Canada

No. The Start-up Visa closed to new applications from 1 January 2026. This followed ministerial instructions published in the Canada Gazette on 20 December 2025, after the backlog reached roughly 42,000–46,000 files with processing times exceeding a decade. IRCC stopped accepting new commitment certificates on that date. Even the transition window for 2025 certificates, which closed on 30 June 2026, has now passed. A replacement entrepreneur pilot, described as High Impact, has been announced. It had not opened as of July 2026, and no criteria, thresholds or intake date have been published. Anyone still being sold a Start-up Visa in 2026 is being sold a place in a closed queue.

Only one survives, and it is provincial: the Québec Immigrant Investor Programme (QIIP). The federal Immigrant Investor Programme was terminated in 2014. Its backlog of roughly 59,000 applications was cancelled outright by statute. The replacement venture-capital pilot (CAD 2M at risk for 15 years) was terminated in 2017. Canada has had no federal passive-investor route for over a decade. The QIIP relaunched on 1 January 2024 and requires a CAD 1,000,000 five-year interest-free investment plus a CAD 200,000 non-refundable contribution. Any site marketing a Canada investor visa at the federal level is describing something that no longer exists.

The money is the easy part. The 2024 relaunch added a hard, unwaivable oral French requirement at Québec Level 7, roughly CEFR B2, for the principal applicant. This is a real speaking-and-listening exam, not a formality, and it is this single condition, not the CAD 1.2M, that killed the programme's traditional Asian market. On the finances, CAD 200,000 of the CAD 1.2M is a non-refundable fee, and the CAD 1,000,000 is returned after five years without interest, which is a six-figure real cost at Canadian rates. Selection by Québec is also not admission. The federal government still runs security and medical screening and issues the PR. Advisers who quote the CAD 1.2M and skip the French are describing a programme that no longer exists.

Provincial Nominee Programme entrepreneur streams and Québec's entrepreneur streams are now the main live business routes to PR. Both are operational programmes, not investment products. Most PNP entrepreneur streams work in two stages. You move on a work permit, actually run the business, and hit performance conditions on jobs and investment. Only then do you receive the nomination. Fail to perform, and there is no PR, and the investment is lost. Québec's streams add the mandatory Level 7 oral French exam across all streams. Federal PNP allocations recovered to 91,500 nominations for 2026, up about 66% from 2025 but still roughly 17% below 2024's 110,000. Capacity is constrained, and provinces close streams with little notice.

Canada has no inheritance tax and no wealth tax. That is a genuine advantage of the G7 passport. However, there is a deemed disposition of all capital property at death, taxed on the final return, plus provincial probate fees. So the accrued gain is still realised at the end of life, even without a formal estate tax. On capital gains generally, the proposed increase in the inclusion rate from 50% to 66.67% was deferred in January 2025 and then cancelled outright on 21 March 2025. The inclusion rate remains 50% for everyone at marginal rates, with no CAD 250,000 threshold and no two-tier system. Combined federal-provincial top marginal income tax rates run from roughly 44% in Alberta to about 55% in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Yes. Canada charges a departure tax under ITA s.128.1. On ceasing residence, you are deemed to have disposed of most capital property at fair market value and immediately reacquired it. That realises the accrued gain at the 50% inclusion rate, effectively about 22–27.5% of the gain depending on province, whether or not you actually sell anything. Some assets are excluded, including Canadian real property, RRSPs, RRIFs, RESPs, TFSAs and registered pensions. But private company shares, which dominate most UHNW balance sheets, are fully caught and frequently the subject of expensive CRA valuation disputes. You can elect on Form T1244 to defer payment without interest until actual disposition, but the election is due by 30 April of the year after emigration, and security must be posted where the federal tax exceeds CAD 16,500.

No. Ceasing residence is a facts-and-circumstances test about severing residential ties. It is not simply a matter of buying a ticket or declaring your intention. Retaining a home available for use, or leaving a spouse or dependent children in Canada, is one of the strongest signs that residence has not ceased. You remain taxable on worldwide income until it genuinely has. You must also file Form T1243 to report the deemed disposition, and Form T1161 listing all worldwide property where total fair market value exceeded CAD 25,000 on departure. These are required even where no tax is owed, and there are penalties for filing late. Unlike the US, Canada's tax system follows residence rather than citizenship, so a Canadian citizen can genuinely leave the system. But only by properly severing ties.

Canada allows dual citizenship. Naturalisation requires three years of physical presence in Canada out of the preceding five, along with a CLB 4 English or French language requirement for applicants aged 18 to 54. That physical-presence rule matters alongside the PR residency obligation, which for QIIP and other PR holders is 730 days in every rolling five years. The routes to PR are themselves the slow part. QIIP runs roughly 24 to 48 months across Québec selection and federal processing, and PNP entrepreneur streams typically require you to operate a business on a work permit before the nomination even issues. So the realistic timeline to a passport is the PR route plus three qualifying years, not three years from arrival.

This is not theoretical. It has already happened. In 2014, Canada legislatively cancelled roughly 59,000 pending federal investor applications, after some applicants had waited years. The QIIP itself was suspended from 2019 to 2023, with little warning. The Start-up Visa closure on 1 January 2026, alongside the simultaneous pause of the Self-Employed Persons Program, shows the same instinct moving faster. The 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan cut the federal business immigration target by roughly half, to about 500 principal applicants a year. Even the announced High Impact entrepreneur pilot is sized to admit a few hundred founders nationally. It is not meant to reopen the market. Applicants stuck in legacy backlogs have no guaranteed processing date. Treat queue risk in any Canadian programme as real.