Ontario

CIC News is profiling Canada's various provincial nominee programs over the coming weeks
Canada’s Provincial Nominee Program has grown exponentially since its creation in the 1990s and now stands second only to the federal Express Entry system as the leading pathway to Canadian permanent residence for skilled foreign workers.

Recent weeks have seen nominee streams in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia issue more than 2,500 invitations to workers with a range of skills and professional experience to apply for a nomination for Canadian permanent residence.
Quebec is the only Canadian province that does not take part in the PNP. It has a separate agreement with the federal government that gives it sole responsibility for the selection of economic-class immigrants.

Since the PNP’s first year in operation in 1996, when only 233 people were admitted to Canada through the program, it has evolved to the point where its admissions target for 2019 is 61,000.
Looked at over the next three years, Canada could receive as many as 213,000 new permanent residents through the PNP alone.
The reasons for this expansion are clear: Canada’s population is ageing, its birth rate is declining and labour shortages are expanding as a result. This trend is especially heightened in smaller provinces, which are also struggling with the loss of residents to other parts of Canada.

Promoting immigration to smaller provinces, cities, and towns across Canada — a process known as “regionalization” — has been the rage since the 1990s.

Recent weeks have seen an impressive amount of activity among Canada’s Express Entry-linked provincial nominee streams. In the past five days alone, more than 1,400 Express Entry candidates have been contacted by Canada’s provinces to apply for a provincial nomination.

The Government of Canada has named 11 Canadian communities that have been selected to take ‎part in its new Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot. ‎

MoneySense's annual ranking of the best cities and towns for new immigrants to Canada has been updated for 2016, with various destinations across the country vying to be crowned number one. The ranking system looks at employment rates, rental costs and existing immigrant populations in communities across Canada.

Ontario invited Express Entry candidates with work experience in one of six tech occupations to apply for a provincial nomination.

Statistics Canada reports that 58% of internationally educated healthcare professionals (IEHPs) in Canada find work in their field, though this lags behind Canadian-educated counterparts. With 500,000 healthcare workers set to retire soon, IEHPs are crucial.

International migration continued to drive Canadian population growth in the final quarter of 2017, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the increase seen during that three-month period, new Statistics Canada data reveal. The federal agency said international migration, which includes immigration, return emigration and net non-permanent residents, “remained the main driver of population growth” between October 1, 2017, and January 1, 2018.

British Columbia

More than 167 candidates received invitations to apply for a provincial nomination in these draws.

The Government of Ontario is being encouraged to create a new immigration pilot program that would address labour needs in its northern and rural regions. Promoted by the Northern Policy Institute, an independent think tank dedicated to issues in Northern Ontario, the proposed Ontario Rural and Remote Pilot draws on existing immigration programs like the federal-provincial Atlantic immigration pilot (AIP) and Manitoba’s morden Community Driven Immigration Initiative.

Two thirds of Canadian businesses surveyed hire talent from abroad

Canada works hard to position itself as an ideal home for the best and the brightest global talent across all industries.

The Business Council of Canada (BCC) recently released a report in which 80 Canadian businesses were surveyed about how they use Canada’s immigration programs to hire skilled workers. The businesses surveyed cumulatively employ over 1.6 million workers. Two thirds of companies surveyed say they recruit talent overseas using Canada’s immigration system. The remaining third hires immigrants who have already relocated to Canada.

Canada’s Immigration Levels Plan 2022-2024 looks to welcome over 450,000 new permanent residents per year by 2024. Canada offers a multitude of work permit and economic class immigration pathways.

According to the BCC survey, all employers agree that Canada’s labour shortage is widespread, and they face real difficulty finding skilled workers across all industries. Labour shortages are particularly pronounced in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.

Canada’s tech sector has been hit hardest by labour shortages as industry growth and demand is outpacing the number of skilled workers. Professions such as computer science, engineering and information tech are in high demand.

Improvement factors:

Only half of respondents agree that the Immigration Levels Plan for 2022-2024 is adequate to address their business needs and the growing labour shortages. The remaining half indicated that the number of economic immigrants needs to be increased but acknowledged that this is not practical until the government has a plan in place to ensure there is adequate housing and other infrastructure to support new immigrants, such as childcare and healthcare.

Employers also believe they have a role to play in helping immigrants settle. This can take the form of language training, assisting employees in obtaining recognition of foreign credentials and relocation assistance.

Canadian businesses expect that competition for skilled immigrants will intensify over the next few years. This is especially true of recent graduates who they say face significant barriers in obtaining permanent residency in Canada due to the time it takes to gain sufficient work experience.

Alberta
Alberta announced it is launching a new expression of interest portal and a new immigration pathway for recent international student graduates from Alberta post-secondary institutions.

The following is the monthly summary of PNP activity across Canada.

The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, one of Canada’s Provincial Nominee Programs, has received an additional nomination allocation for 2017.

This a primer for new Canadian PRs containing answers to a few of the most common questions about healthcare in Canada.

Candidates in the Express Entry pool may find themselves selected by provinces . specialized immigration streams in Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia started selecting qualified skilled workers from Express Entry selection pool.

Canada’s provinces employ a variety of approaches to selecting the Express Entry candidates they invite to apply for a provincial nomination for permanent residence, and the past week saw examples of three of them in action in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Ontario.

The following table outlines how average hourly wages have changed for salaried employees in each province between December 2022 and February 2023.

Some in-demand occupation categories experienced increases in offered wages even higher than the national average, including:

The province of Ontario led Canada’s provinces and territories in net employment gains in 2018 During 2018 Canada’s unemployment rate reach its lowest point since 1976.