Mark Holthe 0:04
Music. This episode of the Canadian immigration podcast is sponsored by the Canadian immigration Institute, one of the best sources of video content on Canadian immigration to help you navigate your way through the Canadian immigration process. Head on over to the YouTube channel, where there's tons of video content, and you can join mark yes myself in a number of live video streams, Q and A's all designed to help you navigate your way through this crazy Canadian immigration process. When you're done there, like and subscribe and then head on over to the Canadian Immigration institute.com where you can find all those awesome DIY courses that I've been talking about. Thank you, Canadian immigration Institute. You are the sponsor of this amazing little podcast. You
Unknown Speaker 0:59
music.
Sponsor 1:05
The Canadian immigration process can be complex and frustrating with the Canadian Immigration Department making it virtually impossible to speak to an officer. There are few places to turn to for trusted information. The Canadian immigration podcast was created to fill this void by offering the latest on immigration law, policy and practice. Please welcome ex immigration officer and Canadian immigration lawyer Mark Holthe as he is joined by industry leaders across Canada sharing insight to help you along your way.
Mark Holthe 1:51
Make sure I got my right mic going here, Oh, seriously, Gore whenever we do our lives, I swear there's all kinds of issues, including my proper mic not wanting to work. So let's see here if I can recharge this one. All right, so those of you who are tuning in will get my audio sorted out. I think a lot of people have had a chance to kind of digest what's happening, and it's a real I guess it should come as no surprise, right? Igor, that it's Friday that they make this announcement, Friday evening when you and I would like to have a little bit of a break after a crazy, insane week of work, and we are unbelievably busy, largely as a result of our Liberal government and our good friend here, Mark Miller, will get him off of the screen because I don't really want to look at him right now. Right now too much. What's your thoughts? Igor, initially with this, this new category changes to express entry.
Igor Kyryliuk 2:51
Well, first of all, hello everyone. Second. Yes, we are busy, and we are so busy mark that it's not Friday today, it's Thursday. We still have one more day to go. And yeah, just came unannounced, and this is perhaps one of the biggest takeaways here. So beware, if RCC is silent, it's just like a little kid. If you don't hear a sound, then something's coming, and then if they announce it and spread the word about it everywhere, then probably the change is not that big. And yes, we've seen some pretty significant changes. We've seen some categories dropped. We've seen some new categories, and we also see some reductions in the knock codes that remained, actually another me, but they are no longer present in one of the categories. And we will talk about those changes, but we'll compare the categories how they used to look like before February 27 and what they look like right now. So there are a lot of things to discuss.
Mark Holthe 4:02
You're right. Igor, I was just thinking about that. Yeah, it's Thursday. Today, it feels like Friday. Usually Friday is when they make the announcements, and my whole week has just become a blur. But today, everyone, we are absolutely going to break this down. We are completely open to hearing what you guys have to say about this. And we've got a little bit of a roadmap that we're going to follow as we go forward. As many of you likely know already, if we just pull this up, here's what we've got going forward. So these are the categories now. Now we're going to dive in a little bit deeper, but obviously number one. Oh my goodness, I go this just drives me so absolutely insanely crazy. Okay, let's French. Okay, let's just set that aside. French language proficiency, number one on the list, number one in the playbook, number one in their hearts, at least of our Liberal government. Number 10 on my list of. Priorities when it comes to this. So if we slide over here to the website and we look at the changes, and you can go here, you guys yourselves to see what the category based selection now looks like, but right here. Okay, this is the biggest hypocrisy. Okay, let's bring them on. Okay, Miller, we got you here because I'm you're the one making these calls, and I know you have a love affair for French, and that's totally fine. That's your prerogative, my friend, but let's just drop him down here with us. Here he is. He's joined us. Now let's take a look at this in category based rounds of invitations, we invite candidates in the express entry pool who are eligible for a specific category established by the Minister. Okay, that's the minister. Okay, everybody to meet an identified economic goal. