On June 26, 2026, Ontario brought its OINP overhaul into force with the Workforce Priority stream. The EOI portal opened August 4, 2026 — here's who qualifies and how to register.
Ontario's provincial nominee program has been a closed door since May 30, when the province revoked all nine of its OINP streams without a single replacement. Today, June 26, 2026, the first replacements arrived. Ontario filed regulatory amendments launching the Ontario Workforce Priority stream — the opening phase of its overhaul — with three new pathways to permanent residence. One of them needs no job offer at all.
Update, August 6, 2026: the EOI system is no longer closed — it opened on August 4, 2026. If you're eligible, the door is open now; see the update section below for how registration actually works.
The Workforce Priority stream contains three pathways, written into the latest version of Ontario Regulation 422/17:
| Pathway | Job offer required? | Who it's for |
|---|
| TEER 0–3 | Yes | Higher-skilled workers (management, professional, technical, skilled trades) |
| TEER 4–5 | Yes | Lower-skilled workers (occupations needing a high-school education or short training) |
| Self-employed physicians | No | Doctors licensed in Ontario and eligible to bill OHIP |
TEER stands for Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities — the skill tiers Canada assigns to every occupation, from TEER 0 (management) down to TEER 5 (short on-the-job training). The pathway you fit is set by your occupation's TEER level.
Two things did not change today. First, anyone who already submitted a complete OINP application before the streams closed will still be processed under the old rules in place when they applied. Second, the rest of the proposed overhaul is still pending: Ontario has confirmed a Phase 2 with three more streams — Priority Healthcare (for licensed or soon-to-be-licensed health workers, no job offer), Entrepreneur, and Exceptional Talent — but has not announced a date for any of them.
This is the flagship pathway for skilled workers with an Ontario job offer. You need a full-time, permanent job offer from an eligible Ontario employer in a TEER 0, 1, 2, or 3 occupation, and then you have to clear two gates.
Language or recent-graduate gate. Either meet the minimum language level for your occupation — Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 6, or CLB 5 for certain trades and lower-TEER-3 roles — in all four abilities, in English or French; or qualify as a recent Ontario graduate (a degree, diploma, or grad certificate from an eligible Ontario institution within the past three years).
Credentials-or-experience gate. On top of that, meet one of these:
- Licensing — hold a licence to work in your regulated profession in Ontario; or
- Education + work experience — a post-secondary credential from a program of at least one year (a foreign degree needs an ECA from WES, IQAS, or another approved assessor), plus either two years of cumulative experience in your occupation over the past five years, or a shorter job-offer route of six months' consecutive full-time work with your offering employer (three months for recent Ontario grads).
Full-time here means at least 30 hours a week. The structure clearly rewards people who already have an Ontario footprint — a licence, an Ontario credential, or months on the job with the employer sponsoring them.
This pathway covers occupations that typically need only a high-school education or a few weeks of training. The gates are different and, in one respect, tougher:
- Job offer: full-time, permanent, in a TEER 4 or 5 occupation, paying at least the median wage for that occupation in your region.
- Experience: at least nine months of cumulative work experience in the past two years — in the same job, with the same employer making the offer.
- Education: a secondary school diploma or equivalent.
- Language: at least CLB 4 in all four abilities, English or French.
The nine-months-same-employer rule is the real test. This isn't a "find any job and apply" route — it's a "stay with your Ontario employer through the seasons, then get nominated" route.
This is the standout. It's the only Workforce Priority pathway with no job-offer requirement — built specifically for the way most doctors actually work. To qualify you must:
- Be licensed and in good standing as a physician in Ontario, holding a valid certificate of registration as an independent, academic, or provisional practitioner from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario; and
- Be eligible to bill through OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Plan).
Most physicians in Ontario are paid fee-for-service — they bill OHIP rather than draw a salary from an employer — which historically made it hard to fit them into job-offer-based immigration streams. This pathway removes that mismatch entirely. It pairs neatly with the federal Physicians with Canadian Work Experience Express Entry category, which made the same fix at the national level. If you're a practising or incoming Ontario doctor, you now have two doors instead of zero.
