Canada’s Entrepreneur Opportunity

For years, the U.S. was the default destination for ambitious entrepreneurs from around the world. Many of the most influential tech CEOs, like Zoom founder Eric Yuan and Jayshree Ullal of Arista Networks, immigrated through the H-1B program, which allows American companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers. Then, last fall, Donald Trump announced that employers would have to pay a staggering $100,000 fee for each new H-1B visa petition. (Before that, they typically cost no more than $5,000.) Trump’s fee hike could slash H-1B applications by 90 per cent, resulting in potential GDP losses of US$100 billion and a shortfall of 154,000 high-skilled foreign workers over the next three fiscal years. The good news: all that entrepreneurial talent will be looking for somewhere else to go.

Canada is a great alternative—and I know this from personal experience. I immigrated from Germany in 2001 after selling my online book marketplace, JustBooks, to AbeBooks, a B.C.-based competitor. I only expected to stay for a couple of years, but then I met my wife and we built a life here. Today, Canada’s tech ecosystem is larger, more mature and has more access to capital than when I arrived. But before we can leverage America’s new immigration barriers to pull folks over from abroad, we have to address our own biggest startup stumbling block.

In 2013, the federal government piloted the Start-Up Visa program, or SUV. Unlike the H-1B visa, designed for skilled foreign hires, the SUV was an immigration pathway created specifically for founders prepared to build their own companies in Canada. The premise was pragmatic and market-driven. If a Canadian VC fund invested at least $200,000 in a company—or an approved domestic angel investor committed $75,000—that money was proof that a founder had enough potential to merit permanent residency.

Related: It’s Time for Canada’s Brain Gain

I was among those who advocated for the SUV’s creation, and it worked, for a time. But problems arose when the government added a new pathway: entrepreneurs could also qualify with a letter of support from a Canadian tech incubator, no financial backing required. Soon, a cottage industry of unethical immigration consultants was steering underqualified applicants toward low-quality and sometimes fraudulent organizations willing to issue letters with minimal scrutiny. (In one instance, an applicant from Vietnam allegedly paid more than $300,000 to a Canadian incubator to develop a likely non-existent daycare app.) The government struggled to vet submissions, and processing times ballooned. As of last October, legitimate SUV applicants faced waits of up to 10 years or, in extreme cases, 35. Many gave up and moved along. We’ll never know whether one of them might have gone on to build the next Cohere.

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The Carney government shuttered the SUV this past December, with plans to roll out a revamped program later this year. The challenge will be striking the right balance: a process rigorous enough to prevent fraud, yet streamlined enough to move strong applicants through the system quickly. Given the surge of interest set to follow Trump’s H-1B gaffe, the sooner it happens, the better.

First, the SUV’s backlog has to be addressed. Entrepreneurs who applied through the old VC or angel-investor pathways should have their cases expedited, while those in the incubator stream should be rejected and invited to reapply under the new criteria.

Related: Canada is Funding its Own Economic Decline

The next step is to restore investment as the central filter. In the new program, the incubator pathway should either be eliminated or redesigned so it’s tied to real capital. The original $75,000 and $200,000 thresholds should also be updated to reflect today’s market conditions. An appropriate benchmark for 2026 would be roughly $100,000 from angel investors and approximately $300,000 from VC firms. When experienced investors commit that kind of money, they’ve already done plenty of due diligence, weeding out weak or fake proposals before they ever reach an immigration officer’s inbox.

Processing should also be faster and more predictable. There are international models worth emulating on this front: Denmark, for example, processes startup-visa applications in approximately six weeks, employing an expert panel made up of experienced entrepreneurs and business specialists. Between tech hubs like Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada has no shortage of qualified people to do that job.

Finally, it will be important to rebuild public trust, which means doling out firm consequences for fraud. Applicants who try to swindle the system should be permanently banned from immigrating to Canada. Statistics Canada should also track and publicly report the outcomes of approved entrepreneurs, including how many jobs and how much revenue their companies generate. Entrepreneurs already play an outsized role in Canada’s economy: small and medium-sized businesses account for more than half of our private-sector GDP and employ nearly eight million Canadians. Yet our startups contribute a smaller share of national output than those in G7 countries like the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Attracting and scaling more high-growth businesses would massively expand Canada’s wealth at a time when the trade war has delivered hit after hit to our economy. If Canadians can see those returns clearly, confidence in the new immigration program will follow.

I know “more immigration” isn’t a welcome take right now. Some ask, “Why should we prioritize attracting international founders when we could just invest more in Canadians?” This is not an either-or scenario: Canada should absolutely pour money into its domestic talent. But entrepreneurship isn’t a mass commodity that can be manufactured on demand. It requires a particular tolerance for risk—a willingness to sacrifice stability in pursuit of something new. Not everyone desires that life. If the government wants more companies headquartered here, we’ll need more people from all corners of the Earth who are willing to build them.

And foreign founders do not displace Canadian workers; they create jobs that did not previously exist. They expand markets. One powerful example is Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke: a German-born founder who helped create one of the country’s most valuable companies. Shopify alone employs thousands and has reshaped our tech sector, which in turn transforms our cities, making them more dynamic and livable for everyone.

Trump has dropped the ball yet again, giving Canada a once-in-a-generation chance to reverse its brain drain and attract the kinds of minds who typically set their sights on Silicon Valley. The question now isn’t whether those entrepreneurs will consider us—it’s whether we can design a system worthy of their ambitions.

Boris Wertz is the founding partner of Version One Ventures.

This story appears in the upcoming April 2026 issue of Maclean’s. You can buy the most recent issue here, subscribe to the magazine here or send a gift subscription here.