BREAKING: Ottawa gives provinces 139 days to nominate tens of thousands more workers for permanent residence

Ottawa has directed the provinces and territories to issue tens of thousands of additional nominations for permanent residence by no later than March 31, 2027.

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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada provided the deadline in a news release it published on the government website on Nov. 12, 2026.

The additional permanent residence spaces are for workers in Canada outside Quebec, and their accompanying family members, who are eligible to apply for permanent residence through the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).

The additional nominations come from a pool of up to 100,000 economic permanent residence spaces through 2027 TR-to-PR transition measures (2027 TPTMs) announced in the federal budget.

The spots for in-Canada workers are on top of the 2027 annual targets announced in the Immigration Levels Plan, which allots 95,000 spaces for the PNP for the year 2027 for permanent residence admissions that may come from outside Canada.

The timeline leaves IRCC roughly nine months to process the resulting PR applications before the end of 2027 to fulfil the federal government’s commitment under the time-limited measure.

The additional allocations are optional, allowing provinces and territories to determine how many spaces to use to nominate workers already established in their communities and meeting labour market needs.

The additional allocations can be used for nominations through both base PNP streams and Express Entry-aligned (enhanced) streams

As of time of writing, no details have been provided on which jurisdictions plan to use the additional spaces or how those spaces will be distributed among them.

In addition to provincial nominees, provinces and territories will also be able to identify workers in their jurisdictions who have already applied for PR and are awaiting a decision, allowing those applications to be processed under the additional spaces.

This includes workers who applied through the Atlantic Immigration Program (AIP), as well as through the following federal programs and pilots, which are now closed to new applications:

• The Start-up Visa Program.
• The Self-Employed Persons Program.
• The Agri-Food Pilot.
• Home care worker programs (e.g., Home Child Care Provider Pilot).

PR applicants are not required to take any steps to be considered for their applications to be processed under these additional spaces.

These spaces are for foreign workers and their families outside the province of Quebec.

IRCC’s measure to transition up to 100,000 in-Canada workers and their families to PR status by the end of 2027 was introduced alongside the initiative to provide up to 100,000 spaces for:

• Up to 32,000 people who have applied under the Hong Kong permanent residence pathways.
• Up to 18,800 people who have applied under the Ukraine Family Reunification Pathway.
• Up to 12,600 people who have already been found eligible for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
• Up to 45,000 spouses, common-law partners and dependent children of in-Canada PRs and Canadian citizens.

These 200,000 spaces are in addition to the overall PR admissions target of 380,000 set by IRCC for the upcoming year.

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This is a breaking news article. CIC News will update this article as details emerge.