p-bende88

You're thinking of the old Entrepreneur Program, that'd been around since the 1970s, and is now under a moratorium. As mentioned in a different comment here, that program was substantially different.

This new program, for one, includes permanent residency and is the first such program in the developed world to do so for entrepreneurs. It puts an end to what many countries (and indeed Canada until now) had, which was to offer the uncertainty of bureaucracy where one's long-term residency was concerned. Not exactly inviting, hey?

What I thought neat during the announcement yesterday was that they recognize that some startup business float while others sink, but your permanent residence status doesn't get taken away if your business sinks.

On that note, it is worth pointing out that Canada is making major headway in what they call a "faster and more flexible" immigration system. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2012/...

You're thinking of the old Entrepreneur Program, that'd been around since the 1970s.

That program simply facilitated new Canadians to make smaller convenience stores or low-risk ventures at best (smaller, safer enterprises, etc). It's criteria was largely just net worth and business experience. The only path to Canadian permanent residence was the creation of one new job every three or four years.

As you'd guess, it didn't exactly inspire risk takers.

This is rather misleading. The average processing time for Canadian citizenship remains 21 months. There is a residency requirement that applicants live 1,095 days (a full three years) in Canada before applying.

Some require a residency follow-up, because there are people who cheat the residency requirement, forging paperwork to pretend to have lived in Canada, etc. This is only a minority of cases. There's an average of 172,000 new citizens to Canada each year, which is huge.