Re-engineering the Startup Visa: Canada’s economic challenges require more global entrepreneurs and investors

By embracing innovation and welcoming more types of immigrant entrepreneurs, we can create stronger startups and a new supply of visionary owners (and capital) to lead our legacy businesses with new ideas and energy, writes Saeed Zeinali. Photo by Jocylene Lloyd/Postmedia files

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The Startup Visa Program (SuV) was introduced by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2013 to attract successful, affluent foreign entrepreneurs to Canada. Unlike many initiatives out of Ottawa, the SuV was designed to be world-class from the start.

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Based on a successful model developed in Chile in 2010, the visa offered qualifying entrepreneurs a path to permanent residency and professional management support from existing organizations such as accelerators and incubators.

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Canada is a nation of immigrants, and newcomers have always been entrepreneurial; foreign-born Canadians start businesses at a rate nearly 50 per cent higher than those born in Canada. Immigrant entrepreneurs create more jobs, export more goods and services, develop more intellectual property and invest more in R&D.

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The SuV aimed to make Canada more competitive by attracting experienced, ambitious business leaders ready to launch successful, scalable businesses.

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But the program has been ground down by bureaucracy, uncertainty, absurdly long processing times (currently four years) and rampant abuse. The program attracted many non-entrepreneurs who were solely interested in immigrating to Canada, often aided by dubious professional sponsors who were only in it for the generous fees.

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Under fire for having invited too many immigrants to Canada, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2024 reduced the SuV pipeline to a trickle. To address the backlog, the government slashed the number of applicants from 6,000 per year to 2,000 for 2025 and to just 1,000 in 2026 and 2027.

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It also limited the adviser organizations, known as “designated entities,” to just 10 applicant groups a year, disrespecting the competent, well-organized accelerators and other organizations that had been growing their capacity to help guide these entrepreneurs.

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As active participants in the startup ecosystem, we believe the government lost sight of what’s important. It cut the SuV when it should have been fixing it and expanding it.

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Ottawa’s target market — mobile business talent with the capital and energy needed to cross oceans and start businesses — represents a rare breed, much in demand around the world. Ottawa has cut back its SuV program, but other countries, from Estonia, Finland and Sweden to Singapore and Japan, are doubling down.

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We have seen many qualified applicants reluctantly change their minds about applying to Canada, put off by long waitlists and the reduced intake. Other countries will be delighted to welcome these entrepreneurs, their families and their capital.

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In the United States, President Donald Trump is promoting a “Gold Card” that would allow any economic migrant with US$5 million to buy a pathway to citizenship. Even he knows that experienced, affluent immigrants are a scarce, valuable resource.