Capital, a track record, and a year of trading before nomination.

This is the route for someone with capital and a history of running businesses who will start or buy a business in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is assessed on a plan, so the business does not need to exist when you apply. What it asks in exchange is that you come here, build the thing, and prove you did before it will nominate you.

• Capital is the first gate, and evidence is the real one. At least $600,000 CAD in unencumbered net business and personal assets that can readily be transferred to Canada. It is verified independently by one of the province's designated verifiers, so the figure you can document matters more than the figure you hold.
• A track record is the second gate. Two years actively managing and owning a business with at least 25 per cent ownership in the last five years, or five or more years in a senior business management role in the last ten. Capital alone does not open this stream.
• Permanent residence sits behind a year of trading. You arrive on a work permit under a signed performance agreement, operate and actively manage the business for at least one year, and only then may you request nomination. That is the structural difference from the graduate stream, which nominates directly.
• A passive investor is excluded outright. The province lists passive investors, meaning people who intend to invest with very limited or no involvement in day to day management, among the applicants it will not accept. The federal regulation behind the nominee class points the same way, because section 87 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations excludes a nomination based on the provision of capital unless you control at least a third of the equity or have invested at least $1,000,000, provide active and ongoing management from within the nominating province, the investment carries no redemption option, and the capital goes to a business in the nominating province other than one operated primarily to derive investment income such as interest, dividends or capital gains. That last condition is worth reading twice, because it is why the province's list of excluded businesses shuts out rental, leasing and passive investment vehicles, and it is where the province's own thresholds come from. Note also that subsection 87(4) now reads as repealed, by SOR/2026-63, so anyone quoting it to you is working from an old copy.
• An exploratory visit is mandatory if you are outside the province. Before submitting the application, and it has to be documented in the Business Establishment Plan with tickets, boarding passes, hotel receipts, business cards and a description of every meeting. If you are buying a business you must meet the current owners on that visit.
• Up to ten people can apply on one business. You and nine associated partners, who may be foreign nationals or Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Every partner seeking permanent residence must separately invest $200,000 with a third of the ownership or invest $1,000,000 or more, must be actively involved in day to day management, and must file the same documentation as you. Someone applying through the graduate stream cannot be a partner here.

Two exclusion lists apply, one about you and one about the business. Both are published and both are read strictly.

You cannot apply if you are living illegally in your country of residence, if a removal order has been issued against you by IRCC or the Canada Border Services Agency, if you are prohibited from entering Canada, if you are a passive investor, or if you do not hold legal status, in which case you are ineligible until it is restored.

The excluded business types are these.

• Businesses conducted remotely, from another Canadian jurisdiction or another country
• Property rental, investment and leasing activities
• Real estate construction, development or brokerage, insurance brokerage and business brokerage, unless you can prove the business is of compelling benefit to the province and that you can manage its daily operations
• Professional services, and self employed operators requiring licensing or accreditation
• Pay day loans, cheque cashing, money changing and cash machines
• Pawnbrokers, and taxi companies
• Home based businesses, unless you can prove compelling benefit to the province. Schedule A of the performance agreement goes further and says home based businesses are not considered a viable business venture and may not be counted as part of the business investment, and that a household business cannot be claimed at all
• Businesses producing, distributing or selling pornographic or sexually explicit products or services
• Not for profit businesses
• Investments into a business operated primarily to derive passive investment income, and businesses operating primarily to derive interest, dividends or capital gains
• Businesses that compensate employees solely by commission
• Any other business that by association would tend to bring the program or the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador into disrepute

This is the document that makes the stream what it is. It is signed before the approval letter is issued, and it is a contract with the province rather than a statement of intent.

• Residence, arrival and presence. Assume residence in the province as a temporary resident within six months of the work permit being issued, meet provincial staff after arriving, and give the province your address and telephone number. Proof of living here may be requested and the agreement names a provincial medical care plan number, a provincial driver's licence, utility bills and property documents as examples.
• The investment, in the terms the regulation requires. Either at least 33.33 per cent ownership together with a capital investment of no less than $200,000 CAD, or a capital investment of no less than $1,000,000 CAD. The funds must be transferred to a Canadian bank account within sixty days of arrival.
• Active management, in person. Hold a managerial position, attend the business premises on a regular basis to provide ongoing day to day management and direction, and comply with the federal requirement to provide active and ongoing management of the business from within the province.
• Reasonable efforts, then delivery. Make every reasonable effort to establish or purchase a qualifying business within six months of arrival, adequately support it financially and personally to the province's reasonable satisfaction, and operate and actively manage it in accordance with the plan.
• Twelve months of demonstrated management before nomination. The agreement requires you to demonstrate at least twelve months of active and ongoing participation in day to day management before submitting a nomination request, and to obtain the review engagement and special purpose report before submitting it.
• Monitoring, on request, including your premises. You must permit and participate in monitoring activities, give access to records and to physical premises, and let the province review anything prepared by the designated suppliers.
• Discretion, and the consequences of breach. Whether the performance expectations have been met is in the province's sole discretion. A breach, or an inability to comply, may result in the approval letter being rescinded or the nomination withdrawn. Misrepresentation or intentional omission of material information means refusal and five years of ineligibility. The agreement also contains an indemnity running from you to the province.
• It ends when your permit ends or your visa is issued. The term runs from the effective date to the earlier of the work permit expiring or a permanent resident visa being issued, so the practical planning question is whether the permit outlasts the federal processing and what you do if it does not.

