Partnership with a Canadian

[Peppers]

I have no connections with Canada-but in the future I might consider settling in Canada.
We are planning to open a trade business with a friend who is Canadian-American. (buy from my country and sell in Canada and States)
There will be no investment in Canada other than trade goods
Can anyone recommend me the procedures to follow so that it will be easy for me to get residency?May be opening the business in a province other than Ontario?

Or any recommendations on tax issues is also welcomed
Tnx

 

[scylla]

Unfortunately there's no easy path to residency. If you want to gain residency through opening a business, this will definitely take money and time (likely several years).

I believe for Ontario you need to be able to invest $3 million in the province (through a business) in order to qualify for the provincial small business stream. For the federal stream, you must be able to make an investment of $800,000 and have a net worth of at least $1.6 million. Both the federal Investor and federal Entrepreneur program are not accepting new applications at this time - but I believe they will be re-opening to new applications in July. See here for more info:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/investors/index.asp
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/entrepreneurs/index.asp

Processing times for the federal programs are here:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/times/perm/investor-fed.asp
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/times/perm/self-fed.asp

If none of those are a fit - then I would suggest that you look through the various provincial nominee programs (each one is a bit different) to see if you might qualify under one of these categories. More information here:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/provincial/apply-who.asp