From Canada or in Canada? A lot of the "Top Talent" in Canada simply couldn't make it to the US due to stricter visa requirements.

The difference between "in" and "from" is not material when you don't even have to show up to sit in a cubicle.

I meant that a lot of the top talent in Canada is already working in the US. There's a skill gap between top talent in the US and top talent in Canada.

Well, they may lose their jobs to folks still in Canada then. You can get a seasoned dev in Canada for less money than a fresh grad in San Francisco. If the company switches to be distributed a-la GitLab, there's no reason not to do it. The reason why offshoring nearly always failed in the past is because teams weren't fully distributed/remote. If a company re-tools around distributed, it can operate just fine as long as there aren't any "hallway conversations" remote workers don't have access to.

>The reason why offshoring nearly always failed in the past is because teams weren't fully distributed/remote

That's an interesting theory. It doesn't match what I've observed where the offshore team almost always had a skill gap with the on-site team.

Remember that in this case it'd be "offshoring", not "offshore outsourcing". That is, the company would be able to maintain the hiring bar at that reduced cost.