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How Ontario chooses immigrants, the Ontario 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: Maksim Sokolov (maxergon.com)(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab)
To move to Ontario for good, one route is the province's own immigration program, the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). Ontario does not grant permanent residence (PR, the right to live in Canada permanently). The OINP nominates people, which means it recommends them to the federal government for PR, and the Government of Canada makes the final decision through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), its immigration department.
What the OINP looks for is a full-time, permanent job offer from an Ontario employer, together with work experience, and the job can be in any occupation. The exception is a self-employed physician, who can apply without a job offer. For 2026, Ontario's nomination allocation from the federal government, meaning the number of nominations it may make that year, is 14,119.
Yes. Ontario runs the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP), 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.
Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP)A stream is one route within a program, with its own rules. Our report checks 3 Ontario streams against your answers.
OINP Ontario Workforce Priority: Self-Employed Physician
For self-employed doctors licensed by Ontario's medical regulator and able to bill the province's public health insurance plan, with no job offer needed.
OINP Ontario Workforce Priority: TEER 0 to 3
For workers with a full-time, permanent Ontario job offer in a management, professional, technical or skilled job, backed by recent experience in that work or the licence the job requires.
OINP Ontario Workforce Priority: TEER 4 to 5
For workers with a full-time, permanent Ontario job offer for a role usually learned on the job, who have already worked in that same position in Ontario.
With a job offer, your employer starts by registering in the OINP's Employer Portal and submitting a job offer for your position. You then receive a job offer ID, and the stream page says you must register an expression of interest (EOI) within 30 calendar days of your employer submitting it. A self-employed physician contacts the OINP instead.
An EOI is not an application. It is an online profile that tells the OINP you want to be considered, and its application process page says you can apply only if the OINP invites you. An EOI stays valid for 12 months unless you are invited first.
The OINP scores each EOI on the job offer's TEER category (a level from 0 to 5 that Canada's occupation classification gives every job), occupation group and hourly wage, your work experience in Ontario, your earnings in Canada, whether you hold a work or study permit, your education, your English or French, and where the job is. The stream page stresses that these scoring factors are not the same as the stream's requirements. From time to time, the OINP ranks its pool, sometimes only candidates with attributes it is targeting, and invites the highest-ranking ones to apply.
According to the application process page, from the day of the invitation your employer has 14 calendar days to apply for approval of the position, and you have 17 calendar days to submit your own application and pay, though only after your employer has applied.
If Ontario approves you, you receive a nomination certificate, and nominees with a job offer also get a letter supporting a temporary work permit. You must then apply to IRCC for PR within six months. A nomination is not PR, and IRCC makes the final decision; our guide to provincial nominee programs explains the difference.
If your job offer is in TEER 0 to 3, or you apply as a self-employed physician, you can ask to be nominated through Express Entry, the federal online system that ranks skilled workers for PR, as long as you qualify for it and keep a valid profile there, and the stream page says an accepted nomination adds 600 points; our Express Entry guide explains that system.
The answer depends on your job offer's TEER category. Canada's National Occupational Classification (NOC) gives every job a five-digit code, and the stream page explains that the second digit is the TEER category: payroll administrators, NOC 13102, are TEER 3.
For a job offer in TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3, you need one of these: at least 6 months of consecutive, paid, full-time work in the offered position within the 12 months before you apply (3 months for a recent Ontario graduate); at least 2 years of full-time work, or the part-time equivalent, in the same occupation within the past 5 years; or the licence the job legally requires, which also covers the education below, except for transport truck drivers and bus and transit operators, who still need the 6 months. You also need CLB 6 in all four language skills (CLB 5 for the listed skilled trades, and no test for recent graduates of eligible Ontario institutions with the listed credentials) and a post-secondary credential of at least one year of full-time study (a high school diploma for the listed trades).
For a job offer in TEER 4 or 5, you need at least 9 months of paid, full-time work in the offered position within the 2 years before you apply, CLB 4, and a high school diploma or its equivalent.
CLB is the Canadian Language Benchmark, the scale for English and French test results; the language score converter shows which level a result matches. The stream page also asks anyone who completed their studies outside Canada for an Educational Credential Assessment (ECA), a report showing the Canadian equivalent of their education, less than five years old. It says a qualifying self-employed physician need not meet these requirements.
Yes. Where the job is changes both your score and what your employer must show.
For scoring, the stream page divides Ontario into regions. A job in Northern Ontario earns 15 points; in Eastern Ontario, Southwestern Ontario or Central Ontario outside the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), 10; elsewhere in the GTA, 5; and in the City of Toronto, none.
The employer guide defines the GTA as the City of Toronto and the regions of Durham, Halton, Peel and York. For a job there, the employer needs at least $1,000,000 in gross annual revenue in its last completed fiscal year; elsewhere the minimum is lower. It must also employ, at the job's location, at least 5 full-time Canadian citizens or permanent residents inside the GTA, or 3 outside it. The wage must reach the median wage that Canada's Job Bank shows for the occupation in that region, or a lower level for a recent Ontario graduate in a TEER 0 to 3 job, unless a collective agreement covers the job.