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but like the rate at which French language, when there's already 50 points being given, plus, really, for French language to have a need for large scale, category based French language draws. I just don't get it. I understand our obligations to make sure that Canada is a bilingual country. I'm fully for it, but economic immigration, I'm not seeing the connection here. How you identify that the French language is is an economic priority, so we'll leave it at that. Thanks, Minister. We'll probably be bringing you back late, like again later, and I welcome your comments. You guys like, what do you think about this stuff? So French language number one on the list, and they put it there for a reason, to justify the the rounds of invitations that have happened, and how many people have been invited with French only. Okay, French only. All right, healthcare, yeah, undergone some changes. I just had unfortunate call, well, a client who sent me an email saying my occupation is now off the list. And I think Igor Alicia and myself and you, we are seeing that happen now, with these recent changes, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be quite sad. I got a better chance. Better turn up my audio here. I can see it's not loud enough. Okay, everybody should be able to hear me now. Okay, science, technology, engineering and math occupations are stem it's still there. I thought it would just be out the door, but it's still hanging in there. And this is an interesting thing. I want to pull up here that I wasn't going to show, but I'm, I'm going to, let's just see, or give me a second, I'm going to slide over here. I'm doing double duty here. We've got me searching up some websites while at the same time trying to, trying to maintain a coherent discussion. All right, take a look at this. You guys, I've showed this a lot in the past. We can close this. We don't need the history. Okay, this is the annual levels plans that were just announced. And we became really fixated with this here in Canada, focus, which is basically CEC. Here's our federal economic priorities. And when we click on five, we went down here and said, Okay, well, if the 2025 priority categories, remember, this is for 2025 and this is the liberals who have announced this, okay, include health care trade and French language proficiency, maybe include means, I guess now it wasn't an exclusive list, so myself, and I have to assume the majority of other People said, Oh, STEM is out the door. But as we see here, that is actually not the case. So STEM is still on the list, although it is pared down, right? Igor, and we'll talk about this, trade, occupations, yes, they're on there, agriculture and agri food and our brand newcomer to the list, education. Igor, I had a consult with a client. I think it was three weeks ago, and I'm not the national chair of the Canadian Bar Association's immigration section anymore. I'm not privy to all of the internal workings of everything that's happening within immigration or attending those meetings, but a client said, are they going to open up education categories for education? And this is me. I've got a daughter who just graduated. She's got a term contract right now filling in for another teacher and and she's just waiting for her first permanent position. She has other friends that don't have jobs, but magically, like, I don't know, Igor, if this is like, I don't know, like, they've been so down on education that the decision to now have education occupations on the list is just, it's unbelievably bizarre to me. And maybe in other provinces there are shortages. I don't know you guys, but, but this is what we're looking at at a high level the current categories. So notwithstanding, what we see here in this breakdown of lists, that was, you know, you can see here the 2025 priority categories include healthcare, trade. French categories are established each year, informed by LMI labor market information and projections, as well as input received from partners, including provinces, territory, stakeholders across the country. Well, there must have been some pretty powerful education stakeholders to. Result in these, these lists I want to as we get to our our main categories here, and I'm just going to drop this off. So here's what we're going to talk about today. You guys. We're going to start off with an overview. For some of you are just tuning in, wondering what, what's the hubaloo like? What the heck's going on? We're going to cover very quickly what this is all about, at least our take on it, not IRCC spin, but our take, we're going to talk about the big picture, which, for all intents and purposes, is the category, the current categories. Then we're going to talk about the breakdown of each and then we'll have this going to impact all of you guys. And then we'll wrap it up with a kind of a Q and A, and I'm going to try to take questions as we go, but this is as much a teaching as it is a live Q and A so for sure, I want to hear your comments. I want to hear what you have to say. We've got a below here says hola Spider Man's once again back in Montreal. That's good to see you. Yes, Christopher acknowledges. It's Thursday evening. Oh, I see what you guys are saying. Okay, pick on me, sure, just because my brain is fried with everything Igor is doing. Abby says, Igor likes Van Gogh. Okay, sure we can see that it's really busy for Mark and Igor, that is true. Thanks for laughing at me, guys, that's okay. We've got a latunde is tuning in from Nigeria. It's great to have you here. Yeah, and like, this is common. Karthik says, I've been waiting. My sister's waiting for imitations for more than five months, and she has 498, she's probably going to keep waiting. My friend like that. You know, it's, it's hard. Software engineer, I saw the score drop in the last draw. Do you think it will open? Well, okay, this is a perfect example. Let's slide over here, Igor. I want to know, I want to let everybody know that Igor has actually drafted a pretty awesome little blog post. He's