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How Nova Scotia chooses immigrants, the Nova Scotia streams our report checks, what changes if you already live, study or work in Canada, and what life is like in its main cities.
Photo: Dionysos1970(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab)
To move to Nova Scotia for good, one route is the province's own immigration program, the Nova Scotia Nominee Program (NSNP). Nova Scotia does not grant permanent residence (PR, the right to live in Canada for good). It nominates people, meaning it recommends them to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, and the NSNP's page states that IRCC has the final authority to issue a permanent resident visa.
The NSNP is for people with the skills and experience Nova Scotia employers need, and demand is high: the province's processing policy says far more people want to immigrate than it can approve under its yearly federal allocation, the limit IRCC sets on its nominations.
Yes. Nova Scotia runs the Nova Scotia Nominee Program (NSNP), a provincial nominee program: the province chooses (nominates) people it wants, and the federal government then decides on their permanent residence, the status that lets you live and work in Canada with no time limit.
Nova Scotia Nominee Program (NSNP)A stream is one route within a program, with its own rules. Our report checks 8 Nova Scotia streams against your answers.
For experienced business owners or senior managers with enough personal wealth who invest in and run a Nova Scotia business, with lower amounts required outside the Halifax Regional Municipality.
For doctors who have a profile in Express Entry, Canada's online system for skilled workers, and an approved job opportunity from the Nova Scotia Health Authority or IWK Health Centre.
NSNP Express Entry Skilled Work Experience
For people who have a profile in Express Entry, Canada's online system for skilled workers, and work experience in Nova Scotia in a skilled job.
NSNP International Graduate Entrepreneur
For graduates of a Nova Scotia university or the Nova Scotia Community College who own and run a business in the province while on a work permit for recent graduates.
For recent graduates of an eligible Nova Scotia college or university with a full-time, permanent job offer in the province, in a listed occupation matching their studies.
For workers with a full-time, permanent job offer from a Nova Scotia employer and work experience related to that job.
NSNP Skilled Worker Construction
For workers with a full-time, permanent job offer from a Nova Scotia construction employer, in a trade or job on the province's list, and related work experience.
NSNP Skilled Worker Physicians
For family doctors and specialists with a signed, approved job opportunity from the Nova Scotia Health Authority or the IWK Health Centre.
For Nova Scotia's worker, graduate and Express Entry streams, you submit your expression of interest (EOI) by completing the full application form with your documents, and the processing policy treats each such submission as an EOI in a pool.
The province then selects from that pool from time to time, in rounds often called draws, not first come, first served. It may weigh labour market needs, occupation or sector priorities, how likely you are to stay, and where you would work. If you are selected, the page says you then have 7 calendar days to review your application and upload updated documents; if not, your submission stays in the pool.
For an EOI sent on or after 1 May 2026, the province's transition notice says it expires if it is not selected within 12 months, and stresses that an expired EOI is not a refusal.
An approved application may bring a nomination and, where it applies, a letter of support for a work permit. The NSNP page says you must then apply to IRCC for PR within 12 months of receiving your nominee certificate, and that you and your family must meet IRCC's medical, security and criminal admissibility rules. Our guide to provincial nominee programs explains why a nomination is not yet PR.
The Nova Scotia: Express Entry stream needs a profile in Express Entry, IRCC's online pool of skilled workers ranked by points, and IRCC says an Express Entry nomination brings 600 extra points. Our Express Entry guide explains the pool.
The Entrepreneur stream runs the other way round: you fill in an EOI first, apply only if invited, and may be nominated after running your business for a year.
The Atlantic Immigration Program (AIP) is a federal route to PR that works through employers: you need a job offer from a designated employer. On Nova Scotia's AIP page, the employer must be designated and then have the position endorsed by the province, after which the worker applies directly to IRCC for PR and can get a temporary work permit while waiting. So the province's step is a nomination under the NSNP but an endorsement under the AIP: IRCC's AIP application page asks for a confirmation of provincial endorsement.
Nova Scotia's processing policy treats an employer's AIP submissions for designation and endorsement as EOIs too, drawn from a pool like NSNP submissions. To be designated, the AIP page says, an employer must commit to working with a settlement service provider organization and complete mandatory onboarding training.