The federal Rural and Francophone Community Immigration Pilots also depend on place: they offer PR to skilled workers who want to work and live in selected communities, working for employers the community has designated. Our guide to community programs explains how they work.
On 25 June 2026, amendments to Ontario Regulation 422/17 came into force that removed the OINP's existing streams and introduced the Ontario Workforce Priority stream, according to Ontario's 2026 program updates. The streams removed on 25 June 2026 included Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker, Employer Job Offer: In-Demand Skills, Employer Job Offer: International Student, Master's Graduate, PhD Graduate, Express Entry Human Capital Priorities, Express Entry French-speaking Skilled Worker and Express Entry Skilled Trades. Each of those streams' own archived pages gives 30 May 2026 as the day it was closed, which is the closing date the provincial streams comparison shows, so the streams stopped being open before the regulation changed.
On 26 June 2026, Ontario said it would issue no further invitations under those streams, and that expressions of interest and job offers registered under them that had not led to an invitation would be withdrawn automatically. On the same day, 26 June 2026, it described the changes as the first of two phases of a redesign.
On 4 August 2026, Ontario opened registration of expressions of interest for the Ontario Workforce Priority stream.
Ontario's public health insurance is the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). You apply in person at a ServiceOntario centre and, once approved, get an Ontario health card; the page lists who qualifies and the documents to bring, proving your citizenship or immigration status, that you live in Ontario, and your identity. The province's page on exchanging an out-of-province licence lists the places whose licences Ontario exchanges and the tests other drivers must pass. Get settled in Ontario covers housing, schools, work and free settlement agencies. IRCC's Find free newcomer services near you lists the free settlement services it funds for eligible newcomers.
Ontario's regulation requires the months of work in the offered job, listed in the section on what the stream asks of you, to be earned while lawfully living and working in Ontario. The other option, two years in the same occupation, has no such condition.
Among the scoring factors in the section on how the OINP picks people, Ontario work experience gives points for six months or more of full-time work in the offered job or, for fewer points, in Ontario generally; less, or no Ontario job at the time, scores none. A valid work permit scores more than a valid study permit.
If you already hold the offered job, the stream page says you must keep it until IRCC decides your PR application. If you apply from inside Canada, you need legal status, such as a permit or a visitor record. Maintained status counts too: you applied to extend that document before it expired and are waiting for IRCC's decision.
A post-graduation work permit (PGWP) lets graduates of eligible schools and programs in Canada gain Canadian work experience.
The changes in the section on what changed in 2026 left graduates no OINP route of their own, only the one other workers have: an Ontario job offer. If you graduated in the last 3 years from an eligible Ontario institution with a degree or diploma of at least 2 years' full-time study, an Ontario College Graduate Certificate, a master's or a PhD, you count as a recent Ontario graduate, and with a TEER 0 to 3 job offer you face lighter requirements, set out in the sections on what the stream asks of you and on where the job is. Graduates of other provinces' schools do not get them.
A federal route is the Canadian Experience Class, an Express Entry program needing at least a year of paid TEER 0 to 3 work in Canada in the three years before applying; IRCC says work done while studying full-time does not count.
Under Ontario's regulation, months worked while living in another province do not count toward the work required in the offered job. If you are working outside Ontario, the stream page says your employer must show it made enough effort to recruit a Canadian citizen or permanent resident before offering you the job.
OHIP has no waiting period. Normally, you must make Ontario your main home, be there for at least 153 of your first 183 days, and hold a status on its list. The section on first steps says how to apply. By status:
You can drive on a valid licence from another province or territory for 60 days after moving, then must switch to an Ontario licence, with a vision test; whether you also need a knowledge or road test depends on how long you have been driving.
These federal programs run only in some provinces or communities, and Ontario is one of them.
For 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 Ontario
For French speakers with a job offer from an employer approved by a participating French-speaking community outside Quebec, and a recommendation from that community, where they plan to settle.
Communities taking part in Ontario
Photo: Maksim Sokolov (maxergon.com)(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab)
Population: 2,794,356 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
Toronto is the capital of the Province of Ontario, as the City of Toronto describes its role. When the OINP scores an expression of interest, the online profile it ranks before inviting anyone to apply, the City of Toronto counts as a region of its own, and a job offer located here earns no points for location, according to the Ontario Workforce Priority stream page. An employer hiring here must meet the program's higher minimums for the Greater Toronto Area, set out in its employer guide.
For newcomers, the City's After You Arrive page says settlement workers at City Hall, 100 Queen Street West, offer free and confidential help, including interpretation, help finding training and career opportunities, and referrals to schools and health care. The same page says the City provides services to residents regardless of their immigration status, and that City staff will not ask about it unless the law requires it.
