Trudeau also said that he’s had conversations with Bezos over the past few years about investing more in Canada.
While in San Francisco, Trudeau has been touting Canada’s tech talent and virtues as a technology hub. At his roundtable with Benioff Thursday morning, Salesforce announced that it would invest $2 billion in Canada over the next five years to build out its data centers and hire more people.
Trudeau is also capitalizing on a less-than-favorable immigration environment in the U.S., where President Trump is threatening to pull out of NAFTA and pushing an “America first” agenda at the expense of people born elsewhere.
Canada is making the case that it’s a friendlier place for immigrants and is offering a two-week fast track called global skills visa for some foreign workers.
“One of the things that tech companies have said repeatedly to me and to others is that they’re always looking to bring new talent over,” Trudeau said. “And talent is global now.”
Facebook and Samsung have opened artificial intelligence labs in Montreal. Toronto is home to Uber’s research lab for driverless technology and attracted Google’s high-tech Sidewalk Labs project. AppDirect co-CEO Daniel Saks announced on Thursday that his company would be doubling its presence in Canada, adding over 300 jobs.
Trudeau has a delicate balancing act in front of him. Canada has some big homegrown technology companies like Shopify and Hootsuite. Trudeau is out to attract investment from U.S. businesses while ensuring that they don’t lure too much talent away from the local players.
