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Immigration is not a zero-sum game. A talented immigrant can spawn a cycle of shared economic prosperity by creating innovation that leads to the establishment of new industries, which in turn, creates more jobs, reduces unemployment rates and boosts an ailing economy. Suren Dutia, Kaufmann Foundation
It’s been a little over a year since Danny Robinson, Boris Wertz and I started working on Startup Visa Canada. Since we launched, our team has expanded to include other entrepreneurs and investors, who share our passion for this initiative and want to see an entrepreneurial visa put in place including:
- Chris Arsenault, iNovia Capital
- David Crow, Startup North
- Eric Brooke, Professional You!
- Mark MacLeod, Real Ventures
- Mike Edwards, Initio Group
Making Progress
As you can imagine, initiatives like these take time but we are making progress. For starters, government officials are taking notice. In a recent Globe & Mail article, Citizen and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said plans were in the works to replace the Entrepreneur Immigration program that they shelved last year:
We want the next Bill Gates or the next Steve Jobs. We want those folks with the brilliant ideas that are going to generate sustainable jobs for a long time to come,” Mr. Kenney said. “We want to create a policy which is more likely to attract entrepreneurs in areas like technology, energy and environmental innovations.
It is exciting to see that all of our efforts and your support to date has helped reinforce that this is an important program, worthy of attention and action. In addition, we have met with Provincial leaders in BC and are in the process of setting up another meeting with Immigration Canada to discuss an alternative Business Investor Program in more detail. If the meeting is successful, I can only speculate that the next step would be for immigration Canada to assign a person and/or team to gather data to help them structure how a Startup Visa in Canada could work.
What Can You Do?
1. If you have not already, please sign the petition.
2. Tweet and blog about the initiative @suvservices
3. Send your local MP’s a message to express your support for Startup Visa Canada.
Start Up Visa Services
and how SVS can help?
