The actual authority and duties need assessment. Delegation does not by itself decide whether the investor genuinely develops and directs the enterprise.
Explain the rights the investor retains
Identify the real ownership or operational control and decisions reserved to the investor. Do not assume a passive title qualifies or that every delegated daily task defeats eligibility.
What causes difficulty is a structure where somebody else in fact runs the business, whether a hired general manager with full authority and an absentee owner, or an arrangement so heavily managed by the franchisor that the buyer supplies capital and little else. Property the investor leases or that a supplier owns can support daily operations without its market value becoming qualifying capital, although lease or rent payments may be counted within the limits in the official guidance. What matters is the commercial activity the company itself conducts — sales, distribution, customer service, product management — together with substantial committed at-risk capital, non-marginality, treaty nationality and at least fifty percent treaty ownership. A useful first review produces a condition-by-condition record: proof of Canadian nationality, the ownership ledger, the transfer trail for money or assets, and records showing that the business is operating beyond the family’s personal support.