The Hongcouver | Step aside Vancouver: Windsor, Ontario, wants the next wave of millionaire migrants

For better or worse, rich immigrants, most of them Chinese, have been flooding into Vancouver for years.

Now Matt Marchand, president and CEO of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce in Ontario, is putting up his hand for a share of what he hopes will be a new influx of foreign millionaires to arrive in Canada, under the federal government’s Immigrant Investor Venture Capital (IIVC) scheme.

“Historically, immigrant investors have gone to three or four large urban areas…and we felt that the federal government should look at immigrant investors coming to small and medium-sized communities [like Windsor],” Marchand said on Monday.

“There are all sorts of reasons to come to Windsor-Essex … but perhaps people coming in under the immigrant investor programme were not aware of the benefits, for example, of living within four hours of 150 million Americans.”