OINP – Provincial Nomination Programs will be reopening in the coming months

The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program has recently stated that they will be re-opening select streams within the Provincial Nomination Program in the coming months. As has been widely documented, Ontario closed many of their high volume provincial nomination streams to new applications early in 2016. This includes the Human Capital Priorities stream, a stream which if a nomination is granted helps support an applicant’s Permanent Residence application through the Express Entry system, which was closed to new applicants in February, 2016. Other provincial nomination streams which were closed include the Employer Pre-screen stream, the International Student – Masters Graduate stream and International Student – PhD Graduate Stream, all of which officially paused intake of new applications on May 9, 2016.

Ontario has stated that they will be receiving their allotment of available nominations for 2017 from the Federal Government in November 2016. As a result, Ontario expects to be able to open select provincial nomination streams in the coming months. For up-to-date information concerning when the programs will be re-opened to new applicants please visit Ontario’s website as this information will be updated when available:

http://www.ontarioimmigration.ca/en/pnp/OI_PNPNEW.html

Ontario has also indicated that they are looking to improve their nomination programs. The improvements are said to include moving towards an online application system as well as decreasing processing times. The effort to reduce processing times is particularly important as Ontario has struggled to assess applications within the 90 day period which they advertised.