1. Canada does have great tech talent. Finding them is a bit more difficult, but talent retention is much better. And if you reward your employees well (i.e. competitively with any other company out there), you can attract world class talent.
2. Building a great company does not necessarily mean raising a huge VC round. In fact, if you can build a business that is growing quickly without the need for VC, they'll come looking for you. One thing that some people get hung up on is that you absolutely need to get funded to start a company. That's not true at all. Although, when the time does come to raise money, most US investors are actually comfortable with investing in Canadian companies.
There are a few things I do notice though. Canadian culture is a bit more conservative (i.e. less willing to take big risks, which also explains a bit of the lower valuation). It makes a bit of sense, since most of the larger industries are around 'traditional' sectors, like natural resources and finance. But this is changing. And as more and more successful tech companies emerge, the startup community will only get stronger.
Also, the tax incentives are well intentioned, however the way they're structure has been a 'one size fits all' approach. The rules put in place make sense for some industries (e.g. medical R&D), but make it a bit inaccessible to tech startups without a lot of effort.