BREAKING: Ontario immigration revives regional pathway for Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Nipissing, and Kenora

Ontario immigration will prioritize workers in six northern and rural communities:

Greater Sudbury/Grand Sudbury.
Kenora District.
Nipissing District.
Rainy River District.
Renfrew County.
Thunder Bay.

Under the Regional Economic Development through Immigration (REDI) initiative, which the province announced it was relaunching on Oct. 16, 2026, dedicated nomination spaces will be reserved for workers in these communities who qualify under any Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) stream.

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As of the time of writing, the Ontario Workforce Priority Stream (OWPS) is the only active provincial immigration pathway through which foreign nationals can qualify.

The relaunched REDI initiative will operate by allocating a quota of nomination spaces to each of the participating six communities, and is set to run until Dec. 31, 2027.

The OINP has not published the quotas, as of the time of writing.

Each community’s boundaries are based on census divisions as defined by Statistics Canada.

The OINP announced the new round of REDI through its Program updates web page.

Ahead of its official Oct. 16 announcement, the OINP posted the new partner communities to its REDI initiative web page on Oct. 14.

Launched in January 2025, REDI was initially scheduled to run for one year, though the OINP continued holding REDI draws for some communities into April 2026.

Thunder Bay is the only community carried over from REDI’s previous participating communities, which also included Lanark, Leeds and Grenville, and Sarnia-Lambton.

The OWPS’s June 2026 launch marked the first stage of Ontario’s planned two-phase restructuring of its provincial immigration program—though no launch date for this phase has been announced as of the time of this writing.

The previous iteration of the REDI initiative operated through the OINP’s Employer Job Offer streams, which Ontario closed in May 2026 as part of the broader overhaul of its provincial immigration program.

While the OINP opened intake for the OSPW on Aug. 4, it has yet to conduct any draws under this stream.

The last REDI draw held by the OINP took place on April 8, 2026, through which 32 invitations were issued to candidates with a valid study or work permit and job offer in Lanark or Leeds and Grenville.

The REDI initiative originally began as a pilot in 2020, with three participating communities, before being expanded in 2025 with four new communities.

Nearly 1,000 workers have been nominated through the REDI initiative to date, contributing to workforce growth in essential sectors, including health care and skilled trades.

Three of the six REDI regions also include communities or institutions participating in federal immigration pilots that offer pathways to permanent residence (PR):

Rural Community Immigration Pilot (RCIP): Offers PR to foreign workers who receive a job offer from an employer designated by a participating rural or remote community.

Three RCIP communities are located in REDI regions: Sudbury in Greater Sudbury, North Bay and Area in Nipissing District, and Thunder Bay.

Francophone Community Immigration Pilot (FCIP): Offers PR to French-speaking workers who receive a job offer from an employer designated by a participating francophone minority community. Candidates must demonstrate French ability at NCLC 5 or higher in all four language abilities.

Sudbury is the only FCIP community located in a REDI region.

Francophone Minority Communities Student Pilot (FMCSP): Gives French-speaking international students from eligible countries a pathway to a study permit and, if all eligibility requirements are met, PR.

The FMCSP operates through participating post-secondary institutions rather than communities, currently 17. Two of those institutions have campuses in REDI regions: Université Laurentienne in Sudbury, and Collège Boréal in both Sudbury and Nipissing District.