No because those brains increase the pool of inexpensive labour in the market, which will allow companies to avoid increasing salaries.
To be clear, this is a super hard problem and I'm not claiming limiting tech labour immigration is a panacea. It's not.
But unless this policy is paired with policies to increase local labour demand as well (which is the real hard problem), all this can do is drive down salaries while exacerbating the housing shortage, which is most acute in the markets where these workers are likely to settle (Vancouver, GTA, and Montreal).
This has been debated in the US ever since the H1B started. Does it suppress tech salaries or does it enable tech companies who are labor-limited to expand? Probably some of both. Still, many of these H1Bs in the US actually got their (higher) education here so letting them stay and apply that gained knowledge seems beneficial for the US economy. If they start moving to Canada they take that knowledge gained in the US with them and instead of building the economy here it contributes to building it there.
As of 2019, the US had a population of over half a million H1B. Maybe ten percent are top tier talent the US needs to import. I would argue the rest are simply taking jobs away from citizens.
> If they start moving to Canada they take that knowledge gained in the US with them and instead of building the economy here it contributes to building it there.
Which is why I say you have to pair this policy with policies to create local demand.
You've gotta give people a reason to build their business in Canada. Simply having a high quality labour pool isn't enough, especially now that remote work is so much more widely available.
Even basic things like getting funding is much harder in Canada because the center of mass is in SV.
But it's a super hard problem and few other places have cracked it (I'm looking at you, Stockholm!)
But this sounds like an inflow of brains to Canada. Wouldn't this help build Canada's tech industry?