Canada has no single investor visa. What it has is a family of business immigration programmes, federal and provincial, that lead to permanent residence for people who put capital and management experience into a Canadian business. Each route sets its own investment level, net worth test, language requirement and reporting duties. The right choice depends on how much you can invest, how actively you want to run the business, and which province fits your plan. Choosing the wrong route is the most common and the most expensive mistake.
Not required
CLB 5 for the Start-up Visa; varies by route
About 2 to 4 years
CAD 200,000 upwards, depending on the route
No. Canada has no immigration programme based on buying a house, an apartment or any other property. A property purchase gives you no immigration status at all. Every business route requires an operating business that trades, employs people and generates income.
Not under that name. ESDC withdrew the owner-operator LMIA category in 2021. The nearest equivalents are a C11 significant benefit work permit under paragraph 205(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, and the provincial entrepreneur streams. Buying a controlling stake in a Canadian company does not by itself produce a work permit: you must satisfy an officer that your ownership and your plan bring a significant economic, social or cultural benefit to Canada. A C11 permit is temporary and is not, on its own, a route to permanent residence.
It depends on the route and on IRCC’s current inventory. Start-up Visa permanent residence applications have recently been running at around three years. Provincial entrepreneur streams usually take one to two years to reach a nomination, after a work permit stage of roughly two years. Check IRCC’s published processing times before you plan around any date.
Technology, agriculture and food processing, tourism and hospitality, logistics and advanced manufacturing all attract business applicants. What matters more than the sector is whether the business is viable in the province you choose and whether it meets that programme’s investment and job creation tests.
Send us your profile and we will tell you which business routes you are eligible for, and which you are not. A proper eligibility check before you file saves the cost of an application that was never going to succeed. The decision itself rests with IRCC and the provinces.
Canada does not issue anything called an investor visa. The phrase is shorthand for a family of business immigration programmes, some federal and some provincial, that lead to permanent residence for people who bring capital and management experience into a Canadian business. Knowing that from the outset saves a great deal of wasted money.
These routes let you move part of your capital into the Canadian economy and, if the application succeeds, obtain permanent residence for yourself, your spouse or partner and your dependent children. Nothing about them is automatic. Every programme sets an investment floor, a net worth test, a management experience requirement and, in most cases, reporting duties that continue for years after you arrive.
This guide sets out which programmes are actually open in 2026, what each one asks for, the documents you will need and the steps in their proper order, so you can decide which route fits your funds and your plans.
The Canada investor visa is a popular name for business immigration to Canada, one of the recognised streams of immigration to Canada. Under these programmes a foreign national invests in a Canadian business, founds one, or buys into one, and on that basis applies for temporary status and then for permanent residence.
Put simply, Canadian business immigration is for people who intend to enter the economy with their own capital rather than through an employer or a study permit. It is not a passive product. Almost every route now expects you to run the business yourself and to live in the province that selects you.
Unlike a work permit or a study permit, a business route needs no Canadian employer and no letter of acceptance from a college. Your standing comes from your capital and from your record as an owner or senior manager. In exchange, the evidence burden is heavier and the assessment takes longer.
The table below sets out the main differences between the business routes and the other ways into Canada:
| Visa type | Main purpose | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Work visa | Employment in Canada | Job offer and work permit required |
| Study visa | Study at a Canadian educational institution | Letter of acceptance and proof of funds |
| Entrepreneur visa | Starting a small or medium business in a specific province | Business plan and management experience |
| Investor visa | Investing in or buying a business in Canada | Specified minimum capital and a management background |
The practical dividing line is how active you must be. Entrepreneur routes require you to run the business day to day and to be physically present at it. Genuinely passive investment was only ever possible through the Quebec Immigrant Investor Programme, and that programme is not currently accepting applications.
Ottawa and the provinces use these programmes to attract owners and founders who will create jobs, bring innovation and support regional economies. Quebec and British Columbia run their own schemes, and so do the prairie provinces, including the entrepreneur route covered in our guide to investing in Saskatchewan.
For applicants the attraction is a stable legal system, a predictable banking environment and good schools. Both sides gain something, but the terms are set by Canada and they change often.
Judging by Canada’s domestic market, its trade relationships and where the provinces are currently directing business applicants, these sectors attract the most interest in 2026:
The business programmes share a common core of requirements, whichever province you choose. These are the tests to measure yourself against before you spend anything:
1. Nationality: Canada places no restriction on nationality in its business programmes. Citizens of any country may apply, provided they can show that their money was earned lawfully and can trace where it came from. Nationality affects other things, such as travel visas and the mechanics of moving funds, but not eligibility.
2. Minimum net worth and investment: the figures differ sharply between programmes and provinces. For example:
There is no federal investor programme. Canada closed the federal Immigrant Investor Programme in 2014 and has never replaced it. Any website offering you a Canada Federal Investor Program is describing something that does not exist.
