Most Ontario provincial nominations went to Express Entry candidates in 2019

Over half of all principal applicants who received a provincial nomination from Ontario last year were invited through one of three Express-Entry linked streams.

Ontario’s Express Entry Human Capital Priorities Stream brought in the most nominations out of all Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) streams in 2019. Nearly 51 per cent of all applicants, or 3,750, were nominated thanks to Ontario’s enhanced streams, which operate in conjunction with the federal Express Entry system.

Express Entry manages the applications for three Canadian economic-class immigration programs: Federal Skilled Worker Program, Federal Skilled Trades Program, and Canadian Experience Class. Most provinces, such as Ontario, have enhanced streams that allow provincial immigration programs to nominate candidates with profiles in the Express Entry pool.

A provincial nomination effectively guarantees that a candidate will be selected to receive an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for permanent residence to Canada.

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The OINP says about 33 per cent of all nominations last year went to candidates with work experience or a job offer in a tech occupation as a result of the OINP Tech Draws, which operate under the Human Capital Priorities Stream. Tech workers needed either work experience or a job offer in an eligible tech occupation, including software engineers and designers, computer programmers, interactive media developers, IT systems analysts, and technology consultants.

Though job offers are not a requirement for the enhanced streams, a large percentage of provincial nominations went to candidates who had jobs lined up in Ontario. International students also took up a large portion of allocations.

Nominations went to individuals from almost 1,900 Ontario employers across every industry. At least 35 per cent of nominees already had a job offer in Ontario prior to nomination. More than 96 per cent held a post-secondary degree, and at least 53 per cent had a Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) of seven or above in at least one of Canada’s official languages.

Ontario also issued 6.1 per cent of its nominations to francophone or high french proficiency candidates, surpassing its five per cent target. Most of these applicants received nominations under the French-Speaking Skilled Worker Stream and the Human Capital Priority Stream.

Originally the province was allocated 6,650 provincial nominations for 2019, but that increased after the province met its full allocation in November. The federal government granted Ontario 700 additional nominations in January, which were filled by the end of the year.

Ontario also nominated 41 applicants through the NOC C Pilot project, a federal-provincial partnership established to create permanent residence pathways for in-demand lower-skilled workers with job offers. This brought the total number of nominations in 2019 to 7,391 principal applicants, who brought 6,340 spouses and dependents for a total of 13,731 new immigrants to Ontario.

The OINP says they do not yet have allocation numbers for 2020.

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