If you’ve been tracking an Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) application and suddenly can’t find your stream on the province’s website, you’re not imagining things. On May 30, 2026, Ontario Regulation 47/26 revoked all nine streams the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program had operated — Human Capital Priorities, the Employer Job Offer streams, the Masters Graduate and PhD Graduate streams, Entrepreneur, and the rest. In their place, Ontario built a single new pathway: the Ontario Workforce Priority (OWP) stream, which opened for applications on August 4, 2026.
This isn’t a rebrand — it’s a different selection model built around actual job offers, Ontario work history, and tax records rather than the Express Entry-style human-capital scoring the old streams leaned on. Here’s what actually changed and what to do next, whether you had a nomination in progress, you’re an employer who used the OINP to retain foreign talent, or you’re weighing whether Ontario is still a realistic PR pathway for you.
What happened to the old streams
Before May 2026, Ontario ran nine separate nomination streams across three categories: Human Capital (the Express Entry-aligned streams plus Masters/PhD Graduate), Employer Job Offer (Foreign Worker, International Student, In-Demand Skills), and Business/Entrepreneur. Most ran on an Expression of Interest system scored against education, language ability, and Express Entry CRS score.
O. Reg. 47/26 closed all nine on the same day. Anyone with an application already submitted and under active review before May 30 continues to be processed under the rules in effect when they applied — existing applications aren’t retroactively affected. What ended was the ability to submit new Expressions of Interest or applications under any of the old streams.
What replaced them: the Ontario Workforce Priority stream
The OWP stream consolidates nomination into three routes:
TEER 0–3 job offer — higher-skilled occupations (management, professional, technical, skilled trades) with a qualifying Ontario job offer.
TEER 4–5 job offer — lower-skilled occupations with a qualifying Ontario job offer, a notable shift since Ontario previously had limited room for lower-skilled roles outside specific pilots.
Self-employed physicians — physicians registered and eligible to bill Ontario’s public health insurance plan, via a separate web-form process rather than the EOI portal.
For the two job-offer routes, the process runs through an Expression of Interest submitted via Ontario’s e-Filing Portal, linked to a job offer from an employer who has registered that position with the OINP. Ontario published its EOI scoring factors on July 22, 2026, and the weighting is a real departure from the old human-capital model: Ontario work experience and Canadian income tax history carry the most weight, with additional points for wage level, official language proficiency, job location outside the Greater Toronto Area, education, and occupation type. Health occupations score highest, followed by trades and transport, and a valid work permit outscores a study permit under the temporary-resident-status factor.
There’s also a built-in regional incentive: employers in smaller communities (census divisions under 150,000 people) face a lower minimum revenue threshold to register a position — good news for Niagara-region employers who may not have qualified as easily under some of the old streams’ revenue requirements.
The timeline that matters if you’re applying
Expressions of Interest submitted through the e-Filing Portal stay valid for 12 months. If you’re not invited to apply within that window, you need to re-register. When an invitation is issued, candidates have 17 calendar days to submit a complete application — a tight window that makes having your documents ready in advance far more important than it was under some of the older, slower-moving streams. On the employer side, a newly submitted job offer position has to clear OINP’s approval process, with employers given 14 days to respond to requests tied to that review.
What this means if you’re still waiting on an old application
If your application was submitted before May 30, 2026 under one of the nine closed streams, it should still be moving through the queue under the rules in effect when you filed — you don’t need to refile. If you were planning to submit an EOI under one of those streams and hadn’t yet, that door is closed; the only route into an Ontario nomination now is the OWP stream (Ontario has signalled future phases for healthcare workers, entrepreneurs, and exceptional talent, but none of those have launched). Employers who previously used the Employer Job Offer streams will need to register the position fresh under the OWP process rather than relying on an older registration.
Where this leaves you
The practical effect is that Ontario PR now depends much more heavily on having an actual Ontario job offer and, ideally, some Ontario work and tax history behind you — it’s less forgiving of a strong resume with no Canadian footprint than the old Human Capital Priorities stream was. Whether you’re an employer registering a position, a worker sizing up how your job offer and work history would score, or you have an application in limbo from before May 30, it’s worth getting a clear read on your situation before submitting anything under the new system.
For a broader look at how Ontario’s nomination options fit alongside federal pathways, see our Provincial Nominee Programs page.
Next steps
If you’re not sure whether your pending OINP application is still valid, whether your job offer would qualify under the new Workforce Priority scoring, or what your options look like now that the old streams are closed, book a consultation and we’ll walk through where you stand.
