Before you start
- A passport valid well beyond the intended stay
- A job offer, and for many employer-specific permits a Labour Market Impact Assessment obtained by the employer
- For permanent residence, language test results and an Educational Credential Assessment
- For an Ontario nomination, a qualifying job offer from an employer willing to register in the province's Employer Portal — there is no longer a nominee route without one, bar self-employed physicians
- For federal employment, citizenship for most postings plus security screening
Step-by-step
- 1
Establish which permit you actually hold
An employer-specific work permit ties you to one employer and one role — changing jobs means a new permit. Open permits, including the Post-Graduation Work Permit and most spousal permits, do not. Read the conditions printed on the permit itself.
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Apply for a Social Insurance Number in your first week
Free, from Service Canada, with your passport and permit. In person it is usually issued on the spot. No employer can pay you without it.
In personWho: YouWeek 1 - 3
Be realistic about federal public service eligibility
The Public Service Employment Act gives preference to Canadian citizens, and many postings are open to citizens only. Permanent residents can apply to some. Almost all require security screening. Treat the private and contractor sector as the realistic entry point until citizenship.
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Enter the Express Entry pool if permanent residence is the goal
Express Entry ranks candidates on age, education, language and Canadian work experience. French ability adds points under the federal system, which is worth noting in a bilingual city. You can be in the pool while on a work permit.
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Treat the Ontario Workforce Priority stream as the only provincial route there is
Ontario revoked all of its previous OINP streams on 30 May 2026 and launched this single replacement in late June; the province's own page now states that all other streams are closed. Read ontario.ca and nothing else — advice written before mid-2026 still names Human Capital Priorities, Employer Job Offer and the graduate streams, and if a source lists a stream that is not on the province's page today, stop reading it.
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Understand that the surviving stream is employer-driven, and the employer moves first
You cannot open this application yourself. Your employer registers in Ontario's Employer Portal and submits the job offer, which generates a job offer ID; only then do you register an expression of interest, within 30 calendar days. If invited you have 17 calendar days to apply — and only after your employer has submitted their own side for approval. The sole exception is self-employed physicians with an OHIP billing number and College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario certification. Every job-offer-free nominee route Ontario used to run is gone.
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Check whether your occupation's TEER category earns the 600 Express Entry points
All TEER categories 0 to 5 are eligible for the stream, but a nomination only attaches to an Express Entry profile — the 600 points that settle the outcome — if you applied on a TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3 occupation and separately meet a federal Express Entry stream's minimum criteria. TEER 4 and 5 nominees are nominated outside Express Entry. Experience minimums differ too: six consecutive months for TEER 0–3, three for recent Ontario graduates, nine months for TEER 4–5, with language requirements from CLB 4 to 6.
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Keep every record of physical presence in Canada
The permanent resident residency obligation and the citizenship physical-presence requirement are counted in days across several years. In this city citizenship also unlocks a whole employment market, so the log has a second purpose here.
OnlineWho: You
Documents you’ll need
- Passport
- Work permit or Confirmation of Permanent Residence
- Job offer letter and LMIA, where applicable
- Language test results in English and, valuably here, French
- Educational Credential Assessment
- A job offer ID from your employer's Employer Portal submission, for an Ontario nomination
- A record of every entry to and exit from Canada
Things most newcomers don’t know
In the city where government is the biggest employer, most government jobs need citizenship.
The Public Service Employment Act gives preference to Canadian citizens, and a large share of advertised positions are restricted to them outright. Permanent residents qualify for fewer than the job boards imply. Newcomers move to Ottawa expecting the public service to be the obvious employer and discover the restriction after applying. Plan around the technology sector, the contractors and the universities until citizenship.
Source: Public Service Commission of Canada
Security screening takes months, and it needs history you may not have yet.
Even the baseline Reliability status requires verifiable address, employment and background history, typically over several years. Someone who has been in Canada for eighteen months has a thin file to verify, and overseas checks slow it further. This is a real, structural barrier to federal and defence-contractor work in the first years, and it is worth knowing before turning down other offers.
Source: Government of Canada
French adds points to your Express Entry score and promotions to your Ottawa career.
The federal system awards additional points for French proficiency, and Canada has been running French-language category draws with substantially lower cut-offs than the general pool. Separately, a large proportion of federal positions here are classified bilingual imperative, tested before appointment. In no other Canadian city does the same language investment pay twice like this.
Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
The one surviving Ontario nominee route needs an employer — in a city whose biggest employer cannot be yours.
Ontario closed all of its previous nominee streams on 30 May 2026, including the ones that needed no job offer at all, and the single replacement is employer-driven: the employer registers in the province's Employer Portal and submits the job offer before you can even file an expression of interest. That lands awkwardly in Ottawa specifically, because the federal public service dominates the labour market and is largely closed to non-citizens. The practical reading is that an Ontario nomination here runs through the technology sector, the contractors, the universities or the hospitals — and that the federal route to permanent residence is Express Entry on your own points, not a nomination.
Source: Ontario — Ontario Workforce Priority stream
Almost every OINP guide you will find is describing streams that were abolished.
The change is recent enough that consultants' pages, forum threads and news articles written before mid-2026 still rank well in search and still name Human Capital Priorities, the Employer Job Offer streams and the Masters and PhD graduate streams. None of them exist. The province's own page now states plainly that all other streams are closed. This is the single most likely way to waste months on Canadian immigration research right now, and the test is simple: if a source names a stream that is not on ontario.ca today, close the tab.
Source: Ontario — Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program
Keep a day-by-day travel log from the moment you land.
Both the PR residency obligation and the citizenship physical-presence requirement are counted in days and assessed retrospectively. Passport stamps are incomplete and land crossings often unstamped. In Ottawa, where citizenship also unlocks the largest local employer, a delayed citizenship application because of an unprovable presence record has a career cost as well as an administrative one.
Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
Common mistakes to avoid
- Planning a move around federal public service jobs that are restricted to citizens.
- Underestimating how long security screening takes and turning down other offers.
- Working for anyone other than the employer named on an employer-specific permit.
- Working from any OINP guidance written before mid-2026 — the streams it names were closed on 30 May 2026.
- Expecting a provincial nomination without a job offer, which no longer exists outside self-employed physicians.
- Missing the 30-day expression-of-interest window after your employer submits the job offer.
- Ignoring French, which pays twice here — in points and in promotions.
- Failing to log physical presence and delaying the citizenship that unlocks the job market.
Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.
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Sources
- Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada — official, Verified August 2026
- Public Service Commission of Canada — who can apply — official, Verified August 2026
- Ontario — Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) — official, Verified August 2026 — records that all previous streams are closed
- Ontario — Ontario Workforce Priority stream — official, Verified August 2026 — the only open OINP stream
- Service Canada — Social Insurance Number — official, Verified August 2026
Last verified August 2026. Government processes change — always confirm critical details against the official source before acting.