By Canadian Immigrant Magazine |
Conference Board of Canada summit to explore business immigration in Canada
Beyond its humanitarian tradition, one of the main reasons behind Canada’s modern immigration policy has been about offsetting the aging population and declining birth rates, while boosting the country’s economic growth as a result.
A recently published article from Statistics Canada analyzes past studies about the positive economic impact of immigration. “Researchers have hypothesized that immigrants can have a net positive impact on growth by contributing specific skills, lowering the average age of the workforce and contributing to innovation,” according to Yuri Ostrovsky and Garnett Picot, research analysts with StatsCan. “In addition, immigrant entrepreneurs have the potential to make direct contributions by starting new businesses and creating jobs.”
Welcoming immigrant entrepreneurs to start businesses and create jobs in Canada seems like a win-win, but, in recent years, business, investor or entrepreneur immigration has taken a back seat to other streams like skilled workers or family class. While many immigrants from these streams become entrepreneurs after a few years in Canada, Canada’s intake of business immigrants who want to come here as entrepreneurs, now done primarily through provincial nominee programs, is extremely low.
A new summit by the Conference Board of Canada will be discussing why Canada’s federal business immigration program has struggled over the past 40 years, what the provinces are doing to bring in investment and how to move forward as a country. The Entrepreneur & Investor Immigration Summit 2018, to be held on November 27-28, in Ottawa, aims to identify how Canada can become the global leader in benefiting from the human, social and financial capital of business immigrants.
“Canada is well positioned to learn from its 40 years of business immigration experience to help grow its economy. In fact, there is tremendous opportunity for business immigrants to contribute to Canada’s economic development agenda in areas such as international trade, FDI attraction, infrastructure, innovation, affordable housing, business succession planning, and the development of small and rural communities,” according to the Conference Board.
What the Conference Board summit on business immigration hopes to accomplish
Through a series of speakers and plenary sessions, the main objectives of the summit are to explore how business immigration can help advance Canada’s economic development agenda, as well as identify how to improve Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial business immigration programs.
Specific topics that will be explored as part of this discussion will include Canada’s federal, provincial/territorial and municipal economic growth agenda, how to attract and retain business immigrants in both large and small communities, a look at global business immigration issues, and public policy concerns such as fraud and high real estate prices in Vancouver and Toronto.
The summit will provide an opportunity for officials from government, business, immigration law and consulting, immigrant-serving organizations and education to network and learn from each other so that they can work toward shared objectives.
The Conference Board will then include these recommendations in a report to be released publicly in early 2019.
Attend the Entrepreneur & Investor Immigration Summit
Learn more about and register for the Entrepreneur & Investor Immigration Summit 2018 here.
With CAPIC as the summit’s strategic partner, regulated Canadian immigration consultants are eligible to receive up to 10.5 CPD credit hours by attending this Summit. Please stay tuned for more details on CPD eligibility for immigration lawyers.
Other sponsors of the event include Canadian Immigrant, Fragomen Canada, SuccessionMatching, Arton Capital, AURAY Capital, Beijing East J & P Star Consulting Co., Ltd. and Seligman Law.