Eastern Canada has a vanishing tech sector, out here in Vancouver it's perfectly alive and well.
The issue with Vancouver is not software patents, but capital recycling. Most of our tech capital leaves Vancouver instead of staying to be reinvested, this is why mining works so well in Vancouver, there is a huge amount of capital recycling, similar to what you'd see in the bay area in tech. (Oddly enough SF also has a fairly large mining sector)
The big advantages to Canada that I see are SRED funding (70% of your dev salary could be paid by the feds), and CMF funding if you're doing a digital media project (75% of costs covered up to $500K for development, production and operations for a total of $1.5 mm)
Vancouver has a clusterfuck for the real estate market.
It is simply unaffordable. The prices has been inflated through speculation to insane levels, mostly driven by Asians dumping boatloads of US cash back into the North Am economy. Talked to a realtor lady few years ago - she would show 5-6 houses to a Chinese buyer (on a two day visit here) and he'd end up buying 4 of them, 1 mil a piece. Things gotten worse since then.
The issue with Vancouver is not software patents, but capital recycling. Most of our tech capital leaves Vancouver instead of staying to be reinvested, this is why mining works so well in Vancouver, there is a huge amount of capital recycling, similar to what you'd see in the bay area in tech. (Oddly enough SF also has a fairly large mining sector)
The big advantages to Canada that I see are SRED funding (70% of your dev salary could be paid by the feds), and CMF funding if you're doing a digital media project (75% of costs covered up to $500K for development, production and operations for a total of $1.5 mm)