The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) provides a route to permanent residency for foreign workers with the professional and academic skills required to succeed in and contribute to Ontario’s labour market.

Ontario immigration minister has proposed new amendments to the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). These new changes are expected to be implemented by November 16 along with implementation of new NOC 2021.

Amendments include changes to the language requirements, employment job offers and international students stream. This article delves into:

Implementation of NOC 2021
New Proposed Changes to OINP

Implementation of NOC 2021

The OINP is required to align its regulations with the new National Occupation Classification (NOC) 2021 system, which has already been adopted by Employment and Social Development Canada’s (ESDC) and Statistics Canada’s (StatCan).

Within the regulatory amendments, one of the recommendation is to implement updated NOC terminology to particular NOC codes. For instance, the term “NOC Skill Level” will now been changed to “NOC Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities (TEER) Category” under NOC 2021.

The occupations eligible for each OINP stream will also change due to the NOC 2021 implementation. For example, for OINP streams that formerly required a job offer and/or work experience in NOC Type 0 or NOC Skill Level A or B, under NOC 2021, these streams will now require the job offer and/or work experience to fall under TEER 0, 1, or 2.

For Employer Job Offer In-Demand Skills, a stream of the OINP, which formerly needed job offers in specific NOC Skill Level C or D occupations, will now call for job offers in specific TEER 4 or 5 occupations under NOC 2021.

Therefore, the streams for which some occupations are eligible will change under NOC 2021 due to the updated NOC 2021 implementation.

New Proposed Changes To OINP

The Ministry has recommended additional changes in addition to the NOC 2021 regulatory amendments to ease the burden and improve integrity for streams falling within the Employer Job Offer category.

The Employer Job offer International Student stream requires applicants applying with a certificate of at least one year to meet the Ontario College Graduate Certificate criteria as outlined in the Ontario Qualifications Framework.

This amendment is expected to clarify and reduce the burden for the International Student Stream applicants applying with one-year certificates.

Another proposed amendment is for the Employer Job Offer Foreign Worker stream. It proposes applicants to demonstrate language competency at Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 5 Level or higher for the Employer Job Offer Foreign Worker stream.

This amendment aligns with the program’s interest in supporting employees’ effective integration and is anticipated to safeguard applicants and the OINP against misrepresentation and other program integrity concerns.

However, all other Employer Job Offer Category stream criteria will remain the same except for the above amendments.

Source: Government of Ontario