Exporting Hard-working Canadians: Why Canada Builds Innovators for Other Nations

It feels like Canada keeps accidentally kicking its own shins and then acting surprised and shocked when the best players limp south.

The world's most sophisticated fighter jet, the Avro Arrow, was created here in 1959 by people who were essentially slide rules rock stars. The government then abruptly terminated the entire program one morning in February. Before lunch, 13,000 engineers and technicians received pink slips. They drove across the border, and (no joke) assisted Apollo in landing on the moon. In essence, NASA wrote a thank-you note to us in lunar dust.

After 65 years, we are still performing the same dance, somewhat more subdued. Because universities are so financially strapped, graduate students share desk space, labs use equipment that is older than the TAs, and American universities steal the top professors by offering signing bonuses and real lab budgets. We tell ourselves that it's okay because we have nickel, oil, and lumber, so who needs to create the next big thing when the earth just gives you money?

In the meantime, thousands of talented Canadian children who aspire to become doctors receive rejection letters from our own medical schools each year due to a lack of available spots. As a result, they take out six-figure loans, relocate to Australia, Ireland, or the Caribbean for four years, and return home in debt and then learn that obtaining a license here is similar to attempting to solve a Rubik's cube while wearing a blindfold while a committee observes and evaluates your methods.

A startling percentage simply quit and accept jobs in American cities, where the paperwork is measured in weeks rather than years and the hospitals are in dire need.