Buying a business in Canada as a foreign national

Buying a business in Canada does not buy immigration status, and the gap between those two sentences is where most of the money is lost. A purchase can support a work permit, and the structure of the deal decides which one, so the two decisions belong together.

About this work

Does buying a business get you a work permit?

It can create the conditions for one. It does not produce one. That is the sentence worth holding on to, because a great deal of what is sold in this area quietly assumes the opposite.

If you are buying personally, the realistic route is an entrepreneur work permit under code C11, and the department's instructions direct that such a permit be considered only where the applicant controls at least 51 per cent of the business. A deal that leaves you with half, or with a minority position alongside a Canadian partner, does not meet that threshold. This is a structuring point and it has to be settled before completion, not after.

The other personal route is an ordinary labour market impact assessment for a role at the company. It is available, and it is harder than it sounds when you are on both sides of the job offer: the offer has to be genuine and the labour market need real, tested by advertising and reporting the result.

If an existing foreign company you already work for is doing the buying, the analysis changes completely and an intra-company transfer becomes available. That route needs no labour market assessment at all, which is why it is usually the better one where the facts support it.

Written by the firm. Pending review by Kapil Rathod, Barrister and Solicitor, Law Society of Ontario licence 77122E.

The thing to be clear about

A purchase is a commercial transaction, not an application

There is no route in Canadian immigration law that grants status because somebody bought a company. Every route runs through a work permit or a nomination, each has its own conditions, and the purchase either satisfies those conditions or it does not.

  1. The owner-operator route people are still sold went years ago

    The dedicated owner-operator treatment, where a majority owner obtained a labour market impact assessment for a senior job at the company they had just bought, no longer appears in the programme requirements. Offers still circulate using that name.

  2. What remains is an ordinary labour market assessment

    Which asks two questions that are awkward for an owner: is the job offer genuine when the person making it and the person accepting it are the same, and was there a real labour market need, tested by advertising the role. Neither is impossible. Both are harder than the material still circulating suggests.

  3. Or a significant benefit permit under code C11

    Which asks what the business will do for Canada rather than whether a Canadian could have been hired. It requires control of at least 51 per cent of the business, and the initial permit normally does not exceed 18 months.

  4. Or a transfer, but only if there is already a foreign company

    An intra-company transfer needs a qualifying corporate relationship and a year of full time employment with the foreign enterprise inside the previous three years. Buying a Canadian company does not create either of those, so this route fits an existing business expanding rather than an individual buying in.

Side by side

Which route does the purchase actually support?

6 points of difference

The same purchase can support different routes depending on who is buying and what they already have. Working this out before the deal is signed is cheaper than restructuring it afterwards.

You are buying it personally

The likely route
An entrepreneur work permit under C11, or an ordinary labour market assessment
What has to be true first
You control at least 51 per cent of the business
What is assessed
The benefit the business brings to Canada
Advertising the role
Not required on C11. Required on a labour market assessment
How long the first permit runs
Normally not more than 18 months on C11
Does it lead to residence
Not directly. Through Express Entry or a provincial nomination, separately

Your existing foreign company is buying it

The likely route
An intra-company transfer, under C61, C62 or C63
What has to be true first
A qualifying corporate relationship, and a year of full time employment abroad in the previous three
What is assessed
The corporate relationship, the genuineness of both enterprises, and your role
Advertising the role
Not required
How long the first permit runs
Up to three years for an executive, manager or specialised knowledge worker
Does it lead to residence
The same. The permit produces Canadian work experience, not status

Before the meeting

What to bring to the first meeting

6 things to bring

Bring what you have and say what is missing. A meeting with the papers in front of it settles in one sitting what two telephone calls will not.

  • ✓The letter of intent or purchase agreement, in whatever state it is in
  • ✓The percentage you will hold on completion, and who holds the rest
  • ✓The vendor's financial statements, and any valuation
  • ✓The lease, and whether it can be assigned
  • ✓Details of the staff: how many, doing what, and on what terms
  • ✓Anything you have been quoted or promised in writing about a work permit

Our approach

A clear path forward

The same four steps on every matter, whether it is a refusal at the Federal Court or a ticket at the Provincial Offences court.

Book a consultation
01

Understand

We take the full history and read the documents before offering an opinion. Most bad advice comes from acting on half the facts.

02

Assess

You get a candid read on strength, timeline and cost, including when the honest answer is that you do not need to hire anyone.

03

Act

We prepare the application, the defence or the appeal properly the first time, because fixing a weak record later is harder and dearer.

04

Report

You hear from us at each stage, and you hear what a wait actually means rather than a date chosen to sound better.

Reported decisions

What has this work produced?

7 allowed of 22 reported since 2023

Public judgments of the Federal Court with Kapil Rathod as counsel of record, each checkable by citation on the court's own site. The rest were dismissed and are listed with these ones.

