About the OINP
The OINP, or Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, is an economic immigration program run by the Ontario province in partnership with the IRCC.
This program’s nine streams nominate workers, international students and people who can positively contribute to Ontario’s economy. The programs are namely:
- Employer job offer: Foreign Worker Stream
- Employer job offer: International Student Stream
- Employer job offer: In-Demand Skills Stream
- Masters Graduate stream
- Ph.D. Graduate stream
- Human Capital Priorities stream
- Skilled Trades stream
- French-speaking skilled worker stream
- Entrepreneur stream
Nomination process
The streams under the OINP follow two distinct application processes.
The OINP Expression of Interest System- Under this system, interested candidates must first register an expression of interest for free with the OINP, the applicant’s credentials are then assessed, and an Invitation to apply is issued if they meet the program’s requirements.
The other method works through the federal government’s Express Entry System. Here candidates must have an active Express Entry profile and receive a Notification of Interest from Ontario. As of March 2023, the total number of NOIs issued for each stream is as follows:
- Human Capital Priorities stream – 3,539
- French-Speaking Skilled Worker stream – 615
- Skilled Trades stream – 2,228
How do yearly quotas for the OINP work?
The federal government allocates the yearly quota of nominations to Ontario and the OINP. This number translates to the number of permanent residents admitted in a single year. These allocations are made with the IRCC’s yearly immigration targets in mind.
As of 2022, Ontario was allocated 9,750 nominations.
What is Ontario’s quota for 2023
The IRCC recently increased the OINP’s provincial nomination quota by around 70% for 2023. With this increase, the OINP is set to issue 16,500 nominations this year compared to 9,750 in 2022.
Why the increase in the OINP’s nomination quota
The increase makes sense when you consider the bigger picture. In recent years, Canada has relied more on Provincial Nominee Programs as its primary source of permanent resident admissions. The 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan allocated 105,500 planned PR admissions from the Provincial Nominee Program as opposed to only 82,880 from the Federal Express Entry program.
Ontario’s current situation
According to Statistics Canada, the province of Ontario had over 326,110 Job vacancies in the fourth quarter of 2022. This follows a common trend of low unemployment rates and high job vacancy numbers nationwide.
This labour shortage has Canada looking outside its borders for skilled immigrants to fill gaps in its workforce- directly contributing to the rising quotas for the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program.
