That is buying your way in, though you've mentioned a good point - the quantity of money needed to do that isn't actually that high, and, while you lose the ability to earn off those assets it's easier to lose future earnings on 1 mil than losing the mil itself.

Anyone living in a reasonably expensive (like east coast USA) area who owns their own house can probably afford the cost by leveraging their property value.

The Canadian government does get the utility of having the money available though, and usually the money put up will be put into projects that end up deferring adding immediately to the deficit.

I think the philosophy here is that anyone who can afford to do this will be paying lots of luxury taxes or employing people, that's just more of a hope than anything concrete and I think the recent trials and tribulations of the BC Liberals (big L - a political party) has shown how little money ends up being added to the system by these asset gifted immigrants.