Foreign Investment

Hi everyone,

Not long time ago, I have read couple articles about different programs that the Canadian Government offers to foreign investors. Basically saying, that "if somebody invests into the country in a sum of for example "500,000 $", will be guaranteed to become a Canadian Permanent Resident and will be allowed to run his/her own business here in Canada. Certainly this way the Government tries to bring more foreign investors into Canada, in order to improve the economy. These kind of programs are not new, but they are always modified, creating new incentives for investors to come into the country. So now just a simple question that I had in my mind.

Do you think that the Canadian Government should limit its choices of Immigrants it admits (or lets say give priority) mostly to those who are able to invest into the country?

Answers: 1. Yes 2. No

or

Answers (% of investors from total amount of immigrants that are admitted): 1. 0-20% 2. 20-50% 3. 50-70% 4. 70-100%

What do you guys think?

Leyla, this is certainly an interesting question. However, I think that we have to be careful about when and where we place it in our series questions. For example, if we mention that financially-investing-immigrants come to Canada, then that may put immigrants in a non-neutral light (ie. a positive one, since 'investors are good') if they were to then be asked a question like the one in the next thread title, ie. "Do you agree that Immigration is a positive contributor to Canadian society and the economy as a whole?" Also, and this is something to think about regarding all of our questions, I'm not sure if we ought to ask questions about increasing or decreasing percentages for specific types of immigrants without giving information about the actual percentages that specific kinds of immigrants/refugees compose Canada's inflow, since, as I learned in my Poli 328A, the public knows very little about immigration issues and thus they wouldn't be giving an 'educated opinion'. Unless, of course, we want to measure only public opinion on such a matter...

Pawel:

You bring up a few really good/significant points. I'm also in Poli 328a, and those are things we must keep in mind.. But I definitely like the issue/question posed by Leyla! What about just keeping it simple (without percentages), as Leyla originally stated? That way we can get an idea of whether Canadians think of foreign investment as a contributing factor (or not) to Canadian society/economy..which seems to be the general scope of research question.

Thoughts?

Thanks Pawel and Aman for your contributions. You guys have a point, and I agree that asking specifically for percentages is not fully correct. Also one should be careful about the way the question is constructed. Since people may refuse to answer a question that might intimidate them. I believe just answering "yes or no" would be sufficient. The Question should be as you guys mentioned: Do you think that foreign investment (foreign investors immigrating to Canada) is a positive contributor to the Canadian society/economy? However tell the truth, I believe we can develop the question further, make it more detailed. any thoughts?

I think it would be nice to add some statistics. This is what I have found on the cic website:

Investors

The Immigrant Investor Program seeks experienced business people to invest C$800,000 into Canada’s economy and become permanent residents. Investors must:

show that they have business experience have a minimum net worth of C$1,600,000 that was obtained legally and make a C$800,000 investment. Your investment is managed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and is guaranteed by the Canadian provinces that use it to create jobs and help their economies grow.

CIC will return your C$800,000 investment, without interest, about five years and two months after payment.

So mainly the idea of attracting investors, is to create spaces for work and develop the Canadian economy.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/research-stats/facts2009.pdf According to the statistics of 2009, 2,872 (principal applicants) and 7,435 (spouses and dependants) were admitted to Canada. Keeping in mind that each of them would have invested min. C$800,000, this would be definitely a positive contributor to the Canadian economy and to the society, decreasing the unemployment in Canada. If we give a brief intro before asking the survey question, this would help the individuals to reply more accurately. However again the question should be formulated in more detail.