Toronto, ON - February 12, 2026 - Today, the Toronto Region Board of Trade released ‘Raising the Bar’, a new report calling for an urgent overhaul of Ontario’s Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). The report warns that the OINP is failing to deliver the talent Ontario needs to drive productivity, economic growth, and prosperity, and offers six recommendations to modernize the program.
The report finds the OINP is chasing too many broad, often competing objectives and is largely missing a rigorous assessment of the program’s efficacy. The program has drifted toward filling short-term labour gaps instead of building long-term economic strength. Ontario has routinely selected lower-scoring candidates than top federal programs, signalling a lower bar for talent. Based on data from the 2021 Census, nearly 18 percent of recent OINP applicants were working in lower-skilled or labourer roles with limited wage and productivity potential.
Lower-wage jobs such as cooks, food service supervisors, and truck drivers rank among the most common OINP nominations, even though shortages in these roles are often temporary and vulnerable to economic downturns. Vacancies for cooks fell by 23 percent and truck drivers by 41 percent in just over a year.
Raising the Bar sets out six actions to modernize the OINP:
- Redefine goals and objectives: Make long-term productivity and competitiveness the core purpose of the OINP, prioritizing high-skilled talent and long-term labour needs.
- Track outcomes: Track stream-level outcomes annually and re-evaluate streams that consistently underperform.
- Raise the talent bar: Focus selection on what actually predicts success: education, strong language skills, proven earnings, and deep experience.
- Introduce new high-skilled talent streams: Create clearer pathways for health care professionals, exceptional talent, entrepreneurs as proposed by the government, as well as experienced executives, that the current system underserves.
- Improve predictability and speed: To attract top talent, the OINP must process applications more quickly, communicate more clearly, and deliver more predictable outcomes.
- Upgrade Ontario’s newcomer support system: Evaluate existing supports to ensure that language training, credential recognition, and settlement services are working to get immigrants jobs that better match their potential.
“Ontario is in a global race for talent, and right now our nominee program has not been built to win. We need to raise the bar, modernize the OINP, and compete for the best talent on earth if we want stronger growth and higher living standards. As the province is redesigning the program now is the time to focus on strategically important growth sectors with high skill occupations where talent is in short supply.”
— Giles Gherson, President & CEO, Toronto Region Board of Trade
The Toronto Region Board of Trade is one of the largest and most influential business chambers in North America and is a catalyst for the region’s economic agenda. We pursue policy change to drive the growth and competitiveness of the Toronto region and facilitate market opportunities with programs, partnerships and connections to help our members succeed – domestically and internationally.
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