How to move to Canada and bring my UK small business with me?

August 24, 2009 6:31 PM

We currently live in the UK and my wife has secured a job in Vancouver, so we're moving to Canada! Yay! However, I am self employed and run my own small business in the UK. All the Canadian Work permit stuff is geared to people who've got a job offer from a Canadian employer, not someone bringing a small business with them. Anyone done this (or something similar) before? Got any advice?

It seems there are some Business/Entrepreneur/Investor visa/work permit schemes available in Canada - but that these only apply to people who've got $300k-800k+ kicking around, which I don't. The self employed one is, for some reason, only for Artists, Athletes or Farm Managers. My web development business doesn't really fall under any of these categories.

My research so far indicates that my wife should get one of these: Temporary Work Permit and I should get one of these: Spousal Open Work Permit. Does anyone know if that's the best way to do it, or have any personal experience of this?

Bonus Round: What do I do with the biz when I get there? Setup a new Canadian company, or what?

Thanks!

posted by dflock to work & money (2 comments total)

Are you an American? I worked in Canada for many years under a NAFTA visa, representing my microscopic web dev/design company (which consisted of me). Perhaps there is some similar free trade type visa for UK-CAN...
Setting up a small business (licenses, commercial accts, etc) was cost prohibitive.
posted by tingting at 7:32 PM on August 24

Just to clarify, we're British citizens and I don't think that there's a NAFTA or equivalent bilateral thing for the UK-Can, unfortunately; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong?
posted by dflock at 2:00 AM on August 25