those to choose from. Programmers earning more than $150k are virtually unheard of, as far as I know. My knowledge could be inaccurate here though so please take it with a grain of salt.

To change it would mean more jobs of a different nature. Startups are the only solution I currently see to change that long-term. And we have many other issues to contend with beyond a smaller talent pool and scarce funding.

I think it'll take a few big wins by a few entrepreneurs with, as my lawyer likes to put it: "balls of steel", to be willing to stay in their local Canadian markets for there to be progress in making this a better place for software engineers and in turn, other startups.

I am starting to notice a slight change and some locals urging me to stay local. Perhaps there's hope for the future.

So to try and succinctly answer the question, I think the pay reflects how interesting the jobs are, unfortunately.

I've chosen to stay in Vancouver for personal reasons. I like it here but it's not much fun to see friends find only mediocre opportunities locally and then end up in Mountain View making ~six figures. Unfortunately as mentioned above this creates a sorting process where the best and brightest leave.

There is a growing startup scene here, but the cost of living hurts -- this is the land of $60-70K salaries and million dollar houses. Real estate costs are such that the startups mostly seem to end up around the drug-addled Downtown Eastside, which can be interesting to say the least. Vancouver's a nice city but it's also kind of crazy.

Cheap labor isn't necessarily a win. It means the best engineers will use NAFTA to go work in the USA where they will be paid 2-3x as much. The last startup I worked for in the Bay Area had over half its engineering staff from Canada.

It's not exactly a one off comment. There was an article posted, I believe here, about the state of startups in Canada. I can't seem to find it at the moment, but I do remember a few examples from it:

* iCraveTV, a Canadian online video service, saw the government cave from US pressure to change Canadian laws regarding online video, which ultimately put them out of business. Later, a bunch of US-based startups entered the same space.

* OpenText, a Canadian search engine, was unable to index the general web due to the law in Canada. While still successful in the corporate space, they could have been a player against Google and Bing if things had been different.

* ZENN, a Canadian automobile manufacturer, is unable to sell their cars in Canada due to legislation. For comparison, Terrafugia, US-based company building a car/airplane hybrid has been able to change several laws in the US to allow them to enter the market.

You can attribute the position these companies find themselves in down to management, but the political climate does not help matters. You can still build a decent business in Canada, but building something revolutionary is more easily accomplished by people of other countries.