Courtesy of Jeremy Berke
While I'm grateful to call Toronto my hometown, New York is where I've built my career and adult life, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Toronto, despite being Canada's financial hub and home to over 6 million people, is not New York City.
Both offer similar career paths in finance, law, media, and tech, but getting paid in US dollars is a huge advantage. One Canadian dollar is worth about $0.71.
Moreover, Ontario's per capita GDP is about on par with that of Alabama, one of the worst-performing economies in the US, while Ontario has historically been a global powerhouse.
The main reason I decided to hop the border, however, was the educational opportunities.
At college, I wanted to explore different fields and sample classes as varied as the hard sciences, history, and literature. But there aren't many schools in Canada that allow that type of experimentation. Instead, students are encouraged to specialize as early as their first year.
So when I turned 18, I left Toronto to attend Bowdoin College, a tiny school on the coast of Maine.
The move changed the trajectory of my life based on the education I received and the network I built with peers from all different walks of life.
After school, I had no interest in returning to Canada. I wanted to develop a career in journalism, and while Toronto is Canada's media capital, the pace of hiring and opportunity pale in comparison with New York City.
That's doubly true for innovation. There are far more companies and jobs created in New York.
In fact, New York is the second-best city for startups globally, with venture investors pouring $180 billion into funding in 2023, according to PitchBook. Toronto, despite being home to some of the world's largest banks and asset managers, such as the Canada Pension Plan, doesn't crack the top 20.
Innovation feels stifled in Canada.
For example, when I go out to dinner or drinks with my Canadian friends visiting me in Brooklyn, they're often surprised at how easy it is to split the bill with Venmo or other mobile-payment services.
Venmo doesn't exist in Canada, as the country's "Big Five" banks ostensibly see it as a threat to business and work with the government to create regulations that favor keeping Canadian customers on their own apps, rather than allowing for disruptive startups.
Outside banking, Canada's economy is dominated by giant conglomerates. Most Canadians have only a few phone plans to choose from, thanks to limited competition as the "Big Three" telecom companies control much of the market. As a result, Canadians pay some of the highest rates for high-end plans in the world.
My left-leaning American friends dream about moving north under the specter of a second Trump administration. They cite universal healthcare and Canada's relatively tame politics as the primary reasons.
While I'm thankful for the healthcare I received in my childhood — and not to mention consistently befuddled by the US's byzantine and often predatory-seeming health-insurance system — Canada's healthcare system is far from perfect.
Of course, if you get into an accident, you'll receive the same quality of care whether you run a hedge fund or have no income at all. I don't want to discount that.
At the same time, Canada's healthcare system experiences some of the longest wait times for "elective" procedures like knee replacements, and there's no way to skip the line, for better or worse.
I haven't personally needed any of these procedures, but Canadian friends and family who have suffered accidents skiing or cycling have been forced to wait months for relatively routine procedures that they could probably get within days or weeks in the US.
Canada is also suffering from a doctor shortage — partly because of regulations that prevent qualified people who trained abroad from working legally — and many talented professionals migrate south for bigger paychecks.
I'm not a fan of the direction American politics is taking. But thanks to the plentiful opportunities in New York and the lack thereof I see in Canada, I'm staying in the US.
Of course, this isn't to say that the US is better than Canada by any stretch. Both countries are far from perfect and have their fair share of problems.
America is certainly not immune to the challenges of crony capitalism, but for me, the opportunities far outweigh the downsides. It's a choice I've made and continue to make by staying here.
