When the case rests on a business.

What these routes ask of you

Business immigration is often presented as the route you take when you have money. In practice capital is the easiest requirement to satisfy, and rarely the one that decides the outcome.

What decides it is whether the business is real and whether you are genuinely running it. Provincial entrepreneur routes typically require you to own a meaningful share, participate in day to day management, live in the province, and operate for a full year before a nomination is even requested. Most also verify your net worth independently, through a professional chosen from the province's own list rather than your accountant, and treat any gap between what you declared and what the verifier finds as a serious matter.

The federal routes work differently again, and both are currently shut. The Start-up Visa depended on securing support from a designated organisation, which was its own competitive process before immigration was even in question, and it was paused on 30 June 2026. The Self-employed Persons Program has had intake set at zero since April 2024. Both pages set out where that leaves anyone already in the queue.

The routes