Everything about OINP changed on June 26, 2026. The eight streams that existed before that date are permanently closed, and every foreign national who wants an Ontario nomination now applies through the Ontario Workforce Priority stream. This FAQ covers the questions we hear most often from applicants, employers, and Ontario graduates in the weeks after the overhaul.
Every answer below cross-references the current OWP grid on the Government of Ontario’s official stream page. Last reviewed: July 21, 2026.
Program basics
Is the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program still open?
Yes. OINP is fully operational, but it now has a single active stream — the Ontario Workforce Priority stream (OWP). All previous OINP streams closed permanently on June 25 and June 26, 2026 when Ontario Regulation 47/26 came into force. Anyone applying today applies through OWP.
What is the maximum OWP score?
The OWP grid awards up to 130 points across five factor groups: employment and labour market (65 points), education (20 points), language (25 points), Ontario work experience or physician practice (30 points), and regional immigration (15 points). No single candidate can hit all sub-maxima at once because some factors are alternatives — a candidate scoring 18 points for job-offer position experience cannot also claim points under the fallback “any Ontario work” sub-factor, for example. In practice, a very strong non-physician profile lands in the 95–110 range and a very strong physician profile lands in the 85–100 range.
Do I need a job offer to apply?
For two of the three pathways, yes. The TEER 0–3 pathway and the TEER 4–5 pathway both require an approved Ontario job offer from an employer that has registered on the OINP Employer Portal. The third pathway is reserved for self-employed physicians who hold a valid OHIP billing number and a certificate in good standing from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario — they do not need a job offer.
Do I need to be inside Canada to apply?
No. OWP accepts applications from candidates both inside and outside Canada. Being inside Canada with a valid work permit is worth ten points under the “legal status” factor and being inside on a valid study permit is worth five, but neither is a hard requirement. Candidates applying from abroad must show they meet the “intention to live and work in Ontario” test through documented ties such as prior work in Ontario, active job applications, family, or study.
Eligibility questions
How much work experience do I need for the TEER 0–3 pathway?
You need one of four options. The default is six months of consecutive, paid, full-time work experience in the job-offer position within the twelve months before your application date. Recent Ontario graduates can qualify with three months of the same. Alternatively, two years of cumulative full-time experience in the same NOC (or an equivalent part-time schedule totalling 3,120 hours) within the past five years is accepted. The fourth option is holding a mandatory Ontario or Canadian licence or authorization that the occupation requires — except for NOC 73300 (transport truck drivers) and NOC 73301 (bus drivers, subway and transit operators), which always require the six-month experience minimum regardless of licensing.
How much work experience do I need for the TEER 4–5 pathway?
Nine months of cumulative, paid, full-time experience in the exact employment position your employer is seeking approval for, gained within two years before your application date. Full-time here means at least 1,170 hours over a twelve-month period at a minimum of thirty hours per week.
What language score do I need?
The minimum depends on the pathway. TEER 0–3 non-trades roles require CLB 6 in all four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking). TEER 0–3 skilled-trades roles require CLB 5. TEER 4–5 requires CLB 4. Ontario graduates from an eligible institution with a two-year (or longer) postsecondary credential, an Ontario College Graduate Certificate, a master’s degree, or a PhD are exempt from language testing entirely at the TEER 0–3 level, provided they graduated within the last three years. Physicians are not required to meet a minimum CLB but score points on the language factor like every other candidate.
Which language tests are accepted?
For English, OINP accepts IELTS General Training (not Academic and not the One Skill Retake variant), CELPIP General (with “IRCC purposes” selected as the test reason and IRCC as the receiving institution), and PTE Core (not PTE Academic). For French, TEF Canada and TCF Canada are accepted. Every accepted test must have a test date within two years of the application submission date.
What education do I need?
The TEER 0–3 pathway requires a postsecondary credential that took at least one year of full-time study, from an eligible Canadian institution or its overseas equivalent. Skilled-trades TEER 0–3 roles need only a Canadian secondary school diploma or its overseas equivalent. Nurse aides applying under NOC 33102 must hold an Ontario college certificate requiring at least one year of full-time study. The TEER 4–5 pathway requires only a Canadian secondary school diploma or foreign equivalent. Where a role legally requires a mandatory licence or authorization, the licence itself substitutes for the education requirement — except for the two transport-related NOCs mentioned earlier.
Application process and deadlines
What are the OWP timelines I need to remember?
Four dates drive the process. First, the applicant has thirty calendar days from the employer’s job-offer submission on the Employer Portal to register an Expression of Interest. Second, if the profile is invited, the employer has fourteen calendar days from the invitation date to file its position-approval application. Third, the applicant has seventeen calendar days from the same invitation date to file the applicant application and pay the fee — and this filing must come after the employer’s filing. Fourth, after nomination, the applicant has six months to file for permanent residence with IRCC through the paper-based process, or thirty days to accept and sixty days to submit through Express Entry.
What happens if I miss a deadline?
Missing the thirty-day EOI window means the job-offer ID expires and the employer has to submit a fresh job offer to restart the clock. Missing the fourteen-day or seventeen-day filing deadline after an invitation is fatal to that specific invitation — the invitation lapses, no application is created, and the candidate does not automatically move back to the EOI pool. OINP does not extend these deadlines for administrative delays or missing documents, so we start document collection the moment the employer registers the job offer.
How does the invitation ranking work?
