Nino M@ninomelikidze
Alright. As promised, @StevePaolasini and I have been really busy over the past few weeks compiling the full Canadian Startup Visa (SUV) program backstory complete with the fraud and mismanagement facts.
And damn, do we have a story for you. Stay tuned for the full article when it comes out but let's start with some fun facts we discovered in the process.
Like many things that have gone wrong, the SUV started off with great intentions. An ambitious, unique, innovation-driven pilot program meant to replace the antiquated Immigration Entrepreneur Program that got phased out in 2011.
SUV had a very straightforward objective: attract innovative founders who would build companies in Canada and contribute to its long-term economic growth. What made the pilot unique was the selection mechanism: the private sector evaluated the business idea first while the government assessed admissibility second.
In practice, this meant that before applying for permanent residence, applicants needed Commitment Certificates / support from a designated Canadian organization such as: venture capital funds, angel investor groups, or business incubators.
The SUV pilot was launched in 2013 and the IRCC decided to convert the program into a permanent one in 2018.
It had great initial results! Lower operating costs than the previous entrepreneur program and applicants raising higher capital in Canada: reinforcing the idea that private-sector validation was working.
However, IRCC's own evaluation of the SUV pilot indicated a very important weakness: the government had limited visibility into the ongoing activities of the designated orgs.
This is important because that's where all the issues started. IRCC's follow-up, 2023 program evaluation report indicated that "One-third (33%) of surveyed clients reported “an opportunity to immigrate to Canada” as the most appealing aspect of the SUV Program."
The report also pointed out that some designated orgs were allegedly charging applicants additional fees to assess their businesses or create fraudulent documents and immigration applications.
Let's talk about some of the biggest offenders. Starting in 2019, Empowered Startups was featured in a series of Federal Court decisions revealing troubling arrangements involving their applicants. There are multiple, public cases documenting that applicants each paid this designated org 300K CAD in incubation fees!
Another one known as Manitoba Technology Accelerator (MTA) operated under two different names and submitted HUNDREDS of applications under both of them over 2023-2024. The total applications submitted by them over that time period was upwards of 1K cases.
Funnily enough, MTA only lost its designation temporarily in 2025 and Empowered Startups never got de-designated.
Instead of dealing with the fraud-abetting organizations, in December 2025, the IRCC stopped giving out SUV open work permits. And in January 2026 they indefinitely paused the entire SUV program.
These drastic actions make sense from their end. Their backlog is now over 45K people and there are only 500 (!!!) spots allocated for business immigration in the 2026 levels plan.
That is close to 90 years of inventory, not something that is feasible or even realistic to deal with...
The main questions now remain:
1. Why did we turn a blind eye to this sheer scale of fraud going on in the SUV program for years? The warning signs were there as early as 2019 but the program only got paused after 2025
2. Why have these organizations not lost their designation before? Why did MTA only lose its designation temporarily? Why is there no further investigation being done into these fraudulent activities?
3. And most importantly, what on earth are we going to do with a SUV backlog of 45K applicants with support from predominantly questionable organizations and close to no spots available now for business immigration applicants? Is this where the powers of bill C-12 will potentially come in?
I'm not sure anyone has the answers right now. But we do need to deal with the consequences of this mismanagement before launching a new program...
