While talk swirls about the potential for Canada to attract foreign technology talent in the wake of changes to the United States’ H-1B visa, wait times under Canada’s existing program for luring immigrant entrepreneurs have grown to 53 months.
Canada’s Start-up Visa (SUV) Program offers a direct path to permanent residency for foreign entrepreneurs with innovative business ideas. But SUV processing time has now surpassed four years, and the ballooned timeline has led some to question whether the program is an effective mechanism for bringing foreign founders to the country.
“As if entrepreneurs will wait a full economic cycle to open a business in Canada,” Testbed Lab president Kirk Lubimov wrote in an X post.
Listed SUV processing times have ballooned from about 12 months in 2022 to over four years today.
Launched as a pilot in 2013 after the end of the Federal Entrepreneurship Program (FEP), the SUV was made permanent in 2018. While publicly listed SUV wait times have increased significantly since July 2022, when they were a more modest 12 to 16 months, a 2023 report from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) acknowledges that processing these applications has been a growing problem for much of the SUV’s lifespan.
In 2018, SUV applications took 11 months to process, compared to 16 months in 2019, the report indicates. Program wait times surged to 28 months in 2020 and have grown since then, hitting 32 months in 2022, the last year the report covers. Archived web data indicates SUV processing around this time in 2023 took about 37 months, and by 2024, it had reached 40 months.
IRCC took over sole administration of the SUV last year from the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO)—which were responsible for vetting and approving designated organizations—as the feds reviewed “ongoing challenges” with the program, including mounting processing times and a large backlog of applications.
At the time, IRCC halted the approval of new designated organizations and implemented a new hard annual cap of 10 new applications accepted per organization, marking a reversal from previously reported plans to scale up SUV intake. IRCC also began prioritizing submissions supported by investors that have committed capital to startups and incubators that are part of Canada’s Tech Network, which represent only a portion of designated orgs.
IRCC told BetaKit that the feds significantly reduced admissions through the SUV and Self-Employed Persons programs last year in a push to reduce immigration “to sustainable levels.” The federal department said it slashed the target number of acceptances from 6,000 in 2024 to 2,000 this year, ahead of another planned cut to 1,000 in 2026. This reduction has contributed to the SUV backlog—which numbered more than 42,000 applications as of July—and longer wait times, the IRCC said.
To help mitigate the impact of these wait times, the IRCC introduced a three-year open work permit last October allowing SUV applicants to come to Canada to build their businesses while awaiting processing.
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Canada’s new immigration bill offers another potential answer as to what the feds might do to tackle this problem: with Bill C-2, the Government of Canada is seeking the power to cancel, suspend, or vary applications “for reasons determined to be in the public interest” in an apparent bid to help cut soaring immigration backlogs and wait times. Canadian immigration lawyer Marina Sedai told the Toronto Star that SUV applicants could be among the targeted groups.
In late 2023, The BetaKit Podcast discussed the SUV’s struggles with former NACO CEO Yuri Navarro, who previously helped create and administer the program, and immigration researcher Stein Monteiro, co-author of a report that found the SUV was failing to fill the shoes of its predecessor, the FEP. Monteiro’s analysis found the SUV was falling short in a number of key areas, from job creation to global trade and long-term business viability.
To qualify for the SUV, an incoming founder must have the committed support of a designated venture capital (VC) fund (with a $200,000 investment), angel investor group (through a $75,000 investment), or a business incubator (via acceptance into an incubation program).
At the time, Navarro explained that the program was designed to take part of the decision-making process away from government bureaucrats and give investors and incubators with the capacity to vet these technology startups the power to nominate them while still ensuring that immigration officers had the final say. Navarro attributed some of the problems with the SUV to its design and the organizations designated to make those decisions.
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“Whereas the angel stream and the VC stream had to put money up to support the companies … the incubators didn’t have to, but also were able to charge the companies for services,” he said on the podcast, adding that this structure has created opportunities for some organizations to “use the program to their advantage.”
Navarro noted the high volume of “low-quality” applications submitted by “bad actors” monetizing the SUV for their own gain clogged the system and put officials in a difficult spot. Multiple sources BetaKit spoke with last year, who have historically been involved with the SUV program, also expressed concern about some incubators charging high fees in return for letters of support.
That IRCC SUV report from 2023 found that incubators were responsible for four-fifths of all submissions. The report also stated that “most of the problematic” SUV applications came from these incubators.
The report also noted misuse by immigration lawyers and consultants selling SUV business plans, and acknowledged that high volumes of weak applications could suggest many applicants do not intend to start or run a business in Canada but simply view the program as an “expedited path” to PR. Despite this, as of the report, no organization has had access to the program involuntarily revoked due to “integrity concerns.”
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In a recent interview with BetaKit, Navarro said the SUV was “not a real option” for entrepreneurs looking to immigrate in its current form. While he believes that Canada still needs an SUV, Navarro argued that the feds need the power and will to either revoke bad actors’ access or replace it with something better.
Current NACO CEO Claudio Rojas told BetaKit that the SUV program “has tremendous potential to help Canada attract the best and brightest innovators from around the world,” but argued that in order to realize this potential, “it must be recognized as a strategic economic tool that reflects the urgency of entrepreneurship.”
NACO CEO Claudio Rojas argued that the SUV program “must be recognized as a strategic economic tool that reflects the urgency of entrepreneurship.”
Some think that the US’ new H-1B fee presents an opportunity for Canada. During a recent United Kingdom trip, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney even revealed Canada is looking at “a clear offering” for people in the tech sector otherwise eligible for an H-1B.
But this eagerness to attract talent stands in contrast to the effectiveness of Canada’s existing immigration programs for entrepreneurs and tech talent.
A CVCA spokesperson told BetaKit that these lengthy SUV processing delays “risk undermining confidence in programs designed to attract talent.”
The SUV is not the only federal program to suffer from inefficiency. The Global Talent Stream, a fast-track initiative that lets Canadian tech companies quickly and temporarily hire skilled foreign workers, has also faced criticism for increasing wait times.
Past programs, like the targeted H-1B work permit stream that the feds launched in July 2023, which hit its 10,000-application cap in just two days, offer some evidence that Canada can occasionally get this right—though data obtained by The Logic shows only 1,625 people actually came to the country on the new work permit between then and December 2024.
Feature image courtesy Freepik.