Provincial nominee programs in Canada

In a sequence that surprises people, because the money goes in before the status comes out. The shape is broadly common across provinces even though the terms are not. An expression of interest is submitted to the province and scored against its own grid. Where it is selected, a full business application follows, usually with a business plan and in several provinces an exploratory visit to the region.

If that is approved the applicant signs a performance agreement and comes to Canada on a work permit, not as a permanent resident. They then run the business through a performance period, meeting the commitments in the agreement on investment, on job creation and on their own active management. The nomination is requested only after those commitments have actually been met, and permanent residence is applied for federally after that.

So the investment is spent, and the family is uprooted, while the status is still a temporary work permit. That is the opposite of how these are usually described, and it is the single most important thing to understand before committing money.

We have not printed net worth or investment figures here. They differ by province and by stream, several were revised in the last two years, and a stale number on a page like this costs somebody real money. Bring the province you have in mind and we will read that stream's current terms with you.

Subsection 87(5) excludes a person from the class, whatever the province decided, where the nomination was based on the provision of capital, or where they intend to participate in or have participated in an immigration linked investment scheme. That second phrase is defined in the section and it catches arrangements whose purpose is partly to facilitate immigration and partly to raise capital for the promoters.

Subsection 87(6) then carves out genuine business investment, and it requires four things together. The capital goes to a business in the nominating province, and not one operated primarily to derive investment income such as interest, dividends or capital gains. The applicant controls or will control at least 33 and a third per cent of the equity, or an equity investment of at least $1,000,000. They provide active and ongoing management of the business from within that province. And the terms of the investment include no redemption option.

That last condition is the one that catches packaged arrangements. An investment the promoter will buy back is not an investment in a business for these purposes, and a scheme structured for exit rather than for operation fails on it however the paperwork is drafted.

Admissibility, which is entirely federal and untouched by any of this. A criminality finding, a medical finding or a misrepresentation finding defeats the application regardless of how strongly the province supported it. Where a nomination is in hand and there is anything at all in the applicant's history, that is the work to do first rather than last.

Membership of the class, under subsection 87(2). The certificate has to have been issued under an agreement in force, in accordance with approved criteria, and on the required basis. And the capital exclusion in subsection 87(5) applies federally whatever the province concluded.

What is no longer available to a federal officer, since the repeal of subsection 87(4), is substituting their own view of whether the applicant can become economically established. That was a real source of refusals and it has gone. It does not make a nomination unchallengeable; it removes one specific ground on which it used to be challenged.