3. Management experience
Most routes ask for two to five years of experience owning a business or holding a senior management post, evidenced by company records, tax filings, payroll and share registers. A job title on a letter is not enough on its own.
4. Lawful source of funds
This is where most files fail. Officers want an unbroken trail from the earning of the money to the account it sits in today. Expect to produce several years of bank statements, tax returns, audited accounts, sale contracts, property deeds and documentation for any gift or inheritance. Money that cannot be traced is treated as unproven, not as neutral.
5. Admissibility and financial standing
You will need police certificates from your country of residence and from every country where you have lived for six months or more since the age of eighteen, plus a medical examination by an IRCC panel physician. Bankruptcy, unpaid judgments and unresolved tax disputes all weigh against a business application.
A missing document may lead to a refusal. A false document is far worse: a finding of misrepresentation under section 40 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act carries a five-year bar on entering Canada. A refusal can be revisited only by reconsideration, by reapplying, or by an application for judicial review at the Federal Court, and Federal Court work is for a Canadian lawyer rather than an immigration consultant.
Applicants arrive with very different amounts of capital and very different appetites for running a company. The routes below run from a federal start-up stream to Quebec’s investor programme. The sensible approach is to match the route to your experience, your funds and your business idea, rather than the other way round.
Quebec selects its own economic immigrants, and its investor programme is the closest thing the country has to a passive route.
Quebec runs the only investor route in Canada. Applications may be submitted at any time and there is no cap on the number received. The application review fee is CAD 18,241 for the principal applicant and is adjusted each January; the current position is set out on the Quebec immigration website.
The Canada Start-up Visa is the federal route for founders whose business is innovative, can create jobs for Canadians and can compete internationally. It leads to permanent residence directly, rather than to a work permit alone.
This is the opposite of passive investment. Securing the letter of support is the hard part: designated organisations reject far more proposals than they accept.
Entrepreneur routes are for people who will start or buy a Canadian business, run it themselves and create work for Canadians. They almost always begin with a temporary work permit and only later lead to permanent residence.
The advantage is control: you own and run the business. The cost is time, personal presence in Canada, and the risk that the business does not perform as the agreement requires.
The federal Self-Employed Persons Programme is often sold as a way to buy a business in Canada. It never was. It is a narrow route for people with relevant experience in cultural activities or athletics who intend to be self-employed in Canada in that same field.
IRCC stopped accepting new applications to this programme in April 2024. If you have been told that it is your route to owning a shop, a restaurant or a trading company in Canada, you have been told something that was never true.
Every province runs business streams shaped by its own economy. Among the better known are the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program and the equivalent streams in British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario.
The pattern is consistent: register your interest, receive an invitation, sign a performance agreement, obtain a work permit, usually valid for up to two years and extendable, establish and run the business, report on it, and then apply for nomination. Permanent residence itself is decided by IRCC once the province has nominated you.
One caution for 2026: provincial nomination allocations were cut sharply for 2025 and then raised again to 91,500 for 2026, with a further 10,000 federally directed spaces. Allocations are reset each year in the Immigration Levels Plan, and individual business streams still open and close at short notice, so check the province’s own intake position before you plan around one.
| Ontario Entrepreneur Program | Nova Scotia Entrepreneur Program | Manitoba Business Investor Stream (Entrepreneur and Farm Investor pathways) | BC Entrepreneur Immigration Program | Criterion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| At least CAD 800,000 | At least CAD 600,000 (CAD 400,000 if the business is outside the Halifax Regional Municipality) | At least CAD 500,000 | At least CAD 600,000 | Minimum net worth |
| OINP Entrepreneur Stream closed; only the Ontario Workforce Priority Stream is open | CAD 150,000 | CAD 150,000 to CAD 250,000 | CAD 200,000 to CAD 400,000 | Minimum investment |
| At least 36 months of full-time work as a business owner in the past 5 years | At least 3 years of business management experience and 33% ownership of a business in the past 10 years | At least 3 years of business management experience and 33% ownership of a business | At least 3 years of business management experience, or 2 years in senior management | Work experience |
| Based on provincial needs | Yes | Yes | Based on provincial needs | Interview required |
Because the provinces differ so much, the sensible sequence is to choose the province first, on the basis of your sector and your budget, and the stream second.
For help comparing them, speak to the regulated consultants at Aval Visa. Hadi Imani is a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, RCIC number R522575, regulated by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.
The order of these steps matters. Applications that go wrong usually went wrong at step one or step three.
Decide which programme you are eligible for before you look at businesses or provinces in any detail. The choice turns on how much you can invest, how much management experience you can document, whether you want to buy an existing business or build a new one, and where you are willing to live. Changing route later usually means starting again.
