Who Should We Bring Back?

Date: Mar 15, 2025

Someone recently asked me about a program called "BetaKit's Most Ambitious" for Toronto Tech Week. They wanted my opinion on who's the Canadian doing the most ambitious tech-related work outside of Canada, and who we should "repatriate."

While I chose not to participate directly in BetaKit's program due to previous experiences with their coverage, the question itself is worth exploring.

This got me thinking: what does repatriation actually mean? And more importantly, who would it really benefit?

Are we trying to help some abstract concept called "Canada" achieve a higher GDP on some scorecard? Are we trying to help people who care about the same things we do? Or are we trying to help the friends we meet for coffee or the people we go to events with.

The answer matters because it frames who we might want to bring back.

The Spectrum of Canadian Talent Abroad

I have connections with Canadians working abroad at various levels:

• People like Andrew Peek, CEO of the company I work with, who is a prolific angel investor, risk-taker, and all-around motivating force in tech
• Friends in leadership positions at public companies in California, like Ross McKegney, who's doing amazing work leading teams on projects like Adobe Firefly
• Academics like Jean-Gabriel Young from Quebec, who works as an Assistant Professor of Statistics at University of Vermont researching complex network theory
• Engineers like Simran Awadia, who I worked with before she moved to San Francisco to become a Software Engineer at Lyft—an incredibly thoughtful, inquisitive hard worker who's pushing forward interesting work

So which of these people should come home? And how would their return benefit the country, the people I care about, and my community of practice?

Global Networks vs. Local Presence

When I visit San Francisco, the first thing I do is message 3-5 Canadian connections to grab coffee. There's an immense value in that. Similarly, if I'm in New York, I'm calling Andrew. Having this global business network of Canadians abroad is powerful.

This raises an interesting question: do we need to physically repatriate talent to benefit from it? Or is there value in having Canadians strategically positioned around the world, forming a kind of diaspora network that we can tap into?

The Reverse Question: Retaining International Talent

Then there's the flip side: what about the non-Canadians who come here, integrate, and then leave?

I worked at a startup with several academics from the University of Toronto. Among a team of about 5 people, only one or two were Canadian. The rest came from Belgium, Germany, the UK, and elsewhere. They came on education visas, got their PhDs, worked at our startup, received permanent residency, and some even had children here.

Yet we failed to retain them. They each eventually left Canada, returning to Europe—Belgium, France, and the UK.

One colleague in particular, Mickael Temporão, now teaches as an Associate Professor in Computational Social Science at Sciences Po Bordeaux, leveraging the PhD work in political science he did at Université Laval. I used to love grabbing drinks or coffee with him—he was a magnetic person. Now I've lost touch with him.

Should he be on this list we're talking about too? He's not even Canadian, but he was in Canada, went through all the programs, integrated, and then left.

These departures highlight that "repatriation" might be only half the story; we also have an international talent pipeline we struggle to retain.

The Impact of Returning Talent

When thinking about repatriation, I consider multiple levels of impact:

• Being able to have coffee in person with fellow innovators
• Attending local events where ideas and opportunities are exchanged face-to-face
• Showing up at a Toronto office every day, proving you can build a successful startup without being in Silicon Valley
• Bringing back specific techniques and approaches they learned abroad and teaching them to local teams
• Making introductions between Canadian founders and their contacts in global tech hubs

My instinct is to say we should focus on bringing back the people who deploy the most capital—someone like Andrew Peek. What if he not only repatriated himself but created a community hub with his resources? We're starting to see new spaces like 535 Toronto, but what would an Andrew Peek version of these look like? It would be fire—potentially five times more powerful as an accelerant for our tech ecosystem.

But each type of talent brings unique value. Ross McKegney is a talent magnet—I've tried to get a job with him in the past knowing he'll work on something interesting. Ross has worked on amazing projects at his startups, at Box, at Adobe. His return wouldn't just bring one person back; it would likely attract others.

Jean-Gabriel Young, who I'm lucky to work with now, is insanely inspirational. Whenever I get a chance to meet him at an off-site or chat on Slack, he tells me something that changes my perspective—either a new development from academia or a fresh idea. He takes my half-formed thoughts and makes them better, saying "that could actually work, it's not that crazy." Anyone who gets exposed to JGY is more likely to succeed.

And then there's Simran Awadia. What I love about her is that she's a reliable problem solver who gets the job done. We often forget that in tech, you actually have to do the work at some point—you can't just have ideas. Even though I've listed three leader/idea people above, I don't want to underweight the value of people like Simran. She represents the muscle of the tech skeletal system—the force that actually gets shit done instead of just talking about it.

There's also tremendous value in these success stories at every level. When a smart engineer goes to university, moves to the Valley, and then comes back—this breaks a cycle. It changes the dominant narrative in Canadian tech that you need to "go to California to seek your fortune." This happens at both the individual contributor level and the venture capital level.

The Questions That Matter

So who should we prioritize? The rich business leader who deeply cares about startups and futuristic technologies? The leaders embedded in large American public companies doing amazing work? The academics pushing forward the research agenda and teaching the next generation? The individual contributor engineers still on their upward trajectory? Or even the international talent who once called Canada home?

Should we wait for someone like Simran to become as influential as Ross before trying to bring her back? Should we focus equal attention on retaining the international talent that comes here?

I don't have all the answers, but I think these questions are worth asking. We need to think more deeply about who we're trying to benefit before making grand proclamations about repatriation.

The real conversation is just beginning. Where we go from here—back home or off to another corner of the globe—remains an open question.