International students and other temporary residents planning to apply for permanent residence through express entry may face changes to how their applications are ranked.
On Oct. 16, Lena Metledge Diab, the minister for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced changes to the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) which ranks candidates in the pool according to factors including age, education, language proficiency and work experience.
Beginning Nov. 3, IRCC will award additional points to candidates with eligible Canadian work experience or qualifying job offers in high-wage occupations, such as engineering and electrical trades. According to the Government of Canada website, the changes will also “remove the Labour Market Impact Assessment requirements for qualifying job offers used to establish the program eligibility and obtain [CRS] points.”
Under the revised system, candidates with qualifying job offers may receive 100, 70, or 50 additional CRS points depending on how the offered wage compares with the applicable median wage. The highest allocation applies to jobs paying at least twice the median wage, while lower allocations apply to jobs at least 1.5 times or 1.3 times the median wage, respectively.
Candidates who may qualify for points based on a job offer are asked to review and update their profiles before the start date to ensure the required information is accurate. IRCC will also reassess existing candidates’ profiles under the applicable rules.
The revised selection criteria come as the federal government seeks to align immigration admissions with labour market needs while supporting a return to what it described as “sustainable immigration levels.”
Under the 2026-28 immigration level plan, Canada aims to admit 380,000 permanent residents in 2026, with the same annual target set for 2027 and 2028.
The plan also places greater emphasis on economic immigration, which is projected to account for 64 per cent of the permanent resident admissions.
The federal government has also committed to reducing the proportion of temporary residents to less than five per cent of Canda’s population by the end of 2027 and stabilizing permanent resident admissions at less than one per cent of the population beyond 2027.
In 2025, the government announced measures to facilitate permanent residence for eligible physicians with Canadian work experience. In 2026, the government also introduced new express entry categories for candidates with experience in transport occupations, “researchers and senior managers with Canadian work experience,” and highly skilled foreign military recruits.
Alongside the occupation-based selection, the federal government continues to use French language immigration to support Francophone communities outside Quebec.
The 2026-2028 immigration levels plan sets targets for French speaking permanent resident’s admissions outside Quebec at nine per cent of the total permanent residents in 2026, 9.5 per cent in 2027, and 10.5 per cent in 2028. The government has also committed to establishing a target of 12 per cent by 2029.
As of Oct. 26, 228,724 candidates were in the pool according to IRCC. The number represents candidates awaiting invitations across the system, rather than applicants guaranteed to receive permanent residence.
Invitation rounds are conducted throughout the year, with selection depending on the type of draw, candidates’ CRS scores, and the eligibility requirements for the relevant immigration category.
The CRS calculator can be accessed on the IRCC website to know the points one may have if they consider themselves eligible for any of the express entry programs.
