When the dust settles, you don't really think that the problem with RIM, or Nortel, are "accounting issues", do you?
I spent 30 years in Ontario. RIM and Nortel confirm my own thoughts on the matter: the talent pool in Ontario (possibly Canada) isn't even close to making local tech companies globally competitive.
I'm from Waterloo (RIM's hometown) so I'm biased, but there is a significant flow of Ontarians to Silicon Valley, Redmond and NY whereas there's no corresponding flow from the US to Ontario. So I'm tempted to call it a shortage of jobs rather than people.
Also from Waterloo, but I think you got this mixed up. There is an outflow of talent because there are only few exciting, innovative places to work in Waterloo. So sure, you can call it a shortage of jobs, but really the culprit is a lack of innovative/entrepreneurial/managerial expertise. Things are changing for the better, but slowly.
Also, it's goina be pretty hard to convince someone from Silicon Valley, NY (or even Redmond) to move to Southern Ontario, let alone Waterloo, unless your doing some really cool, or you can pay them a lot. Obviously people who go to school here are much more likely to stay, but even then, most of them would take a job in California if they had the chance.
As an Ontario boy working in Silicon Valley, there are really very few local Californians working in tech here. Talent goes where the jobs are; companies go where the talent is. If you want to discovery why one place ends up being a magnet over another place I know some profs at Waterloo who do research on exactly this question. Anyone looking for a PhD?
Nortel's accounting problems were extremely bad by any standards and made a mediocre situation terminal. Nortel had the possibility to be at least as successful as Ericsson (which isn't saying much, but). I hope RIM isn't full of Nortel's old accounting people.
I know next to nothing about Ontario, but don't they have at least a few great universities? I know there's Waterloo and U of Toronto. Are they not big enough to provide a good pool of talent?
Yes. Whoever blames the employees here is hiding their head in the sand. Same with blaming the climate or "entrepreneurial spirit" or whatever. There are good schools and talented people. As with any place there are the great and the mediocre. Offer the great $100k out of school and reasonably interesting work like they can get in Seattle or Mountain View and you will find that it is quite easy to get globally competitive talent.
I spent 30 years in Ontario. RIM and Nortel confirm my own thoughts on the matter: the talent pool in Ontario (possibly Canada) isn't even close to making local tech companies globally competitive.