Canada Scraps ‘Millionaire Visa,’ Sends B.C. Property Market Reeling

B.C. Property

B.C. property market hazy after ‘millionaire visa’ scrapped

Real estate agents in Vancouver say property prices could take a hit, after Canada scrapped a program which allowed wealthy immigrants to fast-track the visa process.

The Immigrant Investor Program, launched in 1986, offered visas to business people with a net worth of at least $1.6 million who were willing to lend $800,000 to the Canadian government — for investment across Canada — for a term of five years.

By 2012, the scheme had to be temporarily frozen due to a huge backlog of applications from wealthy mainland Chinese hoping to come to B.C. Now, the government has announced it will end the program for good and scrap all 59,000 applications backlogged worldwide.

The decision came less than a week after the South China Morning Post published a series of exclusive investigative reports into the controversial scheme.

Property prices could take a hit

In West Vancouver, real estate agent Clarence Debelle is still receiving offers from mainland China for luxury property, but he’s concerned the end of the investor program will have an impact on the local economy and the high-end housing market.

“I deal directly with these people who bring a lot of wealth, who are creating lots of jobs for local Canadians — builders, trades, architects, realtors like myself,” said Debelle.

“Most of the buying is coming from Chinese immigrants who are wealthy, so if we make it difficult for them to come into this country, we have killed 80 to 90 per cent of the buying in West Vancouver.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland agrees.

“When you suddenly stave off the intake of literally hundreds of millionaires in the Vancouver property market, prices can only go one way and that’s down,” said Kurland.

Market impacted by more than investors

Others aren’t so sure. Even with the investor program frozen, housing prices continued to rise.

Tom Davidoff with UBC’s Sauder School of Business says the market is driven by other things like low interest rates and the local and global economies.

“Given that in the last couple of years, we haven’t seen the market cool off, it’s hard to believe that freezing the investor market is going to kill even the high-end in Vancouver,” said Davidoff.

The government has also announced the end of theEntrepreneur Program, a smaller scheme for business people who plan to own and manage a business in Canada.

However, wealthy investors can still come to Canada through the Start-up Visa Program, which encourages immigrant entrepreneurs to partner with private sector organizations to invest in local start-ups.

Canada Immigration Minister says Foreign Doctors could be ‘Fast-Tracked’ into Canada

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney during an interview with the London Free Press editorial board in London, Ont. on April 17, 2012 (Morris Lamont/QMI Agency)

In an interview in the London Health Sciences Centre on Tuesday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that the Canadian government is looking to fast-track foreign-trained doctors to help fill Canada’s shortage of physicians.

“It’s critical our immigration system respond to current and future shortages and across the spectrum of the labour market” Mr. Kenney said in the interview.

The reports of the possible fast-track program for physicians are being looked on favourably in the province of Saskatchewan, as provincial officials say it currently takes two years for foreign physicians immigrating to the province to have their application approved.

No details have been released about the fast-track program for physicians, so it is not known what qualifications foreign-trained doctors need to meet to be eligible, and how long a fast-tracked application would take to get approval.

 

Canadian Government to Create International ‘Job Bank’

A new international job bank for immigrants to be launched (BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS)

As part of the revamp to Canada’s immigration assessment system, the federal government has announced that it will create a ‘job bank’ in which all immigration skilled worker applicants will be placed, and from which Canadian employers and provinces will be able to recruit.

Those immigration applicants selected by a Canadian employer or province would then have their applications fast-tracked, making application processing times more dependent on the demand from provinces and Canadian employers for applicants’ skills, rather than the current criteria of time spent in the queue.

The job bank idea is modelled after New Zealand’s immigration system, which also pools applicants and allows employers to cherry-pick the most promising ones. The new immigration assessment system is expected to take at least two years to implement.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the Canadian government would also try to reduce the phenomenon of areas of high unemployment recruiting immigrants for labor. He said immigration authorities would require employers to prove they attempted and were unable to recruit Canadians before they are able to offer a job to an immigration applicant and nominate to have their application fast-tracked.