Measure your profile against the published requirements: minimum investment, net worth, management experience, language results, source of funds and admissibility. For the Start-up Visa this stage also means approaching designated organisations for a letter of support, which is a commercial negotiation rather than a form.
Start the source of funds file first, because it takes the longest. Then build the business plan: market analysis, staffing, how the capital will be deployed, and the specific economic benefit the business brings to the province. Provinces read these plans closely and reject generic ones.
Each programme has its own forms. A Start-up Visa application, for instance, uses IMM 0008 with Schedule 13. Fees are paid on submission and biometrics are given once the request letter arrives. Provincial applications go to the province first and to IRCC afterwards.
Officers verify the source of your funds, your management history and the credibility of the business plan. Provinces frequently interview entrepreneur applicants, and federal business files sometimes involve an interview too. Answers that do not match the written file are the quickest route to a refusal.
If the application succeeds, permanent residence is granted to you and to the family members included in it. In entrepreneur and start-up routes you must keep meeting your commitments, including active involvement in the business and periodic reporting. Whether an application succeeds is a matter for IRCC and the province alone. No consultant or lawyer can change that, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being straight with you.
Government fees are modest next to the investment itself, but they are not the whole cost. Budget also for a business plan, Canadian legal and accounting advice, translation, medical examinations, biometrics, travel and your representative’s professional fees.
The table below compares government fees, minimum investment and approximate processing time for the main routes. All amounts are in Canadian dollars. IRCC revises its fees periodically and publishes current processing times, so confirm both before you pay anything.
| Pathway | Government fees | Minimum capital or investment requirement | Processing time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start-up Visa | About CAD 1,965 for the principal applicant | Investment through a venture capital fund or an angel investor group: CAD 75,000 to CAD 200,000 | Paused – closed to new applications; check IRCC |
| British Columbia investment program | Provincial fee + federal fee (approximately CAD 1,500 to CAD 2,000) | Net worth of at least CAD 600,000 and investment from CAD 200,000 | Registration of proposal about 6 weeks, application processing about 4 months, final report about 4 months |
| Quebec investment program | CAD 18,241 for the principal applicant (2026) | Net worth of at least CAD 2,000,000; five-year term investment of CAD 1,000,000 plus a CAD 200,000 financial contribution | About 12 to 36 months |
Applicants choose these routes for reasons that go beyond the residence itself. The realistic advantages are:
These are not fast routes, and in the financial sense they are not safe ones. Anyone presenting them as either is misleading you.
The first obstacle is the capital required. Below roughly CAD 200,000 of committed investment, plus living costs and professional fees, most of these programmes are out of reach.
The second is the source of funds test. Provinces and IRCC ask for detailed documentation, and any gap or ambiguity in the trail can end the application. Reconstructing a paper trail from years ago is often impossible.
Three further points deserve attention before you commit:
Programme rules also change with little notice. A stream that is open when you begin preparing may be closed or reweighted by the time you are ready to file.
The two broad patterns are a largely passive investment and an entrepreneur route in which you run the business yourself. They differ in the capital required, the level of involvement expected and the kind of status you receive first. The table below sets out the comparison.
| Feature | Canada investor visa | Canada entrepreneur visa |
|---|---|---|
| Amount of capital | Very high, e.g. Quebec: net worth of about CAD 2,000,000 | Moderate, CAD 150,000 to CAD 600,000 depending on the province |
| Type of activity | Passive investment, limited management role | Active investment, running and managing a business |
| Initial period of stay | Short-term, until the investment is established | Temporary, with an active presence in the province, usually 1-2 years |
| Path to permanent residence | After proof of sufficient capital and net worth | After meeting business commitments and creating jobs |
| Example programs | Quebec investment program, federal program | Start-up Visa, provincial entrepreneur programs, business purchase |
Business routes lead to permanent residence, not to citizenship. Citizenship is a separate application made later, and it has its own rules. The two are often confused, so it is worth being precise. To apply for citizenship you generally need:
Separately, to keep permanent residence itself you must be physically present in Canada for at least 730 days in every five-year period. A valid permanent resident card is what allows you to board a flight back to Canada. Permanent residence does not give you visa-free travel to other countries; that comes only with a Canadian passport.
A few points separate a file that moves from a file that stalls:
Handled in this order, a business application is demanding but manageable. Handled in the wrong order, it becomes expensive.
Aval Visa is the practice of Hadi Imani, a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, RCIC number R522575, regulated by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.
We assess which business routes you qualify for and tell you plainly where you do not qualify. We build the source of funds file and the document set against the programme’s own checklist, review the business plan with you, complete and submit the forms, respond to procedural fairness letters, and prepare you for a provincial or federal interview.
What we do not do is predict outcomes. Applications are decided by IRCC and by the provinces on the evidence in front of them; hiring a representative does not improve your chances of approval. What a representative can do is make sure the evidence is complete, consistent and filed under the right programme. If that is the help you want, book a consultation.
