HN user
That's not what I said. If you fire someone, you need to pay severance. Severance is set by statute and case law, and is more - sometimes significantly more - than American employers are used to. If any of the other conditions or circumstnaces are also part of the situation, you could be paying damages, too.
Provincial employment standards legislation, human rights codes and case law make what I am saying actual law, not just impressions, True for all employers, including startups.
A few clarifications: Canada is generally a country where the concept of "employment at will" does not exist. You want to fire someone? You need to pay severance. We also have human rights legislation that can add to what you must pay if you fire someone who is older, pregnant or has one of a wide range of conditions that can be deemed a disability (drug addiction, alcoholism, depression). There are penalties payable for toxic work places or for firing in a particularly harsh manner. These are many reasons why employers based in the US tend to dislike Canadian employment laws - if you hire the wrong person, you have to pay to get rid of them.
Onto the stickiness issue - you're generally right - there is great R&D talent in Ottawa, for example, but very few superstar tech companies at the moment. If you are like most R&D talent and attracted by the quality of work, you're pretty sticky.
A related point - thanks to the limited number ofwork Visas to the US, we've become a naturally sticky country for near-shoring talent from India, etc that cannot get a permit to work in the valley. Sticky by geography works for us, too.