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This article itself is a great case study. The implicit structure of this article is that Lynn got fired and became an entrepreneur because he was forced into i

• onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Especially when wages in Canada for skilled labor are horrendous.
• johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >ell... the whole push for this is coming from callous bureaucrats who've never been anywhere close to entrepreneurship who apparently believe its so bad that the only reason someone would do it is if they have no other options.. In all fairness, isn't that a legitimate reason? If you could make a very comfy life and retire early I think many would be entrepreneurs would take the easy way out. Of course, some want the big cash out or strongly believe in their mission, but many people are there for the money. Of course, I can't verify if wages in Canada are indeed "too well. Seems like an outdated statement if the economy up there is anything close to the US's. Legitimate reason with incorrect data is simply a misguided take.
  • deanCommie 3y ago
    It's definitely not the case. Canada has a cost of living crisis, and an entire generation has been priced out of the possibility of owning a home. One can survive better than in the US at the extremely low end, and being sick won't kill or bankrupt you. But nobody is living a "comfy" life without busting and hustling.
    • danielmarkbruce 3y ago
      Engineers at big tech are.
      • deanCommie 3y ago
        Engineers in big tech in the US own houses, vacation home(s), and have Lambo money if they want (which most don't). Engineers in big tech in Canada can comfortably own ONE house. Relative to the baseline, it's definitely cushy. Relative to each other...not quite.
    • amrocha 3y ago
      All my late 20s accountant friends are buying houses right now. I know a chemical engineer doing the same. Likewise for everyone in tech. And a lot of people live with their parents and will inherit a family house at some point too. Plenty of people living comfy.
      • jq-r 3y ago
        At least in the US, tech is currently in a wage supression war, and I’m afraid this will ripple out all the world. But for “a lot of people live with their parents” that’s actually a sign that things are not going well at all. This can be seen all over Europe, and just means that people cannot afford to move out, not that they like living with their parents. If/when they inherit their parent’s house they might be in their fifties or sixties, and most of their prime life is gone by then.
        • amrocha 3y ago
          No, it really isn't. There's a cultural preference in the white USA for "moving out" of your parents house, but that's not universal. Canada is very multicultural, and a lot of people choose to live with their parents as a matter of preference. On your second point, I don't see what being in the "prime of life" has to do with living with your parents or not. But even that isnt the case , for example my friend's grandma is moving into a retirement home so they're moving into her old house.
• throwawaysleep 3y ago
  Unless you want a yacht or find every other option so miserable/impossible, why would you be an entrepreneur? It’s a lot of work and there’s plenty of money to be made as a corporate drone.
  • dgudkov 3y ago
    Some people just hate to be a corporate drone.
  • ornornor 3y ago
    It’s not only about material wealth, it’s about agency. If you’re a corporate drone, someone else owns your time. Want to take some time off? You need permission from your employer. Want to do something differently? Need permission. Want to think for yourself or take initiative? Frowned upon at best, forbidden at worst. Nothing wrong with one or the other, but it doesn’t suit everyone.
    • arvinsim 3y ago
      It takes time for a business to be at the level where you can do the above. At the start, you are essentially a slave to your business.
    • faeriechangling 3y ago
      A union Canadian civil servant can work 35 hour weeks and be unfirable even if their actions are frowned upon. Whereas an entrepreneur often gets to work a liberating 80 hours a week and stepping a toe out of line can draw the ire of clients and bankrupt them. Of all the criticisms I would have of Canadian work culture, lack of autonomy is not one of them.
• b112 3y ago
  What a joke.. it's hard to believe this level of stupidity , it might just be malice (a pretext to justify raising interest rates and increase unemployment) The political branch of the government does not control interest rates, nor have any say in them. The Prime Minister cannot raise or lower interest rates. This is the same in most western democracies, as such things cannot be left to political control.
  • Scoundreller 3y ago
    I mean, they admit that they only have "considerable independence", but not "total independence": "The Bank of Canada is a special type of Crown corporation, owned by the federal government, but with considerable independence to carry out its responsibilities." https://www.bankofcanada.ca/about https://www.bankofcanada.ca/about They also add: "The Governor and Senior Deputy Governor are appointed by the Bank's Board of Directors (with the approval of Cabinet), not by the federal government." ... and the BoD are appointed by cabinet. Does the political branch make the decisions? No. But they choose the people that do!
    • b112 3y ago
      Does the political branch make the decisions? No. But they choose the people that do! This by no means implies any control over interest rates. At all. People are appointed, and that's where political input ends. And those appointed stay appointed, are not chosen lightly, markets do not react well to poor choice. By your metric, you'd think our Supreme court judges were puppets too. They aren't. People may have political leanings, but understand, that is not the same as allowing input where it is not allowed. The government cannot interfere with the judicial branch, nor with fiscal policy. To do so, renders it a banana republic, or dictatorship, any attempts would be disaster, for those appointed take this very seriously. A core part of the job is to ignore ministers, the PMO, and so on. It is entirely independent.
      • Scoundreller 3y ago
        Bank of Canada directors are on 3-year (renewable) terms. You don't need someone that will take in your input when you install people that are going to do what you want in the first place.
