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> American preconceived notions [...] American craziness

Please don't add national swipes to what was already becoming a flamewar.

> it also has a buy your way in system that allows anyone to immigrate assuming they can put up a big enough pile of cash.

Not really. It's more of a "show that you have a pile of cash" immigration scheme rather than a "create X jobs" or "write the government a big cheque" form of immigration scheme.

Quebec's scheme requires you to loan the government (now) $1.2m for 5 years at 0% interest.

That is buying your way in, though you've mentioned a good point - the quantity of money needed to do that isn't actually that high, and, while you lose the ability to earn off those assets it's easier to lose future earnings on 1 mil than losing the mil itself.

Anyone living in a reasonably expensive (like east coast USA) area who owns their own house can probably afford the cost by leveraging their property value.

The Canadian government does get the utility of having the money available though, and usually the money put up will be put into projects that end up deferring adding immediately to the deficit.

I think the philosophy here is that anyone who can afford to do this will be paying lots of luxury taxes or employing people, that's just more of a hope than anything concrete and I think the recent trials and tribulations of the BC Liberals (big L - a political party) has shown how little money ends up being added to the system by these asset gifted immigrants.

Yes Canadian immigration system is merit based and fastest in the world. But you will have to add an exception which is Québec immigration system.

Québec immigration system is broken, arcane and has unfair delays for merit based immigrants to Québec. Federal stage is 2 years backlogged. Express Entry in rest of Canada will take only 4 or 6 months.

Let me paint a scenario for you:

* I am the sole bread winner for my family and decide to buy Canadian PR for me and my family - thank you Quebec Investor Program!

* My family moves to Canada and we buy a multi-million dollar home in my stay-at-home wife's name. I'll also buy one for my university-age kid because I like real estate. Sure it wasn't his money, but I gifted him the money and he bought the property. This is perfectly legal and won't be taxed until he decides to sell the property.

* I surrender my PR. I am no longer legally tied to Canada in any way as far as the Canada Revenue Agency is concerned.

* Once a month, I transfer a cash "gift" to my family to support them. This is perfectly legal, non-taxable, and Canadian banks don't really ask any questions. It works great for my family and keeps them comfortable while I continue making my income abroad.

* Come tax time, my family's income is zero because I am the sole bread winner and not Canadian in any way. My "gifts" are not income. My wife owns a multi-million home but her income is zero. My son owns a multi-million dollar home, but he's a student. They actually get money from the government to subsidize their "poverty" plus the wife gets child benefits for our little girl (too young for me to gift her cash to buy another multi-million dollar home, but I have the money ready when she hits 18).

* Meanwhile my family is using tax-supported services like health, education, and other services. My university-aged kid is paying domestic student tuition despite us having contributed functionally no money to the Canadian tax system. Sure, they pay sales tax, but they get a huge rebate since as far as the CRA is concerned they are living in poverty.

Since I gave up my Permanent Resident, I applied and received a 10 year super visa, so I can visit my family any time I'd like. Sure, I don't have access to a few things, but my family does and it's nice knowing I can walk into the country whenever I want.

But it gets better: if my family choses to get Citizenship (could go either way, since our home country does not recognize dual citizenship), they can sponsor me to become a Permanent Resident down the line. In fact we'll probably do it just in time for me to retire and when my healthcare costs will be higher.

The cherry on this delicious sundae, with nuts and cream on top? If you dare suggest I am abusing the system I can call you racist and people will take me seriously. Canada is great.

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To be clear. No one is suggesting that a university kid who got paid international student tuition, still found a job, and carved out a life in Canada is not welcome or that they are a problem. No one is claiming that the temporary foreign worker who excelled at their job and was sponsored to remain in Canada is a problem. What is causing a serious problem is the media and Lefist parties pretending that when someone tries to talk about the scenario above, they are talking about honest immigrants who came here to live and contribute to the country.