Separately, the federal Rural and Francophone Community Immigration pilots offer PR to skilled candidates who want to work and live in communities IRCC selects.
It can. Nova Scotia searches the federal Express Entry pool for people whose skills match critical vacancies that local employers could not fill. Its Critical Vacancies page says the province reviews the details candidates submit, screens them against each role and shares qualified candidates with employers, who may interview them and offer jobs.
The page stresses that being contacted this way is not an invitation to apply for a nomination or for an AIP endorsement. With a job offer in place, a candidate may then pursue whichever provincial or federal route fits.
Apply for a Nova Scotia Health Card, your access to the Nova Scotia Health Insurance Program. The application page asks for proof that you are legally entitled to remain in Canada and proof of your address, and says MSI Resident Services can help. The province's licence exchange page says a licence from a listed country and class needs only a vision test, while other licences from outside Canada and the United States need vision, knowledge and road tests. The How to Get Settled page covers early tasks such as a Social Insurance Number, and IRCC's Find free newcomer services near you tool lists funded settlement services, if you are eligible.
Some NSNP routes look at work you have already done in Nova Scotia. Outside its option for physicians, the Nova Scotia: Express Entry stream asks for at least one year of work in Nova Scotia in a job at TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3, the higher skill levels in Canada's job classification (how NOC and TEER work). The Skilled Worker stream is built around a job offer from a Nova Scotia employer. In its main category the offer must be full time and permanent, and a worker in a TEER 4 or 5 job must already have six months' experience with that employer.
IRCC says you need a work permit to work in Canada after you graduate, and graduates of certain Canadian schools are eligible for the post-graduation work permit (PGWP) made for this. Nova Scotia's graduate rules look at where you studied:
The main category of the Skilled Worker stream turns away PGWP holders in TEER 5 jobs. A diploma from another province's school meets none of these NSNP conditions, but IRCC's Atlantic Immigration Program page lists recent graduates of a recognized post-secondary school anywhere in Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia included, among the people that program is for (its own section above explains how it works).
Work and study done in another province do not meet the Nova Scotia work and study conditions in the two rows above.
When you can get the health card from the first-steps section above depends on your status:
The licence exchange page says a licence from another province can usually be exchanged for one of the same class with no testing, and that you may be able to drive on it for up to 180 days, after which you need a Nova Scotia licence to keep driving legally. International graduates of a Canadian college or university who live in Nova Scotia with a valid work permit and plan to settle there are among the groups the province lists for its free settlement services.
These federal programs run only in some provinces or communities, and Nova Scotia is one of them.
For skilled workers and graduates of Canadian colleges and universities with a job offer from a province-approved employer in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, or Newfoundland and Labrador.
Atlantic Immigration Program: official pageFor workers with a job offer from an employer approved by a participating rural or remote community, and a recommendation from that community, where they plan to settle.
Communities taking part in Nova Scotia
Photo: Gordon Leggett(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab), cropped
Population: 439,819 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia, and its local government can be called Halifax, Halifax Regional Municipality or HRM. According to the municipality's page for newcomers, HRM was formed in 1996 by joining Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and the County of Halifax into one municipality of around 200 communities, so an address in Dartmouth or Bedford is still inside HRM. That boundary matters on the NSNP's Entrepreneur page, where the net worth and investment minimums depend on whether the business is inside HRM.
The same municipal page notes that Halifax lies in an area the Mi'kmaq know as K'jipuktuk, meaning Great Harbour, and that from 1928 to 1971 over one million immigrants came to Canada through Pier 21 in the Port of Halifax.
Dalhousie University was founded in Halifax in 1818 and has campuses in the city. Saint Mary's University is in the heart of Halifax. Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) has its Institute of Technology Campus in Halifax's North End and its Akerley and Ivany campuses in Dartmouth.
To settle in, the municipality's Immigrant Services page points to New in Halifax, a website the Halifax Immigration Partnership built with the municipality, the province and service providers. The Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS) delivers its settlement support in person in HRM. Halifax Transit runs buses and ferries, and has guides on how to ride in several languages.
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