There are fewer spots available this year for foreign nationals seeking permanent residence through Ontario’s provincial nominee program.
In a statement on its webpage, the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) announced that its provincial nomination allocation for 2025 had been cut to 10,750—down from the 21,500 nominations the province issued in 2024.
The OINP also advised clients that processing times for under provincial immigration streams will be longer than normal, due to this reduced allocation.
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Latest updates from the OINP
The OINP advises that it will continue to select skilled immigrants who can help address Ontario’s “most critical labour shortages”.
Simultaneously, the province also advised that it will continue to review submitted applications within “new program constraints.”
According to the latest information from the OINP, all the program’s streams are currently open. As of the time of writing, the OINP has not responded to CIC News’s request for more information.
The current state of OINP draws
To date, the OINP has only held a single draw under one of its streams in 2025.
This draw took place on 15 January under the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream and invited only four candidates under a targeted draw for foreign nationals who were part of the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot.
Why have these changes taken place?
In seeing their annual provincial nomination allocation halved, the OINP now joins almost every other Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) in Canada.
These changes stem from the federal government’s decision to halve the total immigrant landings allocation to all PNPs, a change that was made public during the announcement of the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan, in October of 2024.
In the Plan, the federal government cut overall immigration levels by around 20%, but cut the PNP allocation by 50%.
The landings target for the PNP in 2025 was 55,000—a sharp decrease from the 110,000 cumulative landings allocated to Canada’s PNPs in 2024.
While most PNPs have opted to scale back provincial immigration in the face of this change, the Newfoundland and Labrador’s PNP was able to negotiate with the federal government to increase its allocation back to 2024 levels.
In exchange, Newfoundland and Labrador agreed to accept an increased number of humanitarian immigrants to its province over the next two years.
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