Business immigration rests on capital, ownership, or a record of working for yourself. It is not a skilled-worker score, and Canada does not have one business visa.
Your options
- Quebec Investor — passive investment through an authorized intermediary. This is the open passive route. There is no open federal investor program.
- Quebec Entrepreneur — you start, buy, or run a business in Quebec. Three streams. Applications may be filed at any time.
- Provincial entrepreneur streams — inside nominee programs. You live there, invest, and actively run the business, often first on a work permit. Several provinces pause these when allocations are tight.
- Quebec self-employed — a profession on your own account, with a net-worth test and a start-up deposit.
- Federal Start-up Visa — paused for new applications.
- Federal Self-Employed Persons — culture and sport only, and paused. It was never a shop-owner program.
Words that get mixed up
- Investor does not mean buying a house.
- Entrepreneur means you will be responsible for the business.
- Owning a shop does not automatically make you an investor, an entrepreneur, or self-employed in the federal sense.
How we can help
- Say which of the six lines above is actually receiving a file, before any money moves.
- Separate a paused federal program from a Quebec or provincial file that can still be prepared.
- After a Quebec or provincial selection, prepare the federal permanent-residence application. Selection is not the visa.
