The Minister for Immigration recently made an announcement about changes to federal immigration business programs, which came into effect on April 30.
What are these programs and what are the changes?
The start-up program is a program for business entrepreneurs with innovative projects that create jobs in Canada. One of the requirements for this program is to have a letter of support from the organization that support your business.
These organizations are divided into three groups:
1. Venture Capital Funds (26 organizations) (minimum investment 200 thousand)
2. Angel investor groups (7 organizations) (minimum investment 75 thousand)
3. Business Incubators (52 organizations) (no minimum threshold)
From April 30, these organizations will be able to issue a limited number of support letters - 10 letters of support per year for each organization.
Priority processing has been introduced for businesses that meet certain conditions:
- entrepreneurs who will receive letters of support from Venture Capital or Angel Investor Group, as these organizations are subsidized by Canada.
- Projects from the Business incubator group, but only if these projects are in the field of information technology (there are 11 of them in the Business incubator group)
- Projects from the Business Incubators group, but only if investment will be at least 75 thousand.
Due to a high number of applications for this program, the processing time has exceeded 4 years (!!). In order not to extend more already huge processing time, the Ministry of Immigration has frozen this program until December 2026.
The Canadian government is trying to invest more and expand the field of information technology, which is not even on average level in the entire North America. Only time will show us whether the measures taken by the government are effective.