updated his other category based and re released it. And if you're wondering who are the winners, who are the losers, this is where you're going to go to figure that out. And then the government also in the description we've provided, these links you can go here. So let's just take a look at stem here. So this comment, if we go back to we go back to the comment here from, from Karthik here, he says, the sisters a software engineer. Okay, let's go back and let's take a look at what we have here for STEM. So if we jump in here, we hit stem, and then we look at the list. Okay, look at how many total we have here. We have, if we just go over here, 10 entries. There are 1111, occupations now on this list. So we've got architecture, civil engineering engineers, cyber specialists, electrical engineers, electrical geological, industrial insurance. Wow. This has really got to be in shortage serious Igor. And here's the idiocy of this one man. How the heck did this even get on the list? Insurance Agents and Brokers often work on a commission basis. These individuals are very often independent contractors. Holy cow, I guess. Well, maybe Minister Miller here. Welcome back, Mr. Miller. Do you have a friend who's an insurance agent or a broker? Maybe he's got a friend, I don't know that's who he's taking his consultations from. Sorry. I'm really kind of ticked today, Igor, there's some good things in here, for sure. Okay, but you can see what's gone. Igor, what's going on? Engineers, software, all of this boom disappeared. So STEM is no longer it, for all intents and purposes. Do you see any hint and and, in fairness, maybe that's a maybe that is an accurate reflection of what's happening in the market right now. I don't know, but, but, yeah, when we have individuals like Karthik here waiting for an invitation, well, I think they're going to be waiting for quite a while. All
Igor Kyryliuk 13:36
right, which one opens a question like, did the category based draws actually fix the labor market in such way that now there's no shortage. Like, did they actually got enough software engineers? I don't think so. Perhaps with software engineers, yes, because most of the businesses go south of the border and we don't need as many tax specialists now, because with whatever political climate that we have in Canada, nobody wants to open an at business in Canada, and it's easier to do it in states or somewhere in Panama, where you can not pay any taxes.
Mark Holthe 14:17
Well, no, it's Yeah, cost savings. All of our major banks outsource a ton of their, you know, their their phone calls, like the tele whatever, their call centers, etc. It's yeah. So I love this Hemi. Oh, poor Hemi. I don't think you looked at STEM, my friend, unless you're science, unless you're you're like, an
Igor Kyryliuk 14:43
Igor, all right, Mark, I think your audio comes out.
Mark Holthe 14:54
Sorry, my mic came. Thanks people for catching that my mic and my fancy little. Sure, Mike here, the cord came untouched. Okay, I think we're good. Everybody can hear me now. Did I? Did you just lose me? Just recently? It was just, just for tiny bit. Okay, no problem. So this is me whining again and complaining. I think this is the day of Mark's whining. It feels like a Friday, you know what? If it wasn't for the fact I have consults from, like, I don't know, it's 8am to, like 6pm tomorrow. I would just write the day off and just go into the mountains, I think is what I would do. Anyways. Okay, back to what we're talking about. I'm just, like, French language. I once again, I just, I'm shocked at how, yeah, anyways. Okay, back to, back to our discussion here. So STEM is still on board. So Hemi. Take a look at the occupations. People are also identifying this. No more transport. Rich also says the added insurance agents. Yeah, I agree. Like, this is just, I don't get it in STEM, I don't get it. There's clearly someone who's who's, yeah, and then the Ghost Dog, I was in transport, and now they removed it. I'm so disappointed, I fear like I hear you and all right, Minister Miller, maybe send him a message and express your disappointment. I don't know. At the end of the day, Minister Miller, and you know, I just want the Liberal government to take responsibility for for all of this, to acknowledge, you know, what has happened, and take responsibility for it. When Minister Miller came in, he was very clear that they had made some mistakes and but now, because it's an election, because, you know, who's he's backing, who I don't know, whoever the next guy is, what's, what's the liberal candidates? Mark, yeah, Mark Carney, my brain is, like, fried. It really is. You know, he's all you gotta love fest for Mark Carney now, and anything you don't want to have any negative press and, well, my goodness, like this whole crazy situation that we're in is because of your immigration policy decisions. So I guess there's too many Indian truck drivers maybe now. So now they're removing the transport category, like, I don't know. I would love to see the discussions behind the, you know, behind the scenes on how they choose this, yeah, and it's, it's hard. Well, Ghost Dog, I'll put your other comments up. Why not? He says, like, what the heck is happening so many of us in this field need category, you know. Need it to be going understand this person right here. Mark Miller, he does not want you here. The reason it's removed is because they do not feel like all the truck drivers that are foreign workers are needed and, and I agree, the insurance agents and brokers in STEM, yeah. And then, well, if you look at cooks in trade, like that's that they've been in there. So let's flip back right here, Igor, and let's just take a look at the trades. Okay, we'll look just carefully at these again. So trade occupations, these have been shrunk. You guys. There's 25 total, which that has become a priority. But if we look here, painters, roofers, like all of these, are all designed for, you know, for helping the the to rebuild the housing and everything that we need. The all of the main trades are on here, and cooks are on the list. So I think Mark,
