In my opinion this will only worsen Canada's tech scene, compensation bands for tech workers, and the type of work done here, while undermining our university system and local talent development. It will just push us more in a mediocre "near shoring" direction and undermine actual local innovation and discriminate against homegrown talent.

Here's why:

Remember that Canadian graduates from engineering/CS university programs here can go directly south to the US without much hassle under a TN NAFTA VISA. They have a lot of advantages over H1B holders.

So what this really ends up being is an exchange between local talent -- who will go south to where the salaries are much better under TN -- for immigrant talent that currently struggles in the US.

Remember that the local talent was developed under subsidy by Canadian universities. Our tuition rates are a fraction of the US private universities -- while being very high quality. And while they're not free, they are highly funded by the gov't. So... indirectly, we are subsidizing US tech employers with Canadian taxpayer dollars.

I've heard numbers as high as 75%, 80% for the number of e.g. University of Waterloo (highly respected CS/SWE school) graduates who go south after graduating.

Meanwhile H-1B type candidates who come up to Canada will likely be doing it only as a stop-gap before returning to the US; because compensation here is on the whole not competitive with the US, the US was the destination they likely had in mind in the first place, and the selection of employers and interesting companies here is far worse.

And this will only worsen the compensation gap between here and the US by flooding the market with talent; which will thereby encourage more of our own homegrown talent -- who wants to get fair compensation -- to go south ... along with a bunch of these H-1B holders. Vicious circle.

The structure of things are such that Canada has already simply become on the whole a "landing pad" for talent before they relocate to the US. This only further entrenches that.

While I'd say this was not the case for Google Canada (where I worked before) it is the case for most other large US-based employers. And the local companies are on the whole choosing to underpay and take advantage of fresh-off-the-boat talent from overseas at lower cost.

Most shops here aren't doing much of interest, and the VC community here is fairly insular and conservative. The kinds of businesses that will generally succeed here will be places that can take advantage of large work forces of 'meh' imported talent, while the high quality talent finds ways to get to Silicon Valley.

It's also not a great deal for the immigrants who come here; they will find that cost of living here is terrible while compensation rates are lower. There's already a growing recognition/bitterness among many that the Canadian gov't is selling an image of prosperity and potential to skilled immigrants that it can't deliver on when they arrive. And it used to be that at least one could hope one's children would prosper, but the state of the real estate market here is such that most will never able to own a home or get out of debt.

That said, remote work may change this somewhat for some. At least it has for me, giving me a wider pool of (American) employers to choose from.

All in all, I don't think this is much of a good move for Canada. Canadian employers need to learn how to compete with the US for quality talent by offering quality interesting work with better compensation that matches the insanely high cost of living in cities like Toronto or Vancouver -- cities with Bay Area real estate prices & rent but with compensation ranges far lower.