Canadian Brain Drain

How Canada Reversed the ‘Brain Drain’

In the 1990s, we feared a “brain drain” to the United States. But star recruits in science and engineering, such as UBC physicist Jenny Hoffman, have changed the equation.

Kate Allen | November 22, 2015

The University of British Columbia is building Jenny Hoffman a hovering nest of concrete: a slab floating on air inside a room inside a room, the better to dampen vibrations far smaller than the twitch of a hummingbird’s wing.
They are building Hoffman this laboratory because she is the university’s — and almost certainly the country’s — newest, shiniest academic hire. The professor of quantum materials was lured away from Harvard to build strange substances that exploit the laws of physics in new ways.

Article [Brain drain and brain gain: The migration of knowledge workers from and to Canada] highlights

• During the 1990s Canada suffered a net loss of skilled workers to the United States in several economically important occupations, although the numbers involved have remained small in an historical sense and small relative to the supply of workers in these occupations.
• Compared with the general population, emigrants are over-represented among better-educated, higher-income earners and individuals of prime working age. Further, there was an upward trend during the 1990s in the number of people leaving Canada for the United States and other countries.
• While losses of highly skilled workers to the United States accelerated during the 1990s, so too did the influx of highly skilled workers into Canada from the rest of the world. This is particularly true of high-technology industries where immigrant workers entering Canada outnumber the outflow to the United States by a wide margin.
• Emigrants to the United States are more than twice as likely to hold a university degree than are immigrants to Canada. However, because of the overall greater number of immigrants, there are four times as many university graduates entering Canada from the rest of the world as there are university degree holders of all levels leaving Canada for the United States.
• The number of master's and doctoral graduates alone entering Canada from the rest of the world is equal to the number of university graduates at all levels leaving Canada for the United States.

Source: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/studies-etudes/81-003/feature-caracteristique/5001808-eng.htm 

<more at http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/11/22/the-great-gets.html; http://globalnews.ca/news/2309635/does-canada-face-a-high-tech-brain-drain-poll-says-yes-experts-not-so-sure/ (Does Canada face a high-tech ‘brain drain’? Poll says yes; experts not so sure. (Does Canada face a high-tech ‘brain drain’? Poll says yes; experts not so sure. October 31, 2015) and http://www.statcan.gc.ca/studies-etudes/81-003/feature-caracteristique/5001808-eng.htm (Brain drain and brain gain: The migration of knowledge workers from and to Canada. Education quarterly review. Spring 2000, Vol. 6, no. 3.)>