Toronto would like to be seen as the nice person’s Silicon Valley

What a strange article based on the common notion that "Canadians are notoriously polite" and as such want to create a "nice person's Silicon Valley." As someone who was raised in the GTA and came down to SV for full-time work, I can't say I've noticed any significant differences between people who live in either region. In fact, both regions have quite diverse populations and I find that most people are decent and generally polite.

> [Canadians] generally go out of their way to not criticize their southern neighbors. Despite this, there is a burning nationalism deep down that can take the form of disgust toward many aspects of American culture

The above quote is pretty humorous considering the article's message. I've always found it saddening that a strong part of a Canadian's identity is that they're not American. While the US definitely seems to have more problems (greater political divisiveness), I feel like that's mostly seen in the news and not a reflection of most people in day-to-day life, at least in SV.

As for the idea that Toronto can become the North's SV, I'd love to see it happen; I think they have a great opportunity with how the US is currently handling skilled immigrants. I hate living in the Bay Area. But for that to happen, we need to see salaries increase competitively with SV. There's often talk about a "Brain Drain" in Canada as college grads and techies in general move to the US for double the earning potential. I even know someone who was attending university in Canada as a PR and as soon as he became a citizen, he got a TN visa to work in SF.

I've seen others on HN who had issues with the H1-B system mention that they plan to try for Canada and go through the TN system to work in the US. So it's my belief that as soon as the US ends its hostility towards skilled immigrants (Trump removed this year?) and as long as salaries remain much higher in the US, Toronto will always play second fiddle to the many US tech hubs. But who knows, perhaps this COVID-19 situation will prove to be the great equalizer for remote work being seen as ubiquitously viable, in which case these existing tech hubs may fall to the wayside.

Well, its rents are certainly aspiring to be like SV’s