For both job-offer pathways, the OINP vets the employer as hard as the candidate. An eligible employer must:
- Maintain a place of business in Ontario and have been operating for at least three years.
- Meet a minimum gross annual revenue, scaled by location: $1,000,000 in the GTA, $500,000 in a major census metropolitan area (Ottawa, Hamilton, Waterloo, Niagara, London/Essex, and several others), or $250,000 outside those areas (in each of the past two years).
- Employ a minimum number of Canadian citizens or permanent residents full-time at the job location: five in the GTA, three outside it.
- Have a clean record under Ontario's major labour laws.
The job offer itself must be full-time, indeterminate (not a fixed-term contract), genuinely necessary for the business, performed mostly in Ontario, and pay at or above the median wage for the occupation and region (recent Ontario grads in the TEER 0–3 pathway can be offered the low-wage level). If your prospective employer is a small or brand-new business, confirm it clears these bars before you count on this route.
The whole stream runs through Ontario's EOI system, which opened August 4, 2026. Here's the sequence:
- Now that the EOI system is open (as of August 4, 2026), you create a new EOI profile in Ontario's online system. Existing profiles from the old streams didn't carry over — this is a fresh submission.
- If your pathway needs a job offer, your employer initiates an EOI for you through the Employer Portal — submitting the job offer and a position-approval request. Employers already registered in the portal don't need to re-register. Once your employer submits the job offer, you get a job offer ID by email and have 30 calendar days to register your EOI before it expires.
- The OINP selects candidates from the EOI pool and invites them to apply for nomination.
- You submit a complete application; if approved, you receive a provincial nomination.
- You then apply to IRCC for permanent residence as a provincial nominee.
The streams are live and the EOI portal is open as of August 4, 2026 — the job now is to register, not just prepare.
You have an Ontario job offer and months of experience with that employer: you're the most likely early winner. Make sure your employer is registered in the OINP Employer Portal and has submitted your job offer, then register your EOI within the 30-day window that starts when you receive your job offer ID. Have reference letters, pay stubs, employment contract, language results, and ECA ready before you're invited.
You're a physician licensed (or getting licensed) in Ontario: confirm your CPSO registration is active and your OHIP billing eligibility is in order, then register your EOI now — with no job offer required, your paperwork is your application.
You're a foreign-trained nurse or allied health worker: the no-job-offer route you're waiting for is the Priority Healthcare stream — and that's Phase 2, with no date yet. Don't stall: start your Ontario licensing now (College of Nurses assessments can run 6–12 months), so you're ready whenever it launches.
You're outside Canada with no Ontario job or licence: Phase 1 is hard to reach without an Ontario employer or Ontario licensure. Treat Ontario as upside and run your primary plan through Express Entry, BC PNP, Alberta AAIP, or Nova Scotia in parallel.
Tip
With the EOI portal open, the candidates who register first aren't necessarily the ones who get invited first — but the ones who were already eligible before August 4 have a real head start. If your employer's portal registration and your own credential or licensing paperwork (the ECA for a foreign degree, or your CPSO registration and OHIP billing eligibility for physicians) are already in place, register your EOI now rather than waiting to see how the first invitation round plays out.
On July 20, 2026, the OINP published exactly how it will rank job-offer candidates once the EOI system reopens — a 130-point scale covering ten factors. This is the piece that was missing when the pathways launched in June: you could tell if you qualified, but not how competitive your profile actually was.
