The province of Ontario has announced its intention to issue Notifications of Interest (NOIs) to candidates in the Express Entry pool on a weekly basis. These NOIs will be issued under the Human Capital Priorities stream of the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP).
This stream is aligned with the federal Express Entry system. Successful applicants are awarded 600 additional Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) points and placed at the front of the line to issued an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for permanent residence in a subsequent draw from the pool.
The OINP had already announced that it planned to issue NOIs intermittently throughout 2017; we now know that this will be a regular, weekly process.
Ontario’s Human Capital Priorities stream is something of an outlier among the many Express Entry-aligned Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) available throughout the country, due to it operating on a passive model. That is to say, the process is neither first-come, first-served, nor Expression of Interest-based. Instead, the OINP searches the pool for eligible candidates who may settle in the province successfully, and issues them a NOI, which serves as an invitation to apply to the program for a provincial nomination certificate.
Once a NOI is issued, the invited candidate has six months to register on Ontario’s online application system and submit the application. Once registered, the candidate has 14 days to submit the application.
Applicants must pay a government processing fee of $1,500 CAD.
To be eligible under the Ontario Human Capital Priorities stream, candidates must:
In an update on its website posted on May 5, the government of Ontario encouraged potentially eligible candidates in the Express Entry pool to create a new profile in the Express Entry system to make it easier for Ontario to identify their profile during its search of the Express Entry pool. Candidates who create a new profile must delete their old profile.
To find out if you are eligible to enter the Express Entry pool, the first step to immigrating to Canada through Ontario’s Human Capital Priorities stream, please fill out a free online assessment today.
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