In the spring, my colleague Cade Metz, who covers artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other new technologies for The New York Times, declared Toronto to be the “third largest technology center in North America”.
He reports that Toronto has achieved that position thanks to investments by global tech giants including Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, all of which have offices in the city. He found that during the pandemic, the number of people working from home for Meta, formerly Facebook, increased rapidly. A few days after Cade’s article appeared, Meta announced that it was also officially entering the race to Toronto and would be opening a c.join with 2,500 people.
Cade also met Tristan Jung, a Korean-born computer scientist who grew up in Toronto. After six years at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, Mr. Jung opened a technical center in Toronto that, at the time, employed more than 100 people.
[Read: Toronto, the Quietly Booming Tech Town]
Many things have changed. The first was the collapse in technology stock prices, then the wave of layoffs. This month, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, about 13 percent of its workforce, and imposed a hiring freeze that put the Toronto plan into question. Ottawa-based Shopify, which allows small retailers to set up online, has risen to new heights for much of the pandemic. However, the trend of online shopping has waned and in July the company, which also had a major operation in Toronto before abandoning much of its traditional offices, lay off about 1,000 employees. Canadian employees are also among the 10,000 people were laid off by Amazon, the online retail giant, this month.
The layoffs have affected small Canadian tech companies and tech startups around the country, as once bountiful funding has become scarce.
And then there’s Twitter, post-Elon Musk.
As with many things about Twitter since Musk’s acquisition, it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact status of the company’s operations in Canada. But it doesn’t appear to have been spared the deep cuts imposed by the new owners, or the wave of resignations across the company. Among those who left were Paul burnsformer CEO of Twitter in Canada.
[Read: Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter]
As my colleagues and I have reported, a number of factors have led multinational technology companies to look toward Canada. Chief among them is Immigration rules make it easier to attract workers from third countries than is possible in the United States, pioneering work at Canadian universities in artificial intelligence, the reputation of schools like the University of Waterloo, and lower wages in the Valley. Silicon Valley for example.
Courtney Radsch, a senior fellow at International Center for Management Innovation who studies the tech industry, told me that the days when big tech headed north might be coming to an end forever.
“The pullback of the big tech companies will hit Canada more than the US, because there’s also pressure to do more at home to secure jobs there,” she said.
But that, in her view, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most businesses today rely on technology, often to a considerable extent. The current round of layoffs is freeing up people with the skills companies need, while also meaning they no longer compete with the likes of Meta for wages.
The big tech pullback could also complicate the federal government’s ongoing struggle with four bills currently before Congress that, if passed, would require tech companies to compensation to Canadian news organizationsmake sure that Canada video has a house in the online world, improve Privacy and strengthen online security.
Some of those bills are the second attempt by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government after failing to push similar legislation through Parliament before last year’s election. However, today’s technological turmoil demonstrates the difficulty of adjusting to an often-changing industry.
Twitter will be affected to varying degrees by all of those bills. But David Reeveley, a reporter for The Logic, an online publication that often focuses on the relationship between government and technology, reported that since Mr. Musk took over, No one from Twitter showed up at meetings with the government to discuss plans to regulate the company. That absence comes at a time when concerns about Twitter abuse and user privacy have never been higher — two issues the government is trying to address through regulation.
Mr Reeveley’s report also suggests that the government no longer has any contacts at the social media company it hopes to regulate.
Of course, maybe Twitter will settle down and normal relations will return. But there is also a widespread and growing concern that it will collapse. Either way, the government may soon find itself with laws that are both new and outdated.
Trans-Canada
This week’s Trans-Canada section was compiled by Vjosa Isai, a reporter and researcher for The New York Times based in Toronto.
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has covered Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
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