Does the Canadian Brain Drain Still Exist?

By Sung Hon Wu, 2B Electrical

Think back about three or four years ago. The tech boom still existed; Nortel was still $120 / share. A big headline story was about the “brain drain”, the idea that all the talent in Canada was being drained by the U.S. as companies there needed brains as part of the internet revolution. A local component of this story was that those who supported the idea pointed to this university as evidence of the brain drain. Back then, there was a perception that many American multinationals were coming to Waterloo hiring many of the best co-ops and graduates, especially among those focusing in the tech sector such as ECE and Systems Design. In fact a big part of the allure of these programs was the idea that you could end up working for companies such as Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Nvidia. I even wrote an article about this issue for the Iron Warrior back when I was a frosh.

Now skip forward to today. The boom turned into bust; Nortel at one point was a penny stock. Gone along with the boom was all the hysteria about the “brain drain”. People no longer create documentaries featuring 4th year electrical engineers to demonstrate that Canada was being sucked of its best and brightest. In fact, people now associate the tech field with mass layoffs, difficulties finding a job, and a career path to avoid. This may be a reason why recruiting for this year’s ECE class was so difficult that they had to lower the admission average. Any sane high school student would rather go into a safe traditional field such as law or medicine than risk not finding a job once they graduate. For those students who were looking for employment, it was no longer about which American company to work for, but whether you got a job.

Over the last couple of school terms, there is anecdotal evidence that perhaps the brain drain is starting to come back. First, some companies never stopped hiring during the worst of the recession, such as Microsoft. Now, those companies that have survived are all starting to hire again; for example, Amazon. Finally a more convincing argument that the U.S companies are back in force is that new companies, such as Google, are now hiring co-ops. Second, in my circle of friends, some of them will be working for American companies next term. At first, one of them got a job at Microsoft, but in the coming term, there are people I know who will be working at Qualcomm, Amazon, and Sun Microsystems. Also, these companies are not just hiring one or two students, they are hiring a lot. For example, to my utter surprise, Microsoft recently interviewed a full one-quarter of the 3B computer engineering class for co-op positions at their company.

The conditions for a revival of the brain drain idea are all present. The tech industry is slowly but visibly recovering from the recession. Co-op students are still fixed on the allure of working for an American company, despite the fact that America has lost much of its appeal in the last couple of year with Sept 11, President Bush, and the controversial war in Iraq. In fact, I know one person going to work in the U.S who never gives up the chance to mock Bush and Americans as southern rednecks. All that is needed for a revival is for things to keep improving as they are right now. The ironic aspect is that the revival may be killed in its tracks by the American government despite all the efforts the Canadian government has done to stop it. Their recent decision to sharply curtail students from working in the States by restricting the use of the J-1 visa will make it hard for future students to work in the States.

Of course this article is subjective. Maybe all my friends are getting jobs in the U.S because we are getting to be senior students on our last couple of work terms. It may be this economic recovery will stall and students will still have a hard time looking for jobs. But maybe this is for real and it is only time before the brain drain comes back with a vengeance. It would not surprise me at all if in a couple of years a frosh will write an article about the brain drain and what must be done to stop it.