| Factor | Max points | What scores highest |
|---|
| Work region | 15 | Northern Ontario (15) vs. Toronto (0) |
| Occupation skill level (TEER) | 9 | TEER 0–1 (9) vs. TEER 4–5 (0) |
| Compensation | 15 | $40+/hour (15) vs. under $20/hour (0) |
| Occupational category | 10 | Health occupations (10) |
| Ontario work experience | 18 | 24+ months in the job offer role (18) |
| Canadian income tax history | 8 | $70,000+ in a single year (8) |
| Level of education | 10 | Doctorate or medical/dental/vet/optometry degree (10) |
| Canadian educational credentials | 10 | Two or more eligible credentials (10) |
| Highest official language proficiency | 15 | CLB 9+ (15) |
| Official language bilingualism | 10 | CLB 6+ in both English and French (10) |
| Temporary resident status | 10 | Valid work permit (10) vs. study permit (5) |
A few details worth flagging: work region rewards being outside Toronto and the GTA specifically — Northern Ontario scores triple what the City of Toronto does. Self-employed physicians skip the hourly-wage factor entirely and instead score their Ontario work experience on the same 18-point scale as job-offer candidates elsewhere (24+ months of practice = 18 points). And your highest annual income is based on your Canada Revenue Agency Notice of Assessment, not your current salary — so a strong recent year matters more than what you're earning today if it hasn't shown up on a tax return yet.
The same July 20 update also published the list of eligible Ontario and Canadian post-secondary institutions for the education factors, plus a document checklist for OWPS applicants — worth reviewing now, before the EOI system reopens.
What this means for you: if you're preparing for the OWPS, you can now score your own profile against this table before the EOI even opens. The highest-leverage moves, based on the point spread, are locking in Ontario work experience in your job-offer role (worth up to 18 points — the single largest factor) and hitting CLB 9+ if your language results are within two years old (worth 15). Region is worth planning around too: an identical job offer outside the GTA can be worth up to 15 more points than the same role inside Toronto.
Ontario's Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development opened the Expression of Interest portal for the Workforce Priority stream on August 4, 2026 — six weeks after the pathways launched in regulation. Registering an EOI is now the mandatory first step for every applicant, and there's no fee to do it.
A few mechanics worth knowing before you register:
- The 30-day clock. Once your employer submits your job offer through the Employer Portal, you receive a job offer ID by email and have 30 calendar days to register your EOI. Miss the window and the job offer expires — your employer has to resubmit.
- Your EOI stays in the pool for 12 months unless you're invited or you withdraw. Registering doesn't guarantee an invitation, and an invitation doesn't guarantee a nomination.
- Tight timelines after an invitation. If you're invited to apply, your employer has 14 calendar days to submit the application for approval of the employment position, and you have 17 calendar days to submit your own application and pay the fee. You can't submit until your employer's portion is done.
- Application fees are $1,500 for job offers outside the Greater Toronto Area (Toronto, Durham, Halton, Peel, York) and $2,000 for job offers inside it. Ontario accepts Visa, Visa Debit, Mastercard, and Mastercard Debit only.
- The 600-point Express Entry boost still applies. Candidates approved under the TEER 0–3 pathway or as self-employed physicians can be nominated through Express Entry, adding a flat 600 CRS points — which has effectively guaranteed an ITA in every recent PNP draw. Keep a valid Express Entry profile from application through nomination.
What this means for you: the preparation window is over. If you locked in your employer's portal registration and your own documents while the EOI was closed, you can register today. Ontario's 2026 nomination allocation is 14,119 spots — up 31% from 2025 — but roughly 13,000 invitations had already gone out under the old streams before June 26, so treat the remaining capacity under this new stream as limited and time-sensitive.
Today's launch is Phase 1 of an overhaul Ontario first announced in December 2025 and set in motion by revoking all nine existing streams on May 30, 2026. The full eligibility rules now live in O. Reg. 422/17, and Ontario is posting operational updates to its OINP program updates page. Phase 2 — Priority Healthcare, Entrepreneur, and Exceptional Talent — remains undated.
Ontario PNP overview | The 5 proposed streams, explained | May 30 revocation breakdown | PNP guide | WES vs IQAS | CRS Calculator
Disclaimer: This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute immigration advice. Always verify information with official IRCC sources and consult a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) or licensed immigration lawyer for advice specific to your situation.