> It's very hard to run a very small business here.

What do you find makes it hard to run a small business in Canada?

>Shopify is basically the only really successful Canadian start-up.

I've heard that Shopify is by itself 10% of all Canadian tech jobs paying >$100K.

It's actually remarkable how difficult it's made. My only experience is here in BC. In a couple of years I've learned that it's practically punitive, and you have to want to do it really badly. The risk to reward ration is abysmal. I only continue because it's more of a passion project than an economically viable, sensible project. It could become one eventually, but my god, I'd hate to be doing this without a full time job to depend on.