Canada · Residency by investment
Federal Immigrant Investor Programme (and the IIVC pilot)
CLOSED. The Federal Immigrant Investor Programme was terminated in 2014. The backlog of roughly 59,000 applications was cancelled outright by legislation, with fees refunded. Its replacement, the Immigrant Investor Venture Capital pilot, which required CAD 2M at risk for 15 years, drew almost no qualified applicants and was terminated in 2017. Canada has had no federal passive-investor route since. The Québec Immigrant Investor Programme is the only one that survives.
It is listed here because it is the precedent that should inform any Canadian decision today. Canada has a track record of cancelling a queue retroactively, by statute, after applicants had already waited years. The 2026 closure of the Start-up Visa reflects the same instinct, just executed faster.
Qualifying routes
A five-year interest-free loan to the government. The backlog was cancelled by legislation.
CAD 2M at risk for 15 years, plus a CAD 10M net worth test. It was priced to fail, and it did.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 800k CAD
- Total landed cost
- Not applicable. Closed.
- Route type
- Residency by investment
- Physical presence
- Not applicable
- Family
- Not applicable
- Permanent residency
- Not applicable
- Citizenship
- Not applicable
- Language test
- Not applicable
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- Not applicable. Closed.
- Canada legislatively cancelled roughly 59,000 pending federal investor applications in 2014. Treat queue risk in any Canadian programme as real.
- Sites still marketing a Canada investor visa at the federal level are describing something that has not existed for over a decade.