IN THIS GUIDE · Direct the business or manage a brand: testing a L'Ancienne-Lorette contractor's car-rental franchise against E-2 control
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
Identify what the investor actually controls
Read the franchise agreement for the decisions that remain his: hiring and paying counter and lot staff, choosing the location within the territory, local marketing, hours, fleet mix within the program, and whether to expand. Then list what the franchisor controls: rates, reservation flow, software, branding and the fleet itself. If the owner's column is a real business with staff, budget and local decisions, direction can be shown. If the franchisor can remove him as operator or appoint a manager, that clause needs negotiation or the case is weak.
Count the investment without the fleet
Because the fleet is leased from the franchisor, it is not his capital at risk. His investment is the territory fee, the location lease and fit-out, software and equipment, security deposits that are not refundable at will, and working capital actually placed in the enterprise. Substantiality compares that figure with the total cost of establishing the business, so the analysis should show the enterprise's real start-up cost and his committed share of it.
Show the enterprise is more than a job for him
Non-marginality means the business must have present or future capacity to generate more than a living for the investor and his family. Airport-adjacent rental locations employ counter staff, drivers and lot attendants; the plan should show those hires and the revenue projections the franchisor's own disclosure document supports, kept separate from any projection he prepared himself.
Sequence the money and the visa
Do not pay the territory fee outright before the structure is reviewed. Ask the franchisor whether the fee can sit in escrow releasing on visa issuance, or whether the agreement can be conditional on it. As a Canadian citizen he will apply for an E-2 visa at a consulate. His spouse will be employment-authorized incident to E-2 status. E-2 offers no direct path to permanent residence, and his Québec contracting business will need a manager in his absence.
Treaty nationality comes from citizenship
At least 50% of the enterprise must be owned by nationals of the treaty country, and Canada is a treaty country, so treaty nationality follows citizenship rather than where anyone lives. Non-marginality may be established through the applicable income-capacity or significant-economic-contribution basis; the reviewer needs support for the proposed enterprise rather than a categorical claim that one customer is always enough or never enough. For borrowing, examine personal liability, collateral, and use of proceeds: debt secured by the enterprise's assets raises a different issue from financing based on the investor's personal assets.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.