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Can you move to Canada without moving? Of course you can…through the Federal Startup Visa Business Program.
Is the Canadian startup visa program closing? What policy changes are coming up, if any? Is there a risk on the program changing based on the Federal elections scheduled here in Canada for 2025?
You need to know what the latest SUV PR processing times are? How about the work permit processing times? Approval rates for work permits? Everything you need to know in less than time than it takes you to buy a plane ticket to Canada…
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You either love it, hate it or you don’t have any feelings for it …yet. What am I talking about? Of course, it’s the Federal Startup Visa program of Canada which is the only program left in Canada allowing professionals and investors to obtain their residency here by applying directly from anywhere in the world.
If you are new to the SUV (Startup Visa) world, this video is quite advanced and I recommend you to start with some of our beginner videos here.
Let’s dive deep into the Startup Visa world;
What’s really happening? Does anyone know?
Does the Canadian minister of immigration even know this program exists and how the IRCC is processing the SUV PR or work permit cases?
Probably not since she just received the appointment for this position.
Of course not! There are several reasons for this answer. There are over +80 designated organizations under the Startup Visa (SUV) program, and many of them are actively processing cases to endorse startup groups as we are publishing this article. These designated organizations, believe it or not, have deep pockets, very entrenched lobby network to the government, and their directors are all key veteran businesspersons and experts in the Canadian business ecosystem. If the Canadian government closes this program outright, they are shooting themselves in the foot by creating a large backlash from the Venture Capital community , Angel Investors and business incubator community. As we all know, the word ‘startup’ is very fancy and glamorous for politicians , business persons and investors. The term is thrown around loosely because it is ‘trendy’ and every country tries to attract startups to their economy and boast about the unicorns that result in these efforts – the U.S. being the most popular. Canadian politicians and key stakeholders don’t want to send the wrong signal to the world and internally to its local ecosystem that innovation, investments and startups are not welcome. So instead of closing it, they have and will update the policies, regulations and the processing capacity and targets for the Startup Visa program – which they have done already last year and we will cover what may be coming up this year. This is the best strategy by a government to tweak a program without closing it.
Another key reason why the SUV program will survive any government change in Canada is that
It was developed and launched during the time the Conservative party was in power and
Most of the Startup Visa program was run and managed during the Liberal party’s time in power.
Therefore you have the two largest political parties who incepted the program and managed it , now head to head in this year’s elections. Is Startup Visa at the top of their political agenda – of course not! Since most people in Canada who are not in the immigration world don’t even know about this program. Other priorities exist such as looming tariffs, crime rates, high inflation, economic uncertainties, housing crisis and sor forth – to keep the politicians and their electoral base busy debating J
Another reason for the Startup Visa program not closing this soon is that there are literally NO other business immigration programs to attract investors, talent or serious professionals to the country at this magnitude. I’m pretty sure the current government couldn’t give a damn about this program at the current moment since they’re trying to get out of a serious political hole they dug for themselves into for the past several years – and the SUV program is probably on page 100 of their priority policies to look into.
And we have to be realistic – nobody wants the immigration minister job in Canada. It’s a revolving door and just a stepping stone to where the next candidate wants to end up in. So can we expect a serious overhaul or change of the Canadian immigration system – of course not!
If the Canadian government is not closing, then what is happening? The Canadian Startup Visa program (SUV) is changing. This is a fact that started materializing last year with multiple changes that our readers should already know about; Removing the peer review, capping number of letters of support by each designated organization, changing closed work permits to open, and updating work permit eligibility criteria. ***Update March 28th 2025: Interestingly enough we just received another update by the IRCC published the night before this article was posted on our website that work permits under the Startup Visa program can now be applied with EXPIRED Letters of Support. This is good news for applicants! More ‘free’ attempts at work permit re-applications. Refer to our work permit approval rate and trends at the end of this article***
And the answer is most probably yes, we are expecting 2 major revisions to the SUV (Startup Visa) program this year. These are just probabilities, but so far what we have heard from the stakeholders in discussion with the IRCC is that the following program criteria are under review for a major overhaul:
Essential vs Non-Essential members on the Letters of Support. Most designated organizations have communicated to the IRCC that this is a useless factor which is included in the Letter of Support and should be scrapped completely.
Eligibility criteria of Startup Visa applicants. Due to the low quality of applicants many overseas agents sign up into SUV groups to fill up their spots, the IRCC is considering increasing the eligibility qualifications for Startup Visa PR applicants. Some of these changes could be language ability (right now it’s a language exam score of CLB 5). Another key eligibility factor which can be added is previous business ownership or senior management paid work experience. As of the publishing date of this article & video, the Startup Visa program has ZERO work experience requirements – and we believe this will a very likely target of the IRCC to update.