OINP ranks EOI profiles by total OWP score and issues invitations to the highest-scoring profiles that also meet stream-specific criteria at the time of the invitation round. There is no fixed cutoff score published in advance — cutoffs are set draw by draw. The government has stated that early draws target sectors and occupations aligned with Ontario’s labour-market priorities, which usually means the health sector, skilled trades, and specific in-demand TEER 2–3 roles score at the top.
What does the employer have to do?
The employer must have been in active business for at least three years, hold Ontario business premises where the candidate will physically work, have no outstanding orders under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 or the Occupational Health and Safety Act, meet the OINP revenue and Canadian-employee minimums for the region of the job offer, and — for candidates outside Canada or outside Ontario — demonstrate a genuine recruitment effort to hire a Canadian citizen or permanent resident first. The job offer itself must be full-time, permanent, urgently necessary to the business, unrelated to any labour dispute, and pay at least the required wage level for the region.
Scoring and strategy
What score do I actually need to get invited?
Ontario has not published a fixed cutoff. Based on the draws issued between June 26 and mid-July 2026, competitive TEER 0–3 profiles have landed in the mid-eighties to mid-nineties range and competitive TEER 4–5 profiles have landed in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies range. Physician-pathway invitations have gone out at much lower absolute scores because the physician pool is small. These are trend observations, not a guarantee — the cutoff at any given draw depends on how many profiles are in the pool that day and Ontario’s targeting decisions.
Which factors move my score the most?
Three factors carry the most weight for the average applicant: the eighteen-point Ontario work experience in the job-offer position, the fifteen-point language factor at CLB 9, and the fifteen-point regional immigration factor for a Northern Ontario job address. The wage tier (also up to fifteen points) is a strong lever when the job offer can be negotiated to a higher hourly band, and the broad occupational category (up to ten points) rewards health-sector roles specifically. A candidate optimising three of those five levers usually ends up in the invitation range.
Does my Canadian earnings history matter more than a foreign salary?
Yes. The earnings-history factor only counts Canadian earnings — foreign income is not scored. A candidate who earned $70,000 or more in a single Canadian tax year picks up eight points, while an equivalent foreign salary contributes nothing to this specific factor. This is one reason candidates who worked in Canada on a post-graduation work permit or an intra-company transfer usually score higher than a first-time applicant flying in from abroad.
Can I claim both “job-offer position experience” and “any Ontario experience”?
No — they are mutually exclusive. The “any Ontario experience” sub-factor is a fallback that only applies if the candidate has less than six months of experience in the exact job-offer position. A candidate with two years in the job-offer position scores eighteen points and does not additionally claim the twelve points from the fallback. Our calculator handles this rule automatically so you do not accidentally double-count.
Old streams and transitional issues
I had a Masters Graduate application in progress — what happens now?
Applications that were submitted with a full application fee before the closure date continue to be processed under the old rules for that specific stream. Expressions of interest that were sitting in the pool without a submitted application at the closure date do not transfer — the candidate must now register a fresh EOI under OWP, which for a former Masters or PhD stream candidate means securing a qualifying job offer first.
Can I still use the old OINP scoring tools I saved?
No. The old scoring grids — for the Masters, PhD, Human Capital Priorities, French-Speaking Skilled Worker, Skilled Trades, and three Employer Job Offer streams — no longer produce meaningful results because those streams do not exist. Any calculator, checklist, or predicted cut-off that was built for the old streams should be treated as historical background only. Our archive pages at vgis.ca/archive/ preserve the closed-stream documentation for reference and litigation purposes but explicitly warn that they cannot be used to plan a current application.
Was there a grace period for the old streams?
Effectively no. The closure of the old streams was set out in Ontario Regulation 47/26 with an effective date of June 26, 2026 for the applicant-side streams (with certain employer-side transitions closing one day earlier on June 25). Candidates who had not paid the application fee by that date lost the ability to submit under the old rules. This is why we prioritised getting fee-paid applications submitted for every eligible client during the May 30 to June 25 window.
Working with VGIS on your OWP file
What does a full OWP retainer include?
A full retainer with our office covers eligibility diagnosis for all three pathways, EOI drafting and submission, employer coordination during the position-approval application, document collection against the OINP checklist, applicant application drafting and submission after invitation, submission-integrity review, response to any procedural fairness letter, and post-nomination filing for permanent residence — either through IRCC’s paper process or through Express Entry, whichever is appropriate for the file.
Can VGIS help my employer navigate the Employer Portal?
Yes. Employer coordination is bundled into every OWP retainer we open. We walk the employer through the initial Employer Portal registration, the job-offer submission, the fourteen-day position-approval filing after an invitation, and the supporting-documentation requests that follow. Employers who are new to OINP find the fourteen-day post-invitation window especially tight — we build a document pack in advance so the filing goes out on time.
Do you offer a review-only service for candidates who want to file themselves?
Yes. We offer a flat-fee OWP profile review that audits your EOI attestations against the official grid, flags any scoring errors before you register, and identifies documentation gaps. It does not include drafting or filing but is a good option for confident applicants who want a second set of eyes before pressing submit. Book through our regular consultation channel and mention “OWP review” in the intake form.
Ready to move on your OWP application?
Score your profile against the exact 130-point grid using our free OWP calculator. Read the full stream overview on the OWP guide, look up your job address on the regions page, or Book a Consultation with a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant to plan your next step. If you’re ready to retain, Begin Assessment to open a file.
Primary source: Government of Ontario — Ontario Workforce Priority stream. Nothing on this page constitutes legal or immigration advice. Every application is fact-specific and should be reviewed by a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant or Canadian lawyer before submission.