The province lists this in the performance agreement rather than in the guide, which is why it is often discovered late. It decides whether the money you have spent counts towards the minimum.

Whether operating expenses are accepted at all is for the province, which says it may consider them within those limits rather than that it will.

Note where wages sit. The province names wages and salaries among the operating expenses it may accept as eligible investment, within the six month and three month limits, so payroll is not simply outside the calculation. What payroll cannot do is stand in for the job creation requirement, which is evidenced separately through payroll documents and financial statements.

Two requirements sit alongside the table rather than inside it, because they are about proof rather than category. Copies of original receipts must be submitted as proof of investment, and receipts are specifically required for the working capital portion. And you must itemise what you are treating as working capital in your investment breakdown, because an unitemised lump sum cannot be assessed. Neither makes a category of spending ineligible. Both make it unprovable, which in practice has the same effect.

The practical consequence is that a plan which shows a large sum sitting in a Canadian account has not made the investment. The money has to have gone into assets, working capital or accepted operating expenses, and you have to be able to show where it came from and where it went. Schedule A also anticipates a solicitor's or chartered accountant's certificate verifying the statement of account showing the origin of the funds invested and where they were invested.

This is the part clients underestimate. You do not assert your net worth, and your own accountant does not certify it. A verifier chosen from the province's list examines it and reports to the province over your head.

• You choose from a list of four firms, within twenty days. The province's International Entrepreneur overview page names Grant Thornton LLP, MNP LLP, KPMG LLP and BDO Canada LLP as its designated net worth verifiers. It also names individual partners at three of them with telephone numbers and email addresses, which we do not reproduce here because contacts change and they are not ours to republish. Take them from that page at the point of invitation, and confirm the firm is still designated before you engage it.
• That closed list applies to net worth only, and not to the accountant's reports. This is the distinction that costs people money. The Net Worth Verification Report must come from one of those four designated firms. The review engagement and special purpose report is a different appointment, and it may come from any individual or firm licensed to provide such services under the province's Chartered Professional Accountants and Public Accountants Act and holding a public accountant's licence. The province's graduate overview page puts it plainly, saying only a licensed Chartered Professional Accountant in Newfoundland and Labrador holding that licence can prepare the reports and that you choose a licensed verifier. So if your own accountant here holds the licence, you can use them, and there is no need to buy a service you may already have.
• The report goes to the province, not to you. You must give the verifier written direction quoting your invitation file number instructing them to send the report direct. You may review and discuss the file with the verifier first, but only what the verifier submits is considered.
• Both of you are in scope. All assets and liabilities held by you and by your spouse or common-law partner must be identified with supporting documentation, and if a requested document is missing you must explain why.
• The evidence list is long and some of it expires. Twelve months of statements for every personal bank account, certificates for term deposits with an explanation of any lump sum of $10,000 CAD or more, title deeds, purchase agreements and payment invoices for every property, property evaluation reports from a licensed firm that are only valid for one year, twelve months of transaction records for stocks and other investments, three years of financial statements prepared by a chartered accountant for every business you hold an interest in, proof of shareholding and a capital verification report for every business you have held an interest in over the past ten years, and the federal Schedule 4A for business nominees.
• You also write a history of the money. Section J of the federal Schedule 4A requires an accumulation of funds narrative giving a complete history of how the net worth of both of you was built, covering property purchases and sales, previous business ownership and other sources of income and capital gains. This is where unexplainable wealth becomes a refusal rather than a question.
• The verifier can go further than the checklist. It may request additional documentation and may interview you by telephone. The checklist is a floor.

• On the provincial application fee, we follow the live page, and the answer is that there is none. The province's live overview page for this category, last updated 4 May 2026, says under Fees and Costs that there is no fee to apply under this category, and that what you pay for is documents, travel to the exploratory visit and interview, and federal fees. The unlinked second copy of the guide agrees, saying in terms that there is no provincial application fee for the International Entrepreneur category. The linked guide disagrees, saying a fee applies to the principal applicant and associated partners and pointing to a fee structure we could not source. So the documents do conflict, and the conflict resolves. We follow the live page and the later copy of the guide over a linked copy footered December 2020, and we still confirm it in writing before a file goes in.
• On the registry step, we rely on the later copy of the guide. The linked guide requires you to file with the Registrar of Companies a confirmation from the Office of Immigration and Multiculturalism, Department of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour, of acceptance as a candidate under this category. The later copy deletes that requirement and the province's changes note expressly records the deletion. The department named no longer exists either, which is a second reason not to rely on the older text.
• On the nomination stage reports, we rely on the newer position. The changes note records that the Audit Opinion and Special Purpose Report was replaced by the Review Engagement and Special Purpose Report, and that submitting reports every six months from the date of nomination is no longer required. Both are improvements in your favour and both are documented by the province.
• On everything that decides eligibility, we rely on the linked guide. The two copies are identical on the age range, the net worth, the investment alternatives, the ownership and management requirements, the experience requirement, the language benchmark, the credential assessment recency, the excluded applicants and businesses, the partnership rules, every deadline, and the whole of the points grid including the pass mark of 72 and the maximum of 120. That is why relying on the linked guide is safe, and it is also why the later copy being unlinked matters less than it first appears.

One further point about what is and is not published. The province maintains a live overview page and a live eligibility criteria page for this category, both last updated 4 May 2026, and they are more current than any of the documents above. What we could not source is an online policy manual for either entrepreneur category, where the province publishes one for three of its worker categories. So read the live pages first, then the guide, and treat the guide's own footer date as a reason to check anything that turns on money or a deadline.