Several public universities teach in the city. The University of Toronto, which dates from 1827, has its St. George campus in the centre of downtown Toronto. Toronto Metropolitan University is also downtown, and OCAD University, an art and design university, has been in downtown Toronto since 1876 and is next to the Art Gallery of Ontario. York University has its Glendon campus in midtown Toronto, with a focus on bilingual and trilingual programs.
Photo: Sikander Iqbal(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab), cropped
Population: 656,480 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
Brampton is home to the School of Medicine campus of Toronto Metropolitan University, which teaches its MD program, the degree that trains doctors, there in person, with clinical placements in Peel Region and nearby communities. Brampton is one of Peel Region's municipalities, with Caledon and Mississauga, and the Region's Community Services Map helps newcomers find settlement services, from language services to welcome centres.
In the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, Peel belongs to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) but not to the City of Toronto, so a job offer in Brampton earns 5 points for location on an expression of interest, the online profile the program scores to decide whom to invite, according to the stream page. The employer must meet the GTA minimums in the program's employer guide.
Sheridan College, a public college, has its Davis Campus in Brampton, which houses its applied health, community services, engineering and technology programs.
Photo: K2HWY(opens in a new tab), CC BY 4.0(opens in a new tab)
Population: 717,961 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
University of Toronto Mississauga, a campus of the University of Toronto, was established in 1967, and the Mississauga Academy of Medicine is on its grounds, in the Terrence Donnelly Health Sciences Complex. Sheridan College, a public college, has its Hazel McCallion Campus in the heart of Mississauga, home to its Pilon School of Business.
Mississauga, like Brampton, is one of Peel Region's municipalities. The City's newcomer page says its libraries are free to anyone living, working or studying in Mississauga and run programs to help newcomers improve their English, and that Mississauga's transit service is called MiWay.
The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program counts Peel as part of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) outside the City of Toronto. A job offer in Mississauga therefore adds 5 location points to your expression of interest, the online profile the program ranks before it invites anyone to apply, according to the stream page, and the employer must meet the GTA minimums in its employer guide.
Photo: Jon Kolbert(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab)
Population: 1,017,449 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
Ottawa is Canada's capital, and Canadian Heritage's visitor page counts it in Canada's Capital Region, together with Gatineau and other municipalities in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. For federal government jobs, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat's 2024 snapshot of the federal public service put 42.3% of its employees in the National Capital Region.
Ontario's nominee program places the Ottawa census division in Eastern Ontario, so a job offer here is worth 10 location points on an expression of interest, the online profile the program scores before it sends any invitation to apply, according to the stream page. Ottawa is also one of the census divisions where the program's employer guide sets the employer's minimum gross annual revenue at $500,000. Because the city is outside the Greater Toronto Area, the employer needs at least 3 full-time employees at the job's location who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
The University of Ottawa, dating from 1848, calls itself proudly francophone and bilingual, in English and French. Carleton University has its campus beside the Rideau Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, minutes from downtown. Algonquin College, a public college, has its Ottawa campus on Woodroffe Avenue and a second campus in Pembroke.
Photo: Draconichiaro(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0(opens in a new tab), cropped
Population: 569,353 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
Hamilton, Ontario, not to be confused with Hamilton in New Zealand, is a regional centre for health care and professional training, according to the City's New to Hamilton page. The same page says Hamilton was designated a Francophone Welcoming Community in 2019, a recognition of its work to welcome French-speaking newcomers, and that its immigrant-serving organizations offer free services such as help finding a job, language assessments and classes.
For the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, the Hamilton census division is part of Southwestern Ontario: a job offer here brings 10 points for location to an expression of interest, the online profile the program ranks to choose whom to invite, according to the stream page. Hamilton is also one of the census divisions where the employer guide sets a minimum employer revenue of $500,000.
McMaster University moved to Hamilton from Toronto in 1930. Mohawk College, a public college, has a campus on McMaster's grounds, its Institute for Applied Health Sciences.
Photo: JFVoll(opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 3.0(opens in a new tab), cropped
Population: Kitchener 256,885 and Waterloo 121,436 (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census)
Kitchener and Waterloo are separate cities within the Region of Waterloo, whose local municipalities also include the City of Cambridge and several townships, as its Regional Council page lists. The Region's New to Waterloo Region page points newcomers to Immigration Waterloo Region, which connects them with information, organizations and local resources, and to the Region's own services, including transit.
Ontario's nominee program puts the Waterloo regional municipality in Central Ontario outside the Greater Toronto Area, so a job offer in either city earns 10 location points when the program scores your expression of interest, the online profile it uses to rank candidates for invitations, according to the stream page. The Waterloo regional municipality is also one of the census divisions where the employer guide sets a minimum employer revenue of $500,000.
The University of Waterloo opened in 1957 with co-operative education as its cornerstone; in co-op, students alternate between terms of study and terms of work. Wilfrid Laurier University traces its roots to a Lutheran seminary that opened in Waterloo in 1911. Conestoga College, a public college, has its main administrative offices at its Kitchener Doon campus.
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