Where this stands
There is no business or entrepreneur route into Ontario right now
The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program's Entrepreneur stream was revoked as part of the wholesale redesign that took effect through May and June 2026. The single stream that replaced Ontario's eight former streams, the Ontario Workforce Priority stream, is an employment stream and expressly excludes self employed people apart from physicians.
The two federal business routes are also shut. The Start-up Visa closed to new applications on 30 June 2026, and the Self-employed Persons Program has been paused since April 2024 with the pause extended indefinitely in December 2025.
That combination is unusual and worth stating plainly. For a client whose plan is to immigrate by starting, buying or expanding a business in Ontario, there is currently no door, provincial or federal.
This is not permanent. Ontario has called the current position phase one of a two phase redesign and has consulted on a new entrepreneur stream. But an intention is not a route, and nothing about it can be relied on yet.
What is open is elsewhere. Most provinces still run entrepreneur streams with their own net worth, investment and job creation thresholds, and several are considerably lower than Ontario's were. If the business itself matters more than the province, that is the conversation worth having. Nova Scotia, for example, is open.
Why the replacement stream cannot help a business owner
The exclusion is categorical
Ontario has not left this to interpretation. Its published rule for the Ontario Workforce Priority stream is that self employed people, and anyone whose arrangement is not a genuine employer and employee relationship, cannot apply. The only exception is self employed physicians.
The practical consequence is the question every entrepreneur asks, so here is the answer. You cannot solve this by having your own company issue you a job offer. The stream requires a separate legal employer who registers with the programme, submits the offer through Ontario's employer portal and has the position approved, and it requires a real employer and employee relationship between that employer and you.
- No ownership threshold exists. Ontario has not published a percentage of equity below which a shareholder can still qualify. The rule is stated as an absolute rather than as a proportion, which means there is no bright line to work to and no published concession for a minority holding.
- A controlling owner is outside the stream. By definition someone who controls the business cannot be in an arm's length employment relationship with it, so the requirement cannot be met.
- Physicians are the single exception. A self employed physician may apply with no job offer at all, provided they can bill the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and hold a certificate of registration with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in the independent practice, academic practice or provisional class. That pathway sits on the skilled worker page.
- A minority shareholder with a genuine employment contract is unresolved. Ontario has published no guidance on this, so we do not tell clients it works or that it fails. It is a characterisation question that would need to be argued on the facts, and the risk sits with the applicant.
What the Entrepreneur stream required
Recorded because applications filed before the revocation are still being assessed under the rules that applied when they were submitted, and because the thresholds are the benchmark clients will compare other provinces against.
| Inside the Greater Toronto Area | Outside it | Technology and digital communications, anywhere | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal net worth | $800,000 | $400,000 | $400,000 |
| Personal investment | $600,000 | $200,000 | $200,000 |
| Jobs to create | 2 full time permanent, for citizens or permanent residents | 1 | 1 |
Investment had to come from personal net worth and go to expenditure essential to establishing and operating the business. Cash and cash equivalents, working capital, and wages paid to the entrepreneur or a family member did not count.
- Business experience. Around two years of full time experience as a business owner or senior manager within the previous five years. Published guidance varied on this figure over the stream's life.
- A performance agreement. Signed with the programme before any work permit was issued, setting out the investment, the job creation and the business commitments.
- Nomination came last, not first. You came to Ontario on a temporary work permit, established and ran the business, and only after the performance agreement had demonstrably been met could you apply to be nominated. The route was long and the commitment was real before any permanent status existed.
The Corporate stream has been gone far longer. Ontario's route for international corporations expanding into the province, which required investment of $5,000,000 and five new jobs per key staff member nominated, closed in July 2019. Any material presenting it as available is seven years out of date.
The federal position
Both federal business routes are closed, which is why the Ontario closure bites so hard.
The Start-up Visa is paused
Designated organisations stopped issuing commitment certificates after 31 December 2025, and intake closed on 30 June 2026. Applications already filed are still being processed. IRCC has referred to a future targeted pilot for immigrant entrepreneurs, but nothing has been launched and no reopening date has been announced.
The Self-employed Persons Program is paused, and would not have helped anyway
It covers cultural workers and athletes rather than business owners, so it was never a general entrepreneur route. An IRCC evaluation published in July 2026 found it no longer fit for purpose, citing a refusal rate averaging 69 percent over ten years and processing times beyond a decade, and recommended redesign rather than closure. Nothing has replaced it.
Express Entry remains open, but it is not business immigration. It assesses employment history in skilled occupations, so it serves a business owner only where that person also has qualifying employed experience to rely on. How the federal pool works.
What Ontario says is coming
A new entrepreneur stream has been floated, not made
Ontario consulted in December 2025 on a new entrepreneur stream with two pathways, one for establishing a new business and one for business succession, meaning taking over an existing one. The province describes the current single stream as phase one of a two phase redesign.
No regulation has been made, no eligibility criteria published and no launch date announced. We are recording it so that you know the direction of travel, not because it can be planned around.
Be careful what you read about this one. At least one immigration site published content in the spring of 2026 announcing that a new Ontario entrepreneur stream had launched on 30 May 2026. It had not. What took effect on that date was the revocation of the old streams. If a client arrives believing there is a new Ontario entrepreneur route open, that is where the belief came from, and it is wrong.
There is one further thing worth knowing, because it is easy to mistake for a route. Ontario Immigration runs a business immigration service through its promotion and employer outreach team, and as a designated referral partner it can refer companies for faster work permit and labour market impact assessment processing under Canada's Global Skills Strategy. That is temporary work permit facilitation for employers. It is not a nomination stream and it does not lead to permanent residence.
What we do not state
Because it is not confirmed
Three things about the Ontario position could not be settled from the province's own published material, so this page does not assert them.
- A single closure date for the Entrepreneur stream. The redesign ran through regulatory changes effective 30 May and 25 June 2026 and the stream page is now archived, so it is plainly closed. Ontario published no standalone closure announcement for this stream, and our two research passes did not agree on which date carried it, so we give the period rather than invent a day.
- Whether a minority shareholder with a genuine employment contract can use the replacement stream. The published rule is categorical and no ownership percentage appears in it. Any answer either way would be ours rather than Ontario's.
- Anything about the proposed phase two entrepreneur stream beyond its existence as a proposal. No criteria, no thresholds, no date.
Each of these can be pursued for a live file. They are absent here rather than hedged, because on money thresholds and closure dates a page that quietly guesses does more damage than one that admits a gap.