• dleslie 3y ago
  Aye, I like to think of entrepreneurs as extreme investors. They are investing their time and effort in the expectation that there will be significant returns in the market. The Canadian entrepreneur problem is the TSX problem: it's a struggle to convince oneself to invest in Canada, because generally the returns are lackluster. Rail, Banks, Oil and Gas are the consistent winners, all well-connected and deeply rooted, and rare is the startup that becomes a star on the TSX. It's not that there isn't enough starving and unemployed talent, it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies.
  • sidkshatriya 3y ago
    > it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies. On the face of it, Canada should be a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The country has full access to the US market, has a good standard of living, has capitalism with good social nets, has great rule of law, well educated residents, allows qualified immigrants... Every major economy is aging. Surely this cannot be the answer why entrepreurship in Canada is down. Also, I object to the metric of entrepreneurs as a percentage of population used in the article. It is about how many successful companies are being born. You could have a very high entrepreurship rate with a high failure rate or you could have a low entrepreneurship rate with a high success rate. At the end it is the product of the two i.e. sustainable, successful businesses born per year that is a better metric. We also need to take future profitability and future-impact into account. Giving birth to one OpenAI per year is arguably better than getting 100 new dry-cleaner businesses per-year. The article could have been better.
    • raverbashing 3y ago
      Yes but, thinking about this: Canada sells and sees itself as the good boys. The conformists. The least likely to rock the boat. The opposite of that Apple ad essentially You can see that by how often they will go with proprietary solution, even for their startups/SMEs. "Oh why don't we do this in .NET" even when there are plenty of other solutions They will only risk the water only when they see other people way down. I'd say even Europe is not that bad in that sense.
• opportune 3y ago
  This is what happens in a world where “experts” are merely those with “certifications at the expert level” and not people with actual knowledge and experience. That kind of world is an inevitable outcome of large bureaucracies and over-reliance on qualifications. You don’t just get idiocracy, you get Untruths and policies oriented around expanding the bureaucracy rather than addressing problems. See also: Lysenkoism in the USSR, EU’s model of funding startups through grants. I honestly think this one of the things the US does way, way better than other developed countries. We pay a price in cronyism and corruption, but we actually let industry experts with real experience both advise on policy and take key government positions. We don’t pretend you need a PhD in X to be knowledgeable about X to nearly the same extent as Canada and the Eu. You can’t just stick a midwit in a university for 10 years and expect them to be anything other than a midwit, and you can’t expert an organization that values compliance and internal politics more than performance and effectiveness to produce performant or effective leaders. You can’t bureaucracy your way into a free market either.
  • vasco 3y ago
    A bunch of people with the wrong assumptions who don't understand the core mechanics of a situation surely won't improve things I agree with you on that. Calling them midwits with no prospects, on the other hand, says more about you than them.
    • opportune 3y ago
      There is nothing wrong per-se with being a midwit; most people are midwits and I never said they have “no prospects”. What I take issue with is the kind of idiocracy you get when experts are identified according to “an uninformed person’s idea of an expert” rather than actual expertise. Bureaucracies’ ideas of expertise are usually “objective” like a degree or certification. The thing about degrees and certifications is that they are not nearly as difficult to get or indicative of knowledge/intelligence as an average person thinks they are. Especially with regard to more practical degrees like business and engineering, they simply cannot really teach you the same kinds of things you learn from actually working in the field.
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• trevelyan 3y ago
  Perhaps you are being a bit cynical? There are certainly no problems that can't be solved by giving more money to government initiatives like the MaRS Centre in Ontario. These institutions also create jobs and are businesses of a certain sort, so funding them is supporting business directly. And who can argue with the results? Several promising entrepreneurs each year take advantage of these critical programs to consult with pro-business advisers who assist in job creation by recommending they apply for 3k tax breaks.
  • dsq 3y ago
    Your cynicism is so sophisticated I am impressed.
• ta8645 3y ago
  The CBC is little more than crass government propaganda at this point. Canada in general should be viewed as a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks more government intervention in our lives, is a good thing.
  • fooster 3y ago
    Nonsense. Don’t spread misinformation.
    • ta8645 3y ago
      Spoken with the same tone and language that the nanny state and media use. It's inappropriate and shameful. I hope more people start to see through it before civil society is completely lost.
    • FpUser 3y ago
      I am Canadian and am in agreement with the point to which you replied. There is no misinformation about Canada moving backwards comparatively to what it once was.
  • someone13 3y ago
    As someone that has lived in several countries, and currently in Canada, I will respectfully have to disagree both about your opinion of the CBC and beliefs about government intervention. Some parts of Canadian local/provincial/federal government seem deeply dysfunctional, but some are extremely helpful and better than I’ve seen elsewhere.
    • ta8645 3y ago
      You're seeing what remains of a strong and healthy period of Canadian history. But almost every facet is currently under threat and significant stress. You can't fund a "news" organization with public money and expect them to be an independent agency that holds the government's feet to the fire. They don't do much more than add a thin veneer of objectivity and independent analysis for any significant government initiative. The article posted above is just a small piece of evidence for the broken nature of the media. There is a torrent more spewing out daily.
• theGnuMe 3y ago
  I don't know.. before the tech boom that redefined basic meanings, entrepreneurs were known as folks who were otherwise unemployable. So yes some people start companies because they have a blinding ambition but others do so out of necessity.