Vancouver, BC. Dr. Boris Wertz.Laura Leyshon for The Globe and Mail
It takes eight years for the Canadian immigration system to evaluate a young tech entrepreneur applying to immigrate from Paris. Applying from Hong Kong takes a little more than seven years, from New Delhi more than six and from Beijing nearly four.
In the world of technology startups, waiting times measured in Olympiads will convince applicants to apply for a visa elsewhere.
Boris Wertz, a Vancouver venture capitalist, says Canada needs urgent reform of its immigration system if it wants to lure some of the world's best tech talent.
Mr. Wertz is one of the backers of an initiative called Startup Visa Canada, a group calling for the creation of a new kind of immigration class for entrepreneurs. He says the current requirement that entrepreneurs invest $300,000 of their own money is unrealistic. Many are just out of school and, if they had those resources, they would probably not need to migrate.
He proposes the barrier be securing $150,000 in investments from established Canadian partners. The new arrivals would be eligible to work only for their new company. If after two years their business had failed or if they hadn't created three full-time jobs, their visas would expire and they would have to leave Canada.
"Their companies are going to hire people," Mr. Wertz said. "They're going to pay taxes. In the end, the biggest thing we can do in a world that is more and more globalized is to start new companies in the tech space."
His goal is to get this on the political agenda.
Dan Robinson, another B.C. businessman and Startup Visa backer, met with Industry Minister Tony Clement last year and discussed the idea. Mr. Robinson said the minister was receptive, but so far there's been no action. The minister's office did not respond to an inquiry on the subject.
The number of entrepreneur-class applicants who choose to come to Canada is relatively small in the overall picture of Canadian immigration, and it grows smaller every year. Their annual numbers have dropped 78 per cent since 2001, down to a paltry 372 in 2009. Part of that may be due to waiting times. A spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration said the time to process a visa varies by visa office. She said the department is working toward global service standards, but it takes time to verify applications and ensure that appropriate health and security checks are done.
Canada may be missing the moment. In the United States, John Kerry recently introduced the StartUp Visa Act in the Senate, legislation very similar to what's being proposed for Canada. In Britain, a recently enacted startup visa initiative would allow people to migrate with as little as £50,000 in funding, down from current levels of £200,000.
Mr. Wertz said it was his experience trying to invest in a group of entrepreneurs from Romania that convinced him the system was broken. He describes them as brilliant. They had worked for Google and Facebook and were keen on Vancouver for its proximity to Silicon Valley and its environment and quality of life.
"We had tons of trouble getting them a visa to stay here," he said. "It has been an ongoing saga. People were spending probably 20 per cent of their time on immigration visa issues while they could have been building a company."
Mr. Wertz cites a Duke University study that shows more than half of Silicon Valley tech startups had one or more immigrants as a founder, and that a quarter of all U.S. tech and engineering startups were founded by immigrants.
"Part of Canada's history has been about attracting great entrepreneurs to this country to build their businesses," he said. "I want to make that easier."