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Naila Moloo, 19, won the 2022 Canadian Youth Innovation Award at the age of 16 for creating a flexible solar panel prototype when she was a Grade 11 student at Elmwood School in Ottawa. She plans to become an entrepreneur, pursuing her own AI-startup, Periodwise, which assists with menstrual management for women.

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She’s attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — and considering living in the United States permanently to pursue her dream.

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Why not Canada? “There are a lot of opportunities in the U.S., especially in the tech scene,” she says.

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Moloo is not alone in that thinking, studies suggest. Last year, Canada lost about 65,000 residents to net emigration, according to Statistics Canada. A paper by the Canadian Labour Economics Forum suggests it is mostly young, high-skilled workers who are being lost. A 2025 report by the Leaders Fund warned that Canada risks “missing out on the next Shopify.”

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“We’re seeing a pretty significant exodus of our most ambitious entrepreneurs. They are leaving Canada and moving to the U.S., and that’s intensified over the last decade,” says Charles Lammam, Senior Fellow at the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), a free-enterprise thinktank.

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Nearly one in two Canadian company founders who raised over $1 million in 2024 are now based in the U.S., he notes, citing the Leaders Fund study.

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It’s a problem politicians, economists and the business community want to solve. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s planned Investment Summit Sept. 14 and 15 is part of the strategy, aiming to stem the outflow of investment dollars from Canada and attract new capital – particularly at a time when acrimonious trade talks with the U.S. have added instability. Boosting investment could help keep Canadian innovators at home, building successful businesses here.

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  1. Canada’s tech industry warns ‘entrepreneurs are leaving in droves’ for U.S.
  2. Canada’s economy posts fastest growth in three years
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Talent isn’t the problem

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Why are young innovators — tomorrow’s successful entrepreneurs — leaving Canada? Hint: It’s not about their ideas.

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“There’s no shortage of smart, talented people in Canada,” says Michael Buhr, a serial entrepreneur and executive director of C100 – an association of Canadian tech veterans from Silicon Valley dedicated to building up Canadian innovation. Buhr says Canada has great educational and research institutions.

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Canadian talent has, in the past, created giants such as Nortel, Research in Motion, Shopify and more. A new report by CBRE, a real estate corporation, writes that of the top 15 tech talent markets in North America, six are in Canada. (Toronto ranks third, with Vancouver and Waterloo Region also in the top 10. Montreal weighs in at 11, Ottawa 14 and Calgary 15.)

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But great research, talent and ideas are not enough, says Daniel Debow, founder of DMI – Debow Musical Instruments, company producer at Ambitious Adventurers and a board director at Loblaw Companies Limited, based in Toronto. “Innovation … is not invention, innovation is applying an invention to a market.”  In other words, it has to be successfully “commercialized.”