Donald Trump is Toronto’s most effective recruiting tool
From the AI scientist ushering in self-driving labs to the surgeon expanding robotic operations, the city is seeing an influx of talent from our beleaguered neighbours down south
President Trump’s back-of-the-napkin tariff “strategy” has dominated headlines all year, but a different trade war has been brewing since his first presidency. It’s not about dairy, lumber or potash. It’s about brainpower. For decades, whenever something catastrophic happened in the US, Americans would joke about moving to Canada. It’s no longer a joke. It’s serious, and it’s happening. The brain drain is reversing course, and Toronto is the beneficiary.
It turns out a lot of talented people in the worlds of law, academia, medicine, tech and the arts can’t do their best work under a dark cloud of fear, division and uncertainty. They dislike it when their president separates immigrant children from their parents; calls Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole countries”; declines to condemn white supremacy and foments insurrection; cozies up to a brutal dictator; attempts to strong-arm a country under siege into giving up its mineral rights; deports permanent residents without due process and defies the judiciary; gives an unelected tech billionaire carte blanche to gut the social safety net; and appoints as secretary of defence a Fox News talking head who then discusses war plans via group chat. And that takes us to early April.
To Trump’s red-hatted fan base and, indeed, to millions of swing voters, was this the kind of “shake-up” America needed? The man was re-elected, after all. Or did they just want cheaper eggs? Whatever the case, for many millions of other Americans, Trump’s actions are vile and intolerable, the unravelling of 250 years of progress and prosperity and the dimming of a bright light on the world stage.
Trump likes to watch the stock market for a pulse-check on his actions (except when the markets are down, in which case they’re irrelevant). But what he can’t gauge in real time are the departures of brilliant citizens who, one by one, decide they want off the carousel of crazy.
When our editors cast about for examples from the exodus, we were flooded with responses. The result, our May cover story, is just a sampling of the influx of American luminaries we’ve come to call Toronto’s Trump Bump. Some, like the iconic music producer Bob Ezrin, were dual citizens who decided it was time to come home. Others, like the brilliant AI scientist Alán Aspuru-Guzik, are Americans who began the immigration process during Trump’s chaotic first term. For others still, like the Yale professor Jason Stanley, the recent authoritarian crackdowns on campus were the final straw.
These minds, among many others, sought somewhere prosperous, progressive, stable, clean, diverse and accommodating to continue their work—somewhere with excellent universities, restaurants, art and artists, and neighbourhoods. For them, it was a short search. No one’s pretending Toronto is perfect. Our transit system is abysmal and our gridlock maddening. The affordability crisis continues unabated, and we have our own ripple of discontent that echoes the populist movement down south. But, for these overachievers, the choice was obvious.
In season three of 30 Rock, Steve Martin’s character implores Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon to flee with him to Canada. “Toronto is just like New York but without all the stuff,” he says. That was 2008. It was funny then, and it’s funny now—but it’s also a fantasy. We have all the stuff and more, just without the toxic leadership and culture of chaos emanating from the guy in charge.
Malcolm Johnston is the editor of Toronto Life. He can be reached via email at editor@torontolife.com.
NEVER MISS A TORONTO LIFE STORY
Sign up for This City, our free newsletter about everything that matters right now in Toronto politics, sports, business, culture, society and more.
Malcolm Johnston is the editor-in-chief of Toronto Life, a role he took on in 2022 after more than 11 years at the magazine. He has worked as a writer and features editor, with a strong focus on investigative journalism and in-depth reporting on the people, politics, and culture shaping Toronto.
