New Ontario Immigration Programs

The province of Ontario in Canada is soon to release two new streams that make applying for your Canadian visa that much easier to as a skilled worker in a critical field. Every year the province is given a budget of $163.4 billion by the federal government for immigration purposes and they have used it to implement these changes and more in 2019. They have four main priorities overall which will address labour market shortages currently happening in Ontario and elsewhere across Canada as part of the government’s plan to welcome over a million immigrants into the workforce.

The Ontario Immigration Nominee Program’s (OINP) allocation for nominations is only 6,900 which is only a small part of the total newcomers that enter Ontario for settlement every year with a total of 137,410 in 2018 alone. Candidates will be happy to know that the province is also expanding its in-demand occupations list under the Employment Job Offer: In-demand Skills Stream to include truck drivers (which provinces such as Saskatchewan have already done) and personal support workers.

Tech Worker Stream

The province is in search of highly skilled tech workers to come in and boost the sector. For this reason they are developing a new stream dedicated to finding individuals with these skills who can relocate to areas where there is currently a tech-boom. These include Toronto, Ottawa and Waterloo which are all sought-after cities to live in by immigrants.

The current path for tech workers to apply to the province is through its Human Capital Priorities Pathway which is linked to the Express Entry system. This system fast-tracks applications and processes them within six months. This system manages the federal programs which are the Federal Skilled Workers Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program and the Canadian Experience Class.

In order to apply through Express Entry, candidates need to create an online profile which is measured against the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). This awards points to candidates based on the criteria below. Once they have a score (which can still be updated), they are entered into the Express Entry pool where the highest scoring profiles are drawn, typically every two weeks.

CRS Criteria Awards Points For:

• Age
• CLB Language proficiency (English and French)
• Level of Education (In and outside Canada)
• Work Experience (In and outside Canada)
• Arranged employment
• Sibling in Canada
• Your spouse’s profile (if married)

Rural Immigration Pilot

There is a deficit of skilled workers all across Canada but especially so in smaller communities where immigrants are less-likely to settle. To address this issue, Ontario Immigration is also creating an immigration pilot for rural communities which will experiment with the best ways to attract and retain in-demand occupations in certain necessary sectors. Many immigrants are unaware of all the benefits to living in a smaller city, some of which include lower housing costs compared to major centres, cheaper daycare, lower rates and taxes as well as more open spaces to explore.

A successful example of a pilot such as this is the Atlantic Immigration Pilot which caters to the Atlantic provinces. These provinces are Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland & Labrador. All of these provinces have their own lists of occupations required to be filled to avoid critical labour market shortages locally. Canada has also created a five-year Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot which caters to the following provinces:

• Ontario
• Manitoba
• Saskatchewan
• Alberta
• British Columbia
• Yukon
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut

Ontario Provincial Nominee Program

There are other Ontario PNP programs also offered by Ontario immigration that might be a better fit for your skills or education. These are not just for highly skilled workers and cater to a variety of applicants. You can view other streams and a description of their target candidates below.

Other Changes

Further changes that are expected to take place in the following year include having a look at the investment and net worth thresholds for the province’s Entrepreneur Stream which targets business investors. This is in the hope that the stream will be easier for prospective applicants to apply to, making their immigration streams more competitive with those from other provinces.

Ontario is also calling on the federal government to make the allocation of immigrants through OINP more fair, thereby increasing the number they are allowed to accept through various streams to a goal of 7, 600. These enhancements will ensure that more critical skills reach Ontario’s communities and continue to grow the province and hold its position as the region with the highest GDP in Canada.

What We Do

We have Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants (RCICs) who are experts when it comes to changing immigration policies and how the different programs work. You can learn about what the correct documents are to submit as well as when to submit them to the federal government. Get help with everything from boosting your profile to finding the visa program that you are most eligible for.

These experts are all immigrants themselves and have therefore been through the different steps of the application process. Let them ease any fears you may have about the road to permanent residence and provide you with the opportunity to successfully immigrate to Canada through one of many settlement programs on offer.

Sign up for our services today in order to get the best advice regarding the over 70 different immigration programs available to candidates who want to immigrate to Ontario. Give yourself the best possible chance of successfully achieving your ITA by doing an assessment on your profile before applying for a Canadian visa program.