Minimum investment criteria may change. Currently there are NO investment requirements for the Startup Visa program. But if you review the Provincial Entrepreneur programs in Canada, they all have minimum investment criteria – and these PNP Entrepreneur streams are the holy grail for the Canadian immigration department. The government bureaucrats believe they are the master pieces of entrepreneurial programs – although they are a complete flop and no serious applicants really enjoy nor look forward to applying to these programs, the government takes them as a key benchmarking tool against other business & investment immigration programs in the country. The reason being is that there are clear and defined eligibility criteria, a points-based EOI system, minimum net worth, minimum investment, and clear guidelines for the creation of jobs and economic benefit to Canada. It is interesting to note that Startup Visa has none of these criteria or guidelines which is why it’s the single most popular business immigration program in Canada. Go figure! However, this will change – and we believe the economic benefit that a Startup will bring to Canada will be defined this year by the government. We don’t expect a point system or net worth minimum threshold to be announced for the SUV program, but either the creation of jobs OR more importantly minimum investment by the Startup business are definitely on the horizons. The Canadian government and bureaucrats can just look to their neighbors in the south (USA) and over the Atlantic to our symbolic head of state the in the U.K (currently being the King) to see that all their startup immigration programs have clear investment criteria meaning that any applicant who wants to qualify to be admitted or receive permanent status in that country through the startup programs need to have committed capital from investors (if they are not bootstrapping) or have accomplished specific revenue or investment milestones to be eligible to convert their temporary status to permanent. The Canadian Startup Visa program is long overdue for such a overhaul and it seems the IRCC is a little bit behind the times...
Another major change is on the horizon which is a bit more secretive, and this is the internal procedure of Designated Organizations on how they process and communicate with the Canadian immigration department (IRCC). It will be an internal procedural change which is not going to be client-facing. The details have not been disclosed but we know that IRCC is cracking down on designated organizations’ due diligence and selection process – and we believe they are going to beef up this endorsement (commitment certificate) and due diligence process for these organizations.
Here are the answers to these important questions:
If you have already received your Letter of Support and applied for your Permanent Residency, the new changes will be unlikely to affect you as your application will be locked in to the ‘old’ regulations
If you are planning to apply for your permanent residency or letter of support, the new upcoming changes will affect your eligibility to the program
If you are planning to apply for your work permit (post-PR submission) and if there are any new work permit regulations, it will affect you.
If you are planning to renew your SUV work permit inside Canada, and there are new work permit regulation changes, you will be affected
If you have already received your Letter of Support and have not yet applied for your Permanent Residency (PR), you could be exposed to new regulation changes although IRCC will not force the designated organizations who have already issued the endorsements for their candidates in case the applicants don’t qualify for the new criteria – however this is yet to be seen and remains a mystery each time the government announced Startup Visa policy changes.
Is there light at the end of the SUV tunnel? Yes, there is but there is bad news and some good news.
The bad news is that SUV PR processing resources across the IRCC network have been cut. Late 2023 to early 2024, IRCC was load balancing and involving many processing centres across the entire country to process the permanent residency application backlog SUV. This stopped sometime between end February to April 2024 and everything was thrown back into the Sydney, Nova Scotia, central SUV processing unit – which we sometimes called the terminators or minions in our previous YouTube videos (include Youtube video link with terminators) , depending on how novice or senior these IRCC officers were. As well IRCC is going through large staff layoffs this year. Consequently, a limited SUV processing team in Nova Scotia is currently managing the entire backlog.
Another key element is that this limited SUV processing team is picking up and reviewing ‘priority’ Letter of Support cases first and issuing them a permanent file number before reviewing any other cases. This is good news for startup visa applicants who have a Letter of Support or endorsement from a priority designated organization (IRCC List of Designated Organizations: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/start-visa/designated-organizations.html ) and very bad news for applicants who do not have a priority Letter of Support and were endorsed by non-priority incubators. Keep in mind that all Venture Capital and Angel Investors are priority by default, and only a few business incubators are designated as priority organizations by the IRCC. Previously if you applied for a Startup Visa PR application it could have taken 2 years or more to obtain a PR file number. Today, you can expect this in 3-8 months which is an improvement.
