Updates to the British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP)
The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) will be updated in January 2025 to provide clearer pathways and better outcomes for international workers coming to B.C.
The updates aim to ensure that nominees are set up for career success and that prospective applicants are less susceptible to bad actors in the immigration system. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs will continue to issue targeted invitations to apply for workers with a job offer in priority occupations such as healthcare, construction, and early childhood education.
The updates are necessary to provide clarity to prospective applicants regarding the level of education and language skills required to have a chance of being nominated. This will make it harder for bad actors to misrepresent the BC PNP as an "easy pathway" to permanent residency. The updates also align with new measures to protect international students from predatory institutions and recruiters.
The updates will include the replacement of the current International Graduate and International Post-Graduate streams with three new streams: the Bachelor's stream, the Master's stream, and the Doctorate stream. Additionally, the minimum language proficiency level will be increased program-wide, except for the Health Authority stream which has already been adjusted. A minimum of Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 8 is currently planned for the new graduate streams.
On January 30th, 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) officially included the Pearson Test of English (PTE Core) to its list of approved language proficiency tests. While the BC PNP does not yet accept this test, it is anticipated to begin accepting PTE Core in fall 2024. The BC PNP currently accepts other language tests such as IELTS General Training, CELPIP-General, TEF, and TCF. More information will be posted on the WelcomeBC News page and in the relevant BC PNP program guides.
Source: https://www.welcomebc.ca/Immigrate-to-B-C/News