PNPs face challenges with reduced provincial immigration targets. Provincial immigration ministers from both Manitoba & Newfoundland & Labrador have expressed their desire to welcome more immigrants than their 2025 allocation.
This news comes alongside the postponed reopening of the Northwest Territories Provincial Nominee Program. The NTPNP had planned to accept 100 applications for provincial nominations by January 16, 2025.
The New Brunswick Provincial Nominee Program also declared an adjustment to its 2025 provincial economic immigration programs.
Newcomers wishing to apply for Canadian immigration via a Provincial Nominee Program might witness delays in application intakes. Well, that’s because of PNPs grapple with significantly reduced provincial immigration targets and allocations.
To date, no province, with the exception of Manitoba, has held a provincial immigration draw in 2025.
Provincial Immigration Cut In Half
PNPs face challenges with reduced provincial immigration targets.
Well, the immigration levels for a year are confirmed in October of the year before under the annual Immigration Levels Plan.
In 2024, Marc Miller declared that he would be reducing admissions allocations to Canada’s PNPs in 2025, by 50%.
Note that the Immigration Plan outlines admissions, not Invitations to Apply (ITAs). An admission, or landing, refers to the final interview with an immigration officer, conducted either at a port of entry or a local office in Canada. During this interview, the applicant signs their confirmation of permanent residence (COPR) and officially becomes a permanent resident.
While this process can also be completed electronically, it always requires the approved immigrant to arrive in Canada to finalize their permanent residency status. Admissions might also be referred to as ‘landings’.
Before the announcement of the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan, Canada’s PNPs were set to cumulatively be the nation’s largest intake of economic immigrants – even outpacing federal immigration admissions targets through Express Entry.
The following table breaks down the projected targets against current targets:
| Year | Projected Provincial Immigration Targets | Actual Provincial Immigration Targets |
| 2024 | 110,000 | 110,000 |
| 2025 | 120,000 | 55,000 |
| 2026 | 55,000 | – |
As a possible counterweight to the significantly reduced provincial levels, IRCC also declared a sub-category under its federal immigration allocation. It is known as the ‘In-Canada Focus’ category.
Under this category, IRCC prioritizes the invitation of Express Entry applicants in the CEC program and those in enhanced PNPs. The In-Canada focus category has been allocated 82,890 admissions in 2025.
The inclusion of this category will allow more immigrants to be nominated by provincial governments to settle in their provinces. However, it will not account for reduced targets.
Due to the fact that immigration in Canada is regulated at the federal level, provincial governments should accept the level and allocations declared by the federal government yearly.
As a result of these changes, Canada’s PNPs must now prepare to welcome far fewer new immigrants than they could last year. Well, this is a change with the potential to yield economic challenges because of the important role that newcomers play in filling key labor shortages in communities across Canada.
While it remains difficult to speculate what changes will be there, Canada’s provincial immigration ministers should prepare for a vastly different landscape for regional and provincial immigration in 2025.
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