Igor Kyryliuk 18:04
if that's a mistake, it should probably be in that group food category. Perhaps they will change it later. Well,
Mark Holthe 18:12
cooks are, cooks are, although it's six, you will, if you go to the actual Federal Skilled Trade, I'll show you that this is, like, this is where it has been. It has been slotted. So if we go, if we look at the Federal Skilled Trade Program, and we break down here, you can see this here. This is cooks and stuff. And so this has been a part of the Federal Skilled Trade and you can get trade certification as a cook. So the certificate of qualifications for the Federal Skilled Trade Program, if they ever did it again, it does include cooks. So I understand kind of why they have it. See if we can find it. I understand why they have it here. You know, people are just not accustomed to having a red seal as a cook as a trade, but it is considered that, yeah, so you can see it's just,
Igor Kyryliuk 19:01
it just like, as I look at those categories, one thing i i Always keep in mind is that when I speak with my clients on the consult and I'm like, as long as you fit into the category, maybe try, try searching for job here in Canada to fit into The category, all you need is, like, six months, right? And then we go through the jobs on those categories and look at where they can start getting work experience. And I realized, like, there's not too many different occupations where they can try to get this work experience in Canada, because pretty much everywhere, you need to have a certification or a license or red seal. And so when they put cooks under trades, I understand the logic that you need a red seal to become a cook, or whatever certification. But at the same time, so many other occupations require the certification. So like in terms of the where to put. Cooks in perhaps most logical would be to put it in the agri food at the same time. Like something to keep in mind for our viewers is that if you want to qualify for one of the categories and you have trouble trying to fit in the category with the work experience in Canada, because you require the certification for work experience to take outside Canada, the minimum requirements to enter the job are not applicable. So if, if you cannot become a Pipe Fitter in Canada, if you get that work experience outside Canada, they will not ask you to provide with a red seal. And so that is something to keep in mind there, as we talk about certifications.
Mark Holthe 20:51
River here, who's tuning in on X says I can cook chicken. Is it possible to get invited? Hell yeah, maybe, right. Maybe my friend. So I want to show you guys something here, and just show you the tenacity that some people have, and I've talked about this in the past, and we will break down some of the more categories. And I welcome your comments, you guys, please. I welcome your comments. I'll pull them up, and we can, we can, we'll definitely address them. But one thing I want to point out, for example, here welders in Alberta, you have to have trade certification to be a welder, so you actually have to go through, get your certification, your licensing, and then you can practice as a welder. That's not the case in all provinces. So we had a client just the other day. Well, I shouldn't say that. It's probably about a week ago. I think was about a week ago now, it's more like a month ago. We had a client who I had a consultation with him, and he was actually drawn under one of the trade categories. Actually was, maybe it was more than a month now. Sorry, my all of these days are blurring together, and this is the degree of tenacity that this guy went through. So basically what he was, he was a, I guess, by his by by his occupation, he was in finance, so he's working in a bank. And he looked at the category based draws. He looked at the rounds of invitations. He saw the scores that were happening. And he was realizing that I'm not going to get drawn unless I make a change. I'm finance is never going to be on the list. And so do you know what he did? You guys, he literally went to a welding shop. I don't know where Mississauga or somewhere in Ontario, and he said, Look, I will work for free for you as a welder, if you if you'll teach me. And so he basically worked for free. I think it was five months before he ultimately got an official position, when they said, Okay, your skills have developed enough for you to actually be, you know, useful to us as a welder. So then he worked another six months, and I think it was seven. On the seventh or eighth month, I wish he would come back on the live stream and talk to us, but about this, but about the seventh month, he got an invitation to apply with that six months of welding experience. And he now, if, like, he's well in his way. He's filed his eapr. He's just waiting for the approval. And so he he had gone through this process, and