On August 18, the Ontario Immigration Bureau announced that a handful provincial nominees for international students would be opened on August 19^th. As the province with the most international students in Canada, the degree of competition for provincial nomination places for international students in Ontario is imaginable.

From the 18th to the morning of the 19th, all Polaris employees were actively involved and finally helped multiple clients successfully grab valuable places in the program.

Today the OINP announced it’s intention to enact regulatory amendments that will alter the application procedure to the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker Stream, the Employer Job Offer: International Student Stream, the Employer Job Offer: In-Demand Skills Stream, the Master’s Graduate Stream, and the PhD Graduate Stream. The proposed change will introduce an Expression of Interest (EOI) system to these streams. Under the current system applicants apply on a first-come first-served basis to these streams. These programs are now so popular however that it is often very difficult for even well qualified applicants to get a slot to apply. In addition, because it is first-come, first-served a marginally qualified applicant who registers quickly, will be able to apply when a much better qualified, but slower to act applicant will be shut out.

Under the new proposal the OINP will establish a points system, and applicants will register and receive a score based on their qualifications and characteristics. The OINP would then be able to select the highest scoring applicants from all those who have registered and invite them to submit an application. The OINP has not yet released details of the scoring system it will use. This proposal represents a major change to the way the OINP works. The job-offer streams in particular were among the most attractive in Canada for less qualified applicants, since those streams did not compare applicants against each other at any point. This change, if enacted, will bring these streams more into line with programs offered by other provinces, and will change the competition for spaces from a test of speed, to a test of qualification.

Our client is a football coach. In Canada, Sports coaching is a qualified profession. Our client has a personal studio and cooperates with a local Chinese company to train Chinese children to play football. Our team worked towards determining if our client can successfully become a Self-Employed Football Coach in Canada.

The client had studied coaching courses in Europe and had a coaching certificate recognized by UEFA and the FA. But sport training is a professional field. Our team at Polaris Strategy cooperated with football clubs and schools in Ontario to showcase the job opportunities of local free football coaches, proving that our client can build his own business in Canada.

Application process:

1. October 30, 2017: Submitted a complete set of application to the immigration office.
2. February 7, 2018: Received the Federal File Number issued by the Immigration Service.

3. October 7, 2018: Received the notice of supplementary materials issued by the Immigration Bureau.

4. January 17, 2019: Received interview notice.

5. April 7, 2019: Received the notice of medical examination.

6. July 5, 2019: Obtained the Canadian Permanent Resident Visa.

On June 3^rd, 2020 Ontario conducted a draw in its express entry linked Human Capital Priorities stream. In keeping with past practice, it has invited candidates with experience in certain occupations only. Unusually for the OINP they have issued invitations to two different groups of applicants in this draw – those with 1 year or more of Canadian work experience, and those with one year or more of foreign work experience.

Of interest are the different CRS score ranges for these two groups. 167 workers with experience in Canada were invited, and the lowest invited score was 358 – this is a very low score for success in the express entry system. 532 workers with only foreign experience were invited and the lowest invited score was 471 – this is a very high score to achieve.

These results clearly indicate the change in the Federal express entry pool since the outbreak of COVID-19. The Federal government has ceased conducting draws for those without Canadian experience or provincial nomination and has been making up its invitation target by accepting more – and therefore lower-scoring – candidates with Canadian experience. As a result, the CRS score required for those with Canadian experience is very low, and we can see that in the Ontario draw here. By contrast, the pool of high-scoring applicants without Canadian experience just keeps growing, since none of these candidates are being selected in federal draws – and even in a provincial nominee program draw like this one a very high score is needed for selection.