The Hongcouver | Slim pickings for China’s immigration industry in Canada’s new investor visa scheme

For years, Canada’s immigrant investor programme was the Chinese immigration industry’s cash cow. A money tree. A goose that popped out golden eggs like a tennis ball machine.

Big commissions (more on this below) and a seemingly endless supply of mainland millionaires covetous of Canadian passports made the scheme the Chinese consultants’ favourite. So when it was axed this year, all eyes were on the promised replacement - would it offer similarly rewarding opportunities?

Two Canadian sources briefed on the government’s plans told me this week that the replacement venture capital investor scheme would be tiny, approving just 50 applicants per year - a number so low that I initially thought a couple of zeroes had been left off. Both sources said it was possible the scheme has been modified since they were briefed by Alexander’s people a couple of months ago, although they were under the impression that it was close to being a done deal. “I think it [the small size of the programme] is symbolic of the level of interest they have in pursuing this long-term. Compared to the caps on other programmes, this is nothing,” said one source.

Fifty, 60 or 120 – it matters not at all, compared to the vast scale of the old IIP, which brought about 37,000 rich immigrants to BC from 2005 to 2012. When it was formally scrapped in June, 60,000 would-be millionaire migrants in the years-long queue had their applications dumped too; about 40,000 of those were likely bound for Vancouver.

The new venture capital scheme looks like being so minuscule as to serve little more purpose than allowing the government to keep its promise to replace the IIP. It certainly won’t provide viable access to Canada for the bulk of the dumped IIP applicants.