he had actually made this huge sacrifice of working for free. And at first I was like, Man, what a crappy employer, What a lousy employer. They're totally exploiting this guy, and they making him work for free. He had a side hustle. He had a little side job in the evenings that helped to at least make the, you know, payments on his rent or whatever. I'm sure he was living in a house of a whole bunch of people, and he had his savings that he was using to make, you know, to bide the time until he was actually going to get wage. But he made that sacrifice to get on the list. And so when I look at these, when I look at what he sacrificed, and I look at these people, you know, no, I'm not telling you to go take a job for free with, you know, to work in a trade so that you can get the experience. But as I was thinking about it, and I was, I was really, really upset about the employer, that they would have taken advantage of them like that. But the reality is, when you look at teachers, there's a little bit of feedback on your end. I think Igor, not sure why. But anyways, I'm just going to mute you, basically, in his situation, he, he was willing to make this sacrifice. And then I look at what teachers in Canada go through. As a teacher myself, I went and my undergrad is, is education. I worked at least three semesters, not all of the semesters, like all four months, but the last one was pretty much full time teaching. I paid the university to allow me to teach in the schools. And even as a there was three professionals, professional semesters for teaching. The first year, I did just a little bit of kind of I worked right alongside the teacher. In the second one, I actually was teaching lessons and teaching class. And then the third I had the whole class to myself effectively. And so all that time I was paying to teach, to get the experience, to get the qualifications to be able. Eligible. So what's the difference? So, you know, I don't know if any welding shops out there, gas fitting, or, you know, if you're a carpenter, a cabinet maker, you run your own business, and you've got, you know, someone that says, hey, I want to learn this trade, and I'm willing to work for free so that I can qualify through IRCC for a trade and get one of these categories based draws. Well, then, so be it. Then maybe that's what you that maybe that's what you need to do. So anyways, those are just my, my little rant and my little thoughts on this. Igor, you got some comments?
Igor Kyryliuk 25:34
Yeah? Like you also want to make sure that I'm not, I'm not exactly sure about the circumstances of this particular client, but the work experience must be paid, right? Like, if, at least if that's a foreign work experience. Yes.
Mark Holthe 25:47
Thank you, Igor, for pointing that out. So yes. So he reached the level of skill where he could then work the six months to get paid. Thanks for clarifying that. I don't want to give people the impression that they just go and work for free and then it's good. Yeah,
Igor Kyryliuk 26:00
exactly, yeah. So whenever you are a doubt, you always want to go back to the original source and read the instructions on Express Entry, completeness check and payment is something that you always want to make sure to include, and it's also important that mark, as we talked about the categories we we mentioned this all the time. Don't try to game the system, like if you are in a very close knot code, don't try to inflate your knot code to fit into the category. That's going to be a fatal mistake, and you can be found guilty of misrepresentation, essentially barring you from Canada for five years. So yes, things become more complicated, and they're going to get worse before they get better. But that doesn't mean that you have to try to, kind of like, go around, cut the corners, you know, sometimes, yes, there are some tips and strategies how you can fit into the category, but not at the cost of misrepresenting. Essentially, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Mark Holthe 27:07
All right, so yeah, we welcome your thoughts, your comments. There were some I posted there. It's not that I'm not a fan of Minister Miller, okay. I think he's tried to do a lot of very difficult things, picking up the pieces after his two previous ministers and the decisions that they had made. And so I, you know, I always don't want to be too hard on him, but lately, my goodness, like his decision to cut the PNPs back because the provinces wouldn't play ball with him, like that's just weak, like that's just someone who is making decisions just as a bully entirely to for political purposes. And I get the I get the fact that you're feeling some provinces, Minister Miller, are not taking their fair share of refugees, which is what you've said in the newspaper that you quoted yourself in on x, which you usually do. I get that. But the reality is, there are all of these people watching this channel right now, Minister Miller, who are literally out of options because you've cut the PNPs. And I'll just mention to all of you guys, this was by design. Okay? This was absolutely by design, sure you can say. And I'll bring Minister Miller right in here with me. Sure you can say that the decision was purely because they weren't taking enough refugees, or one aspect of it, why the levels for the PNPs were dropped in half. But where are all of you guys getting your spots? If you don't qualify through Express Entry, you're getting them through the PNPs and the PNPs have way