We believe that due to the lower IRCC Startup Visa targets per year for 2025, 2026, and 2027, the IRCC officers are intentionally slowing down the processing to meet these new targets (Refer to the latest Immigration Plan Targets for 2025-2027: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/annual-report-parliament-immigration-2024.html#annex-4 ). There are hundreds of Startup Visa groups which have been stuck in the queue since late 2023 with no clear communication and progress received on their PR processing by the IRCC. Many of you are in what we call ‘SUV limbo’ and we believe that the priority applications from 2024 will receive their PR decisions before end of 2025. Yes, this is extremely bad news for the non-priority Startups stuck since 2022 or 2023 in the queue – but there is nothing you can do at this point but wait. New applications for the Startup Visa permanent residency are technically in better shape and are being processed faster in the IRCC workflow than the previous applications from the backlog. I know this is bad news – but nobody can change this new system that was implemented end April 2024 with the announcement that was made by the IRCC.
The estimated PR processing time for non-priority endorsed Startup groups is over 40 months. That’s a lifetime! For priority, the data is not published, but we are seeing 24-30 months. And as you should all know by now, if you are Startup veterans, is that time is a startup’s worst enemy! More time means a higher likelihood of failure in the startup business world.
Work permit processing times are averaging 4 to 4.5 months no matter where you are applying from. Of course, in certain visa-exempt Western countries such as EU, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the SUV work permit processing is fast. But the rest of the world, including USA applicants, 4 to 4.5 months is a general average for all work permit SUV applicants.
We are seeing significantly high refusal rates across the board for non-visa exempt country applicants for the SUV work permit. This is because the IRCC announced the open work permit option last October and this has caused an influx of new SUV work permit applicants, and at the same time internal IRCC instructions which have not been revealed yet are training their officers to refuse most SUV work permit applicants on the basis that “you have not demonstrated you fall within the exceptions of R205(a) and that the proposed work in Canada would create or maintain significant social, cultural or economic benefits or opportunities for Canadian citizens or permanent residents” . Basically this means as per the Regulation R205(a) in IRPR that you are not showing or bringing any benefit to the Canada – and there is no compelling reason to let you in on a work permit (Refer to the IRPR regulations on this link: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-2002-227/section-205.html ) . This is the easiest trick in the book being used by the IRCC for Startup Visa work permit refusals. It’s the ‘catch all’ of all refusals – literally 99% of all startup work permit refusals are based on this specific reason. Sometimes the officer is really lazy or tired and will just mention that there is no “valid LMIA” for this application – which is just another way of stating that you are not LMIA exempt under R205(a). The reason the IRCC is using this refusal reasoning is that they know and we know the reality of the Startup Visa world, which is that many of these Startups either:
A) do not have the funds to invest and create jobs in Canada or economic , social or cultural benefit or
B) have no intention of doing anything besides looking for a job inside Canada with their new open work permits
We can’t blame them, but also it begs the question; Why did the IRCC even announce an open work permit and why did they implement this new rule 2 years after the minister of immigration announced it at the Collision conference in June of 2023?
See our short clip posted back in June of 2023 below…
These are mysteries that will haunt humanity for the next thousand years, similar to the JFK assassination.
Yes. It’s simple. Hire Canadian(s) inside Canada, preferably remote from rural parts of Canada as it’s more impactful considering the current unemployment rate, run payroll, and mention this in you work permit application that Canadians are at risk of losing their job (which falls in line with the ‘maintaining’ benefit for Canadians within the R205(a) regulations). Voila! You have a strong SUV work permit case and a potentially strong JR case (Federal Court Judicial Review).
I hope the information today regarding the Canadian Startup Visa has provided you more insight regarding this direct PR program, and allowed you to make an informed decision on whether to apply, what to do next, or at least plan your next move against the IRCC. It’s a game of SUV chess. Have you studied your opponent before you started playing? My team has been playing this chess match with the IRCC on behalf of our clients for over +8 years. We know the opponent well and we can make the odds in your favour for the Startup Visa PR application!
Don’t forget we have our upcoming investor exploratory trip to Panama and Italy in April and May this year (2025). If you are looking to apply for your residency to any of these two countries, which takes weeks, not years – we are hosting a trip to both these destinations where you can see everything upfront before you decide to apply. Reach out to our office through our website or the contact information provided in below this video (article) and mention the name of the country you want to join for our trip. Everyone from anywhere in the world is welcome to join!
If you are ready to put your Plan ‘B’ into action, for yourself, your family or perhaps your clients, you can reach out to us through the link under this video. Join our online live stream every Thursday at 11am EST, or 8am PST, to share your feedback, post your questions, and engage with others who are also exploring these opportunities.
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