OINP Is Open: How to Register for Ontario's New Workforce Priority Stream

If you have spent this summer refreshing the OINP page and wondering whether Ontario forgot about you, today is the day the waiting ends. As of August 4, 2026, ontario.ca confirms that the expression of interest portal for the new Ontario Workforce Priority stream is open. For thousands of people working in Ontario on temporary status, this is the door to permanent residence reopening after months of silence. But the new system is not the old system with a new name, and the details decide who actually benefits.

What Actually Happened Today

On August 4, 2026, Ontario's Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development announced on ontario.ca that it has opened the expression of interest (EOI) portal for the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program's new Ontario Workforce Priority stream. The stream has pathways for people with job offers in every NOC TEER category, from TEER 0 to TEER 5, plus a separate pathway for self-employed physicians who need no job offer at all.

This is the culmination of the biggest OINP redesign in years. The eight former streams, including Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker, International Student, In-Demand Skills, the Masters and PhD Graduate streams and the three Express Entry streams, are closed. Ontario states plainly that no further invitations will be issued under the former program streams.

The Part Most People Will Miss: Old EOIs Are Being Erased

Here is the detail that will catch people off guard. Ontario announced on June 26 that EOIs and job offers registered under the former streams that have not resulted in an invitation to apply are being automatically withdrawn. If you registered an EOI in the old system and never got invited, that registration is disappearing, and you will receive a notice about it. Sitting and waiting for an invitation on an old profile means waiting for something that will never come.

For employers there is one piece of relief: a company already registered in the employer portal does not need to register again. But it does need to submit a new job offer in the employer portal, and that job offer is what starts a new EOI for the worker under the new stream (the application for approval of the employment position follows after an invitation). If your PR plan runs through your employer, your employer has homework too.

Who Qualifies, in Ontario's Own Words

Ontario describes minimum eligibility requirements for each pathway, and the word minimum matters: meeting them puts you in the pool, it does not guarantee an invitation.

For the TEER 0 to 3 pathway, ontario.ca lists a full-time and permanent job offer in Ontario, plus work experience shown in one of several ways: 6 consecutive months in the last 12 in the job offer position with the job offer employer, or 3 consecutive months for recent Ontario graduates with the job offer employer, or 2 years of cumulative experience in the last 5 years in the occupation. Unlike the first two routes, ontario.ca does not tie this 2 year route to the employer making the offer. Licensed applicants are exempt from the experience requirement. Language must reach CLB 6, with CLB 5 accepted for certain occupations, and the minimum education is a post-secondary degree or diploma. Ontario notes that some occupations may have alternate criteria.

For the TEER 4 and 5 pathway, the requirements listed include 9 months of cumulative experience in the last 2 years in the job offer position with the job offer employer, language at CLB 4, and a Canadian secondary school diploma or equivalent. Note carefully: those 9 months are tied to the employer making the job offer. For many caregivers, drivers, food service and general labour workers, this is the first permanent front door Ontario has offered in years, but it runs through the employer you have now.

Self-employed physicians qualify without any job offer if they are members in good standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, hold a valid certificate of registration in an independent, academic or provisional class, and are eligible to bill through OHIP.

One more Ontario-specific detail: employers in rural communities face lower gross annual revenue requirements, and for this program rural means a census division with a population under 150,000. That is a legal definition, not a feeling: Hamilton, Waterloo and London are not rural under this rule.

What This Means for Your Own Plan

A provincial nomination remains one of the most powerful tools in Canadian immigration, and for candidates in the federal pool it interacts directly with Express Entry, where a nomination through the stream's Express Entry option adds 600 CRS points. That option applies to TEER 0 to 3 applicants and self-employed physicians with a valid Express Entry profile; TEER 4 and 5 nominations are base nominations outside Express Entry. But the Workforce Priority stream is employer-anchored by design. Your months with your current employer, your NOC code, and your language test result are now the three numbers that decide your options. Count them honestly. If you are at 7 months with your employer in a TEER 5 job, the timing of your EOI matters. If you are a TEER 2 worker with 2 cumulative years in your occupation across different employers, you have a route that does not depend on how long you have been with the current one.

What to Do Right Now

Confirm your NOC code and its TEER level before anything else, because the pathway, the language bar and the experience math all flow from it. Book a language test now if you do not have a valid result: no EOI strategy works without one. Remember the order of operations: your employer submits the job offer first, and then you register your EOI within 30 days. Talk to your employer this week about the new job offer registration, especially if they registered under the old system and assume it carries over. And if you registered an old EOI, do not wait for an invitation that is being withdrawn. As a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, Alisa Osipovich helps Ontario workers read their own numbers against the new rules, choose the right moment to file, and avoid the mistakes that quietly cost people their place in the pool.