Canada's young entrepreneurs are fleeing south. We need to keep them here

Homekin CEO Natasha Penzo, shown at her Toronto office, is looking to scale up. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /PostmediaArticle contentNaila 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.

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

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

Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of NP Posted will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

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.”

“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.

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.

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.