We have good news for all Start-Up Visa (SUV) applicants currently waiting for their Permanent Resident (PR) visa for Canada, and the people about to submit their applications: The Federal government of Canada just announced this week that they would significantly increase the number of SUV PR visas in the coming three (03) years!

Context:

• In December 2021, Canada had announced an extra financing of about CAD 80 million to address the backlog at Immigration Canada.
• In the course of 2022, the growing popularity of the Startup Visa program kept growing at a fast pace of about 1,000 applications per month, hence the backlog in this category kept increasing significantly despite the extra financing.

This week’s announcement:

This week, in its desire to address the backlog and to illustrate their commitment that “Canada is open for business” with the SUV program in this post COVID era, the government announced that they would select a significantly higher number of SUV applicants. To be specific, let me provide a bit of background information: Canada is accepting a pre-determined number of applications in every category, every year. For each category, Canada has a minimum number of applications they wish to approve, a maximum number, and in between: the actual “soft target”. Below is the summary of the current year target for the category of SUV applicants, and the just announced targets for 2023, 2024 and 2025:

2022: 1,500 Target

• Minimum target to reach: 1,000
• Maximum target not to exceed: 2,000

Newly Announced [i]:

2023: 3,500 Target

• Minimum target to reach: 2,350
• Maximum target not to exceed: 4,000

2024: 5,000 Target

• Minimum target to reach: 3,500
• Maximum target not to exceed: 7,000

2025: 6,000 Target

• Minimum target to reach: 4,000
• Maximum target not to exceed: 8,000

Impact of this week’s announcement:

By multiplying by 2 to 4 to the number of applicants in the coming 3 years, the processing times will be reduced significantly. With an approximate current backlog of about 12,000 applications, it is reasonable to believe that processing times may be reduced from the current 32 month to about 2 years.

Let it be reminded that for applicants who still consider such time frames too long because of the nature of Start-up companies, the possibility to apply for a Work Permit (and obtain this WP in about 3 to 12 months) still exist for applicants that are considered “essential” members of the Start-Up, and declared as such in the Letter of support (LOS).

For more information about the Start-Up Visa Program or other immigration programs, please contact us at info@jthlawyers.com |  Tel: +1 (514) 397 0995 | WhatsApp: +855 (0) 98 6767 82.

[i] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/notices/supplementary-immigration-levels-2023-2025.html