The Canadian government is reportedly axing its 28-year-old investor visa regime, which has seen groups such as wealthy Hong Kong residents enter the country, bucking the trend of other nations that have rolled out such programs.

The Canadian government is axing its 28-year-old investor visa regime, which has seen groups such as wealthy Hong Kong residents enter the country, according to the South China Morning Post. The move bucks a trend of other countries rolling out the red carpet for wealthy investors, such as Spain, Portugal, the UK and Malta.

According to one explanation of how it works, to qualify for this program, a person needs to have a minimum of two years of business management experience, have minimum net worth of C$1.6 million ($1.45 million); alone or with an accompanying spouse, make an investment of C$800,000 and meet certain health and security requirements.

The publication said the announcement, which it said was a surprise, was made in the budget statement of the country’s finance minister, Jim Flaherty. (The ministry’s announcement of the budget statement gave no comment on the issue on its official website. Family Wealth Report is in contact with the ministry for confirmation of details and will update in due course.)

The SCMP report said “tens of thousands of Chinese millionaires in the queue will reportedly have their applications scrapped and their application fees returned”.

The report said the decision to axe the program came shortly after the publication issued a series of investigative reports into the controversial 28-year-old scheme. The program has “spun out of control”, the publication said.

“In recent years, significant progress has been made to better align the immigration system with Canada’s economic needs. The current immigrant investor program stands out as an exception to this success,” Flaherty’s budget papers were quoted as saying.

“For decades, it has significantly undervalued Canadian permanent residence, providing a pathway to Canadian citizenship in exchange for a guaranteed loan that is significantly less than our peer countries require,” it read.

Countries such as the UK, Spain and Malta - all of them members of the European Union - have, in slightly differing ways, offered rights of residence, or visas, to people willing to invest minimum sizes of money in the countries, or to those willing to support specific enterprises. In Malta, the issue has caused a noisy political row in the small Mediterranean island, which suffers a significant problem of illegal immigrants seeking to enter from North Africa. In the UK case, there have been calls for the rules to be adjusted to boost the economic benefits from the investor visa system.