Provincial Nominee Programs

What is the Provincial Nominee Program?

Each Canadian province or territory has its own immigration program (“Provincial Nominee Program”) that enables foreign nationals who have the skills, education and work experience to contribute to that province’s economy and who wish to live in that province to obtain Canadian permanent residency. These programs may, for example, target students, business people, skilled workers or semi-skilled workers.

Some Provincial Nominee Programs have multiple streams, some of which are processed through Express Entry and others of which are processed through a paper based application. A paper based application generally takes longer to process than an application through Express Entry.

A foreign national who is applying for permanent residency under a Provincial Nominee Program through Express Entry must be eligible under an Express Entry immigration program (i.e. the Federal Skilled Worker Program (“FSWP”), the Federal Skilled Trades Program (“FSTP”) and Canadian Experience Class (“CEC”)).

For foreign nationals applying through Express Entry, there are 2 major advantages of a nomination under a Provincial Nominee Program. First, based on recent history, the frequency of rounds of invitation is higher for the Provincial Nominee Program. Secondly, a foreign national who is nominated earns 600 points under the Additional Factors category, representing half of the total maximum points available under the Comprehensive Ranking System (“CRS”). These advantages mean that a foreign national who is nominated under a Provincial Nominee Program enjoys a significantly higher likelihood of receiving an invitation to apply for permanent residency over a shorter period of time.

The BC Provincial Nominee Program

The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (“BC PNP”) is a Provincial Nominee Program with multiple streams, including an Express Entry BC (“EEBC”) stream, a Skills Immigration stream, the Tech Pilot (“BC PNP Tech”), which is a subset of the Skill Immigration stream, and an Entrepreneur Immigration stream.

In the 3 year period from 2018 to 2020, the Province of British Columbia nominated between approximately 6,250 to 6,550 foreign nationals each year under the BC PNP as follows:

From 2020 to 2018, the BC Tech Pilot contributed 1,855, 1,509 and 1,135 nominees respectively within the Skilled Worker and International Graduate & Post-Graduate categories of the Skilled Immigration Stream.

In the 3 year period from 2018-2020, China accounted for approximately 25% of the provincial nominees.

BC Tech Pilot

The Tech Pilot (“BC PNP Tech”) is intended to help BC tech employers to recruit and retain international talent in 29 tech occupations by offering foreign nationals with those tech skills a priority pathway to permanent residency. These tech occupations include computer and information systems managers, computer programmers, web designers and developers, information system analysts, database administrators, authors and writers, graphic designers, editors, broadcast and technical motion picture occupations and a range of engineers including civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic, computer, chemical and software engineers.