“Some Canadians in the group kept asking, ‘Should we relocate our positions? Should we change our attitude?'” Waselnuk said. “But we really don’t know what will happen. If anything, the United States doesn’t know. Canadians don’t want these problems. We just want to get along.”
Alysaa Co, principal of Bain Capital Ventures and fellow Canadians, agreed. She noted that since its inception, one of Bain’s portfolio companies is a Toronto-based fintech startup that has served small businesses in the U.S. Ideally, the startup doesn’t have to rethink the strategy, CO said.
Some of the maple syrup gangs make fun of American and American culture. An entrepreneur who demonstrated an AI-powered tool to help kids learn math, asked the crowd to bake him and provide cruel and honest feedback on his app. “Pretend you’re from Texas. Or pretend you’re Trump,” he said.
Canada’s pride and nationalism have been rising since Trump began threatening the U.S. northern neighbors and on trade. The percentage of Canadians saying they are “very proud” about their country Jumped up February began a few months ago, according to data analysis from Angus Reid Institute, a Canadian nonprofit research organization. As Canada’s efforts to participate in national elections within weeks, two major political parties are emphasizing the importance of “Canada No. 1” and defending national sovereignty. Carney’s Liberal Party fell into a poll before Trump’s rhetoric on Canada turned dark. Influence As prime minister, former banker, positioned himself as the best candidate to protect the Canadian economy.
This growing feeling of Canadian national pride has also introduced technology, with some investors and startup founders seeing the division between the United States and Canada as an opportunity to increase productivity and self-reliance in their country. A group of Canadian tech entrepreneurs, including executives from Shopify and Cohere, recently launched a promotion called Build Canada Build Canada to influence policies on technology, tax reform and immigration. One article Canadian Blog Betakit The report said the tech leaders were “frustrated by the liberal government and the country’s long-term productivity dilemma.”
“In hindsight, we will see these U.S. tariffs as important warnings [Canada]” Say on X In early February. Wertz wrote that Canada should detach its international trading partners from the United States, relax foreign trade and double its energy infrastructure. He also made the “hard-strength in border security/crime” an agenda item.
Since the NAFTA was concluded in 1994, Canada has been an important source of technical talent in Silicon Valley, including a program that provides unlimited number of visas for skilled professionals looking to move from Canada or Mexico to the United States. (NAFTA was replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, or USMCA, in 2020.) Canadians who work in tech can quickly rattle off the names of unicorn founders and other notable figures who are originally from their home country, including Uber cofounder Garrett Camp, Notion cofounder Ivan Zhao, Cloudflare cofounder Michelle Zatlyn, and Pebble creator Eric Migicovsky – Not to mention the thousands of Canadian engineers working hard on the products behind the scenes.
