Where this stands
Saskatchewan has no business or entrepreneur route at all
All three business streams closed on the same day. The Entrepreneur category, the International Graduate Entrepreneur sub-category and the Farm Owner and Operator category are gone, permanently rather than paused, and nothing has replaced them.
Applicants who had already signed a Business Performance Agreement continue to be processed. For everyone else there is no provincial business door into Saskatchewan, and the two federal business routes are closed as well.
This is a complete closure rather than a narrowing, and it is worth saying so directly. If your plan is to immigrate by starting, buying or running a business in Saskatchewan, there is currently no route, provincial or federal.
Saskatchewan has not described this as a phase or a redesign and has not consulted on a replacement, which distinguishes it from Ontario. Ontario also has no open business route, but has at least said it intends to build one. Saskatchewan has said nothing of the kind.
What is open is elsewhere. Several provinces still run entrepreneur streams with published net worth, investment and job creation thresholds. If the business matters more than the province, that is the conversation worth having. The provincial business routes we cover.
What closed, and what it was for
Three distinct routes went on 27 March 2025, and they served three different people. It is worth separating them, because a reader who has been told Saskatchewan business immigration is closed often does not know which of the three they were actually looking at.
| Route | Who it was for | Position now |
|---|---|---|
| Entrepreneur category | People establishing, buying or partnering in a business in Saskatchewan, coming first on a work permit and being nominated only after the business had operated and the performance agreement had been met. | Closed permanently. Signed Business Performance Agreements continue to be processed. |
| International Graduate Entrepreneur | Graduates of Saskatchewan institutions starting a business in the province rather than taking employment. | Closed permanently. |
| Farm Owner and Operator | People buying and operating their own farm in Saskatchewan, with their own capital and farm business experience. | Closed permanently. Signed Business Performance Agreements continue to be processed. |
We do not reproduce the former net worth, investment or job creation thresholds for these streams. They governed nothing now, they would be read as current by someone skimming, and the figures a client actually needs are the thresholds in the provinces that are still open.
- This was one decision, not a drift. The federal allocation cut for 2025 left Saskatchewan with 3,625 nominations, its lowest since 2009, and the province restructured the same day. The business closures, the sector caps, the restriction of overseas recruitment and the return of pending applications without a job offer were all announced together.
- The graduate entrepreneur route closing matters more than it looks. It was the route that let a Saskatchewan graduate build something rather than be employed. A graduate now has to take employment to stay, through the Students sub-category, which requires a permanent job offer related to their field of study.
- Spas, salons and pet care businesses were barred from the worker streams too. Permanently ineligible to recruit through the programme from the same date, with veterinarians excepted. So a closure that reads as being about business immigration also removed some employers from the employment routes.
The federal position
Both federal business routes are shut, which is why the Saskatchewan closure leaves so little.
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 and recommended redesign rather than closure. Nothing has replaced it.
Federal Express Entry remains open and is drawing, 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 we tell business clients about Saskatchewan
Three honest options
A closure this complete does not leave much room for cleverness, and the useful thing is to be clear about which of three real options a client is actually choosing between.
- Move the business to a province that has a route. Usually the right answer where the business is genuinely portable. Several provinces run entrepreneur streams with published thresholds, and some are considerably lower than Saskatchewan's were. This is a comparison worth doing properly rather than a fallback.
- Qualify as a worker on your own record, if you can. Many business owners also have employed experience in a skilled occupation, either earlier in their career or in a genuine executive role for a company they do not control. Where that is real, it can carry a federal or provincial application on its own terms. Where it is not, it cannot be manufactured.
- Wait, and understand what you are waiting for. Saskatchewan has not announced any intention to reopen. Waiting is therefore waiting on an unannounced decision with no timetable, which is different from waiting for a programme that has been consulted on. For a client with time and no urgency it may still be reasonable, provided they know that is what they are doing.
The one thing we will not do is dress a business plan up as employment. A job offer from a company you control is not a job offer for these purposes, and presenting it as one is a misrepresentation with consequences that last five years and reach the whole family. The alternatives above are worse than the route you wanted. They are not worse than a misrepresentation finding.