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.
Federal Self-Employed Program
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.
