Major changes to British Columbia’s Provincial Nominee Program
The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) has closed many streams, paused some draws, and will accept only 1,100 new applications in 2025.
The province plans to limit these new applications to front-line healthcare workers and to entrepreneurs and skilled workers with high economic impact.
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The province also announced a moratorium on general and priority occupation draws for 2025, and will only nominate approximately 100 high-impact people from its registration pool, which has over 10,000 candidates.
The BC PNP further announced that it will not process International Post-Graduate (IPG) applications received between September 1, 2024, and January 7, 2025, but will put those on a waitlist. All other IPG applications received in 2024 and early 2025 will be processed in 2025.
The province says that it will not launch its three new student streams “until B.C.’s allocation levels are restored.”
The PNP will continue to issue invitations to apply (ITAs) under its entrepreneur stream.
The Health Authority stream is now limited to front-line healthcare workers. Prior to this change, it was open to Health Authority employees of any occupation.
Early Childhood Educator Assistants will no longer be included in targeted education draws—these draws will instead focus only on Early Childhood Educators.
The province noted that they started 2025 with 5,200 applications in inventory, and received an allocation of only 4,000 provincial nominations. Of these, the province plans to allocate 2,900 nominations to some of the applications which have already been received.
These changes were announced on April 14, 2025.
Background
In Oct, 2024, the federal government halved the landing allocation to the provincial nominee program, reducing it from 110,000 in 2024 to 55,000 in 2025.
In January of 2025, the federal government notified PNPs of a corresponding 50% reduction in their allocations for 2025 under their Provincial Nominee Programs, along with cuts to the Atlantic Immigration Program for the Atlantic provinces.
With a significantly reduced allocation, many PNPs paused the opening of streams and made significant changes to program eligibility and to application processes.
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