PremiumCanadian government while announcing the new Immigration Levels Plan on 1 November said that permanent residents arriving in the country will increase by up to 500,000 per year by 2025. And a large part of this will be under the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).
In 2022, a total of 83,500 new permanent residents were invited to the country and by 2025, additional 20,000 new permanent residents will also be invited. And, one-fifth of the new permanent residents will be admitted through a PNP.
Immigration is a shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments as set out by the Immigration and Refugees Protection Act (IRPA).
Under the PNP, provincial governments decide which skill set will be the most beneficial for the provincial economy and then invite skilled candidates to apply. If a candidate accepts a provincial nomination, meaning they intend to live and work in the province, they can then apply for permanent residency through IRCC, a CIC report said.
Provinces select the immigrants as per needs, however, it is still the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that takes the final call on whether a candidate can become a permanent resident.
As per the new plan, Express Entry programs will invite 82,880 new permanent residents in 2023, and up to 114,000 by 2025. This also means, a higher number of invites in the next few years.
PNP targets are broken down into allocations for each province. For example, in 2022 IRCC allocated 6,500 provincial nomination certificates to Alberta and 9,700 to Ontario. The allocation for each province over the next three years has not yet been made public, the report also said.
There are currently nearly one million job vacancies in Canada and an unemployment rate of 5.2%. There are not enough people in the Canadian workforce to fill all the vacant positions, particularly as many of them are in specific skilled sectors such as healthcare and tech.