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editorial

Chris Alexander, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.Peter Power/The Globe and Mail

Give us your innovators, your inventors, your frustrated entrepreneurs, yearning to start companies. Chris Alexander, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, on Monday announced a new plan to attract 2,750 entrepreneurs a year to Canada. Good. The idea is to open a door for smart people with bright ideas – to allow them, and their planned businesses to launch, and to prosper, in Canada. Done right, it could be a win-win for immigrants and their new home.

To select suitable candidates, the government is partnering with the private sector, through the Canadian Association of Business Incubation. It's an expansion of the start-up visa program that was launched in April under Mr. Alexander's predecessor, Jason Kenney. Innovative thinking around innovation is something this country needs more of.

Mr. Kenney's original program was designed to grant permanent residency in Canada to entrepreneurs whose proposals have been endorsed by a venture-capital firm or an angel-investor organization. This latest announcement creates a third stream in the program.

As Mr. Alexander said, "We know Canada's private sector will only invest in ideas they think will succeed." He is in effect creating a public-private partnership.

The incubator stream is open to entrepreneurs whose plans are not yet hatched. They will not have to invest money; instead they will apply for acceptance into a business incubator program. That should mean screening up front, followed by support. As Mr. Alexander noted, Canadian business culture may be strange to newly arrived immigrants, and they may need help breaking in to Canadian professional networks.

In these and other reforms to the immigration system, the government appears to be making a genuine effort to match newcomers with actual needs and realistic opportunities. In the past, the granting of residency to immigrant investors and entrepreneurs sometimes appeared to amount to selling visas at a high price. More than a few investments did not materialize. The truth is that Canada needs human capital more than it needs cash. And success, in policy as in business, comes from trying new things. This program is a welcome experiment.

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