All case outcomes, including the client accounts

Where to go next

Buying a business in Canada is a commercial transaction that can support a work permit, and the structure of the deal decides which permit is available.

Settling the ownership percentage and the route before completion is far cheaper than restructuring afterwards.

Entrepreneur work permitsIntra-company transfersBook a consultation

Common questions

What do people ask about buying a business?

8 answered here

Written to be read once and acted on rather than to be rung about. Each answer is complete where the law allows a complete answer.

What does an officer look at in the business itself?

Whether it is real, whether you will actually control it, and what changes in Canada because you are here. Those three run through every route.

Real means trading, with financial statements, premises, customers and, usually, staff. A company that exists on paper and has never done anything does not carry a work permit application, whichever route is used, and buying a dormant company does not fix that.

Control is a documentary question and it is answered by the share register and the purchase agreement rather than by intention. Where a vendor stays on, where financing gives somebody else a veto, or where a management agreement leaves day to day authority elsewhere, the control question can be answered against you even at 51 per cent.

What changes is the significant benefit question, and it is the hardest one on an acquisition. Buying a profitable business and running it exactly as it ran before does not, on its face, change anything for Canada. The answer is usually in what you will add: expansion, new hires, a service or a market the business was not reaching, or the rescue of a business that was going to close.

What should you check before you sign anything?

The immigration analysis and the commercial diligence at the same time, because each one can make the other pointless. A deal that is commercially sound but structured so that no permit is available has bought you an asset in a country you cannot work in.

On the immigration side: what percentage you will hold on completion, whether anything in the financing or the shareholders' agreement qualifies your control, whether the business has staff and premises, and which route the resulting structure actually supports.

On the commercial side, the questions are the ordinary ones and they are not immigration questions: what you are buying, shares or assets, what the financial statements actually show, what liabilities come with it, whether the lease can be assigned, what the employees are entitled to, and what the vendor is agreeing not to do afterwards. Those need a corporate lawyer and an accountant.

And on the offer in front of you: if somebody has quoted a price for a business plus a work permit as one package, the question to ask before any money moves is which permit, under which code, and what happens to the money if it is refused.

Does a franchise change the analysis?

Not the immigration analysis. Buying a franchise is a commercial choice with real consequences, and it is neutral as far as the routes above are concerned. What matters is still the corporate relationship for a transfer, the ownership percentage and the benefit for a C11, or the province's own terms for an entrepreneur stream.

There is one practical way a franchise can help. A recognised system with an established model, disclosed unit economics and a defined territory makes the business plan easier to evidence, and evidence is what a discretionary application turns on. The projections are not yours alone, which is worth something to an officer testing whether the plan is realistic.

There is also a way it can hurt. Franchise agreements frequently constrain what the franchisee may decide, and where those constraints are heavy enough they bear on whether the applicant genuinely controls the business. That is worth reading with the immigration question in mind, not only the commercial one.

The franchise disclosure document is a commercial and regulatory matter in Ontario and it needs a corporate lawyer. We read it for what it says about control and about the benefit argument, which is a narrower job.

A consultant has offered me an owner-operator work permit. Is that real?

The dedicated owner-operator treatment is gone from the programme requirements. What can still be arranged for an owner is an ordinary labour market impact assessment, which requires advertising and a genuine job offer, or a significant benefit permit under C11, which is discretionary and needs control of at least 51 per cent. If the offer does not say which of those two it is, that is the question to ask before any money changes hands.

How much of the business do I need to buy?

For an entrepreneur work permit under C11, the instructions direct that the permit be considered only where the applicant controls at least 51 per cent. That is a floor rather than a target, and control can still be questioned at 51 per cent where financing, a shareholders' agreement or a management agreement leaves real authority elsewhere.

Will buying a business get my family status too?

Not directly, because the purchase does not produce status for you either. Where a work permit is granted, a spouse or common law partner may be eligible for an open work permit and dependent children can generally study, but the rules on spousal open work permits changed in January 2025 and turn on the principal applicant's occupation, so it is checked rather than assumed.

Is it better to buy an existing business or start one?

For the immigration analysis, neither is automatically better. An existing business is easier to prove is real and harder to argue changes anything for Canada. A new business is the opposite. What decides it is usually the commercial question rather than the immigration one, and the immigration structuring then follows the deal.

Does buying a business help an Express Entry application?

Only through what it produces. Owning a company adds nothing to an Express Entry score by itself. A work permit that follows from the purchase can produce a year of skilled Canadian work experience, which opens the Canadian Experience Class and moves the score, and a provincial nomination is worth 600 points. Both are separate applications.

Speak to someone this week

Bring the purchase agreement and the shareholding you will hold on completion. Buying a business in Canada and the permit that follows it are one decision, not two.

Book a consultation Call +1 (647) 372-1983
Law Society of Ontario licensedFederal Court filingsEnglish, Hindi, Gujarati and PunjabiFee quoted before you commit