I moved from Toronto to NYC and have no plans to return to Canada. I prefer life in the US.

03.12.2024 - 12:29 / insider.com

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 Alabama's, one of the worst-performing economies in the US, while Ontario has historically been a global powerhouse.

However, the main reason I decided to hop the border was because of educational opportunities.

At college, I wanted to explore different fields and sample classes from the hard sciences to history and literature. However, 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 to 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 Canadian 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 only have 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