Ontario suspends its Express Entry Skilled Trades Stream
The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) has suspended its Express Entry Skilled Trades Stream, effective immediately, citing systematic misrepresentation.
Candidates currently in the Expression of Interest (EOI) pool for the Skilled Trades Stream will not be able to pursue a provincial nomination through this pathway.
The province will stop the new intake of applications to the Express Entry: Skilled Trades Stream and return all applications that are currently pending in the system under the program.
All pending applications that are returned will have their application fees refunded.
The OINP did not indicate whether the stream would resume accepting new applications at a later date.
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In their announcement, the OINP made clear that candidates currently in the EOI pool for the program may submit new EOIs to other OINP streams, provided that they meet the needed eligibility criteria.
The decision to suspend the Skilled Trades Stream and return all outstanding applications stems from a combination of program integrity, compliance, and labour market concerns.
The OINP’s internal review of the stream found “widespread misrepresentation and/or fraud” connected to the Skilled Trades Stream’s eligibility criteria.
The province’s immigration authorities have therefore determined that they could not reliably assess whether Skilled Trades Stream applicants actually met the stream’s eligibility criteria. As a result, Ontario has also concluded that the current design of the Skilled Trades Stream is vulnerable to systemic misuse—a problem which in turn impacts the OINP’s ability to nominate newcomers who will fill critical labour gaps in Ontario.
These new developments come with the consideration that the OINP has received a significant reduction in its immigrant nomination allocation for 2025, a factor that provincial immigration authorities cited in their decision to end the Skilled Trades Stream.
With a limited number of allocation spots, many Provincial Nominee Programs (including the OINP) have become far more frugal with their nominations, choosing to focus them on newcomers who can address labour market needs. Due to a systemic lack of clarity present in the current structure of the Skilled Trades stream around this, the OINP has instead chosen to close the stream altogether in a bid to better allocate its limited nomination allocation.
