Oddly once upon a time (back in '94) we were a feeder for Canadian high-tech and Microsoft, but very few students ended up in the Valley, at least not fresh out of school. In the intervening 20 years Canadian high-tech has stayed flat at best while the US has taken on more and more Waterloo grads every year. The increases in UW engineering & CS enrollment over the past 20 years are basically all going to the US (in my anecdotal opinion).
NAFTA. That is what allows US companies to hire Canadian immigrants much easier than from any other country, and so it made it a lot easier for smaller companies (like startups) to actually hire immigrants at all.
As an Ontarian this is a little sad, although I'm sure there's places in the US where the same thing happens. Certainly though I think companies should think of setting up engineering locations in KW. You can get quality people for way less money than you would have to pay in the Valley.
I wish American software giants would open more offices in Canada. Canadian software industry is still in a sorry state right now, but there's a lot talent in the country. American companies can pay lower wage to Canadian devs than US and they will still attract top talents from other Canadian companies because developers are lowballed hard here.
Every tech company I've ever worked for in Toronto has been acquired by a US company. Quest Software/Dell, Oracle, Microsoft, and the former Novell... the only bad part is that these offices don't always keep hiring post-acquisition. But that has more to do with acquisition dynamics than Toronto being a bad place for a satellite office.
But I disagree that Canadian developers would be appreciably cheaper. There are plenty of cities in the US that would be as cheap or cheaper than Toronto or Waterloo for a dev office.
Google really needs to take a hint from BufferBox. If they can set up parcel delivery sites everywhere, what about setting up small to medium sized offices in every major city so that people don't have to relocate to work with them. Start with Vancouver. Mozilla has an office here in Vancouver and near as I can tell its only function is so that local people can work close to home on one or another of the Mozilla projects.
In my opinion, this is the future of work. Small hubs colocated with other small hubs, so that you are not working remote alone, but with a handful of coworkers in a larger office environment that has many businesses sharing a building and the overhead things like receptionists, room booking, coffee rooms, etc.
Got a source for this? All I know about is the marketing office, where Hinton now works some months of the year since the acquisition of DNNresearch. [1]
It's easier to just import them on TN visas than to open another office. Managers would probably love everyone living in one mega-headquarters if it was actually practical.
