British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) – Statistical Report （1）

2021:

$28.84/hour

Within reasonable range of the median wage for individual British Columbians 2 The PNP selects nominee  families who settle into affordable communities outside B.C.’s major urban centres Skills Immigration (SI) Nominees who are settling

outside of Metro

Vancouver

21% of SI Nominees outside of Metro Vancouver (2020 level) 23% of the BC PNP’s SI nominees in

2021 were outside Metro Vancouver

Range: 23% to 25% of portion of allocation used for SI Entrepreneur Immigration (EI) Nominees who are settling outside of Metro Vancouver 71% of EI Nominees outside of Metro Vancouver (2020 level) 76% of the BC PNP’s EI nominees in

2021 were outside Metro Vancouver

Greater than 60% of portion of allocation used for EI 3 The PNP selects nominees who help deliver essential services with identified shortages Nominees who are essential service workers in health care and early childhood education 172 (2021 level) Nominees in 35 prioritized healthcare occupations:172 Increased level

(Exact figure  TBD)

90 (2021 level) Early childhood educator nominees:90 Increased level

(Exact figure  TBD)

Discussion of Results

1. BC PNP’s median wage is currently just above the overall median wage for British Columbia. In 2021, BC PNP nominations generally targeted higher-skilled workers  who bring  their specialized knowledge and experience to British Columbia.
2. Moving forward, the program will be seeking to further support the immigration needs of all regions by progressively increasing the proportion of nominees settling outside of
3. Metro Vancouver. Under the current points system for Skills Immigration, registrants receive extra points if they will be working in any part of the province outside of the Lower Mainland.  New measures are currently being introduced to prioritize regional candidates and are designed to lead to a higher percentage of regional nominees in 2023.
4. In March 2022, the BC PNP began to prioritize Care Economy occupations, specifically health and childcare. The program made process and criteria changes to support meeting the critical demands for these occupation As the BC PNP is currently evaluating the immediate-term impact of these changes, a specific figure  for a 2022 target has not yet been established for these Care Economy priorities.

Impact of COVID-19

In the spring of 2020, the BC PNP made various temporary changes to deal with the impact of COVID-19. However, most of those measures were ended before the beginning of 2021. The only major change that continued into 2021 was a temporary policy that registrations in 31 occupations related to tourism, hospitality, retail and personal services would not be eligible to receive invitations to apply until further notice. That suspension was removed  in February 2021.

Overall nomination levels for the BC PNP in 2021 were similar to the levels seen in 2020 and remained below pre-COVID 2019 levels. However, these figures do not represent an overall decrease in immigration to British Columbia, nor was there a decrease in the level of applications processed under the BC PNP. In 2021, the federal government introduced a limited-time temporary to permanent resident pathway for some temporary residents who were already working in Canada to apply directly to the federal government to become permanent residents without involving the BC PNP. For that reason, the BC PNP saw significantly more withdrawn applications in 2021 as it did in 2020, but most of those applicants  still intended to immigrate to British Columbia.