Changes to the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP)

We receive many calls about the OINP, but the amount of interest in the OINP is out of portion to its size. In 2020, Ontario was only allocated slightly over 8,000 spots. That means that the Province could nominate slightly over 8,000 people for applications for permanent residence. These 8,000 spots are spread over nine different programs at last count. In 2021, Ontario has been allocated 8,600 spots.

On April 28, 2021 the Province started to route all applications through an expression of interest system. This means that interested persons can upload details of themselves into the OINP e-Filing Portal. That expression of interest will be registered with the OINP for 12 months. After that time it will expire. The Province will from time to time go into the pool of candidates and will send an invitation to apply to those candidates that it likes best. This makes the system much less transparent and predictable.

So far, the expression of interest system only covers the Employer Job Offer categories for foreign workers and for international students. In 2020 this represented about 3,290 applicants. In 2020 3,499 spots were allocated by the OINP through the Express Entry system. This left only 1,265 spots to allocate among the remaining application categories. The entrepreneur stream, by the way, saw only one nomination in 2020.

There is no harm in filing an expression of interest with the OINP. The likelihood of an individual being given an invitation to apply through the expression of interest system, though, is probably extremely low. Back to all news