British Columbia ran its July Skills Immigration draw on July 9, 2026, issuing at least 343 invitations across four streams. The headline isn't the volume — it's the direction. Every single Care and Build cutoff dropped for the third consecutive draw. If you've been sitting in the BC pool watching your score fall short, the line has been moving toward you since May.
What happened
Per the official BC PNP invitations page (last updated July 9, 2026):
| ITA type | Who was invited | Minimum score | Invitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Care: Childcare | Early childhood educators only | 108 | 91 |
| Care: Health | All priority health care occupations | 96 | 116 |
| Care: Veterinary Care | Priority veterinary care occupations (NOC 32104 with valid designation) | 88 | fewer than 5 |
| Build: Construction Trades | All priority construction occupations | 97 | 136 |
BC reports the veterinary stream as "fewer than 5" rather than an exact figure, so the true total lands somewhere between 343 and 347. Construction trades again took the largest single slice.
The trend is the story
Look at the same four streams across BC's last three Care-and-Build rounds. Every column falls, every time.
| Stream | May 6 | June 2 | July 9 | Change since May |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Care: Childcare | 115 | 111 | 108 | −7 |
| Care: Health | 108 | 100 | 96 | −12 |
| Care: Veterinary Care | 100 | 92 | 88 | −12 |
| Build: Construction Trades | 108 | 101 | 97 | −11 |
Three draws, four streams, twelve data points, and not one of them went up. Health and veterinary cutoffs are each down 12 points since early May. Construction is down 11.
Invitation volumes, meanwhile, have barely moved — 333 in May, 342 in June, 343+ in July. BC isn't inviting dramatically more people. It's inviting roughly the same number of people from a pool that isn't keeping up, and the cutoff falls to fill the seats.
Why the cutoffs keep sliding
The pool composition explains it. As of July 7, 2026, BC's Skills Immigration registration pool held 8,683 candidates, distributed like this:
| Score range | Registrations |
|---|---|
| 150+ | 12 |
| 140–149 | 34 |
| 130–139 | 440 |
| 120–129 | 1,058 |
| 110–119 | 1,369 |
| 100–109 | 1,728 |
| 90–99 | 1,496 |
| 80–89 | 1,227 |
| 70–79 | 729 |
| 60–69 | 381 |
| 0–59 | 209 |
| Total | 8,683 |
The pool is bottom-heavy. Only 486 candidates sit at 130 or above — under 6% of the pool. The bulk of registrations cluster between 80 and 120. When BC needs 116 health workers and 136 construction workers from priority occupations only, it isn't drawing from all 8,683 — it's drawing from the much smaller slice of that pool who hold the right NOC codes. That occupation filter is doing more work than the score filter.
Put plainly: in BC's Care and Build streams, your occupation decides whether you're in the running. Your score decides where you sit once you're there. A high score in the wrong occupation gets you nothing in these rounds.
If you're registered in the BC pool and your score is in the 90s, do not withdraw and re-register to "refresh" your profile. Recheck your NOC classification instead. BC's Care and Build rounds invite by priority occupation list, and people routinely self-classify into a NOC that sounds right but isn't on the list — or miss that they are on it. A health care aide, a licensed practical nurse, and a registered nurse are three different codes with three different outcomes here. Confirm your code against your actual duties with our NOC finder before you touch anything else. Being in the right occupation at 96 beats being in the wrong one at 130.