more programs for lower wage individuals, people that are working in fast food, people that are working in service industries. And so there is no doubt that there is a correlation between Minister Miller's decision right here to slash the PNPs in half at the same time, they're taking all those measures, with the temporary foreign worker program, to remove the ability of employers to keep their workers under lmias If they're in those regions where there's 6% or greater unemployment, and I get the desire and the need to encourage Canadians to take those jobs, but at a rate of 1 million to 2 million people that they want to leave. Each one of these measures, you guys are all designed to kill options that you have. And you know, the toolbox that I used to have and that I've had for 20 years, Minister Miller here has done a phenomenal job of taking all of those tools that I have out of my toolbox for options to help you. When I started practicing immigration, I considered it, you know, as I transitioned from working on the border as an officer and as I as I went and, you know, to law school and decided to become a lawyer and choose immigration to practice in, I saw immigration kind of like a buffet. You know, people could they had multiple options and multiple. Choices. And you would kind of choose the ones that tasted the best, the ones that you know were the least amount of work or or time that would get permanent residence the quickest. And so it was really a decision of which pathway to choose. There was always one that was right. And now it's become, well, I don't know if any of these items on the table are even going to be here tomorrow. And every day we come back to the buffet, if you want to keep calling it that, and Minister Miller has removed something else. And sure, there are things that have been added, but you guys have seen what's been added. It's just it's absolutely crazy. So we'll pull I go back in here and we'll, we'll, we'll. I like Minister Miller here to stick around. Let me just see if I can find him. Here he is, and we'll shrink him down a little bit more. That's a good spot for him, right down there. Okay, we'll make him disappear. So, yes, so I know a lot of you, I like I said, I welcome your comments. We've got people that are connecting in on Facebook, on X, on YouTube, and it's great that we've got a good reach here. But Bill, Bill, nice is, I'm starting to think Mark isn't a fan of Minister Miller, and, you know, I'm just not a fan of some of the decisions that he's making. And I don't want to be overly critical, because he's got people above him, our prime minister, well, our lame duck Prime Minister, who's basically out, I don't know who's leading the country now, to tell you the truth, and you know, and his predecessors and cabinet, he's got all of these people telling him what he's supposed to do, and then he is the scapegoat. He's the one that takes the wrath. And, hey, you accepted the job minister Miller. So the, you know, the pushback, and the, you know, the fair criticism, that criticism that you're receiving is, is, it's, justified, I think, in the circumstances. And all of you that are watching all 500 people that are watching this live, you're watching it for a reason, because the decisions that are made every day, from literally week to week, or day to day or hour to hour, are changing your decision making as to whether or not you have a shot at being in Canada or not. And many, many of our colleagues, including Igor myself, Alicia, are all in a situation now where we give you advice by the minute. So in other words, the advice that I just gave my I don't know how many had six or seven consultations today with people literally, could be stale, dated and outdated as of the evening on the same day, that's the extent to which change is occurring. So when we're giving advice and in the consultations, it's always a view with keeping as many options open as possible. We're going to talk a little bit more about this, but, but Igor, I want to get back to your blog post that you wrote. I'm just going to pull this up. So if you guys in the in the link, in the description, you'll be able to come to Igor s blog post and and we will also this is going to be a podcast episode. And I want to point out that within our what we're doing here, I'm just going to pull this up here. We've got minister. I've got too many things going on here. We are starting a brand new series within our podcast called Express Entry, getting it right. And we just released one. It should, it should be up now on police clearance certificates. Before that, it was certificates of qualification, and today it's the changes to the category based draws. It's critical that you get things right. And so let's start Igor just and we're kind of backtracking, and I know people are wondering, okay, what's the big deal? What are they actually sharing? But I want to, I want to talk just briefly about this, the kind of the the how this works. And so I'm going to pull up on our website the the page that actually breaks down the requirements. And so this is something, if you're looking to wade into these category category based selection. There's some people that are a little bit confused about how you actually present your work history in a way that will get it captured by these category based draws. And some people are confusing the reality, thinking that their primary occupation has to be one of these category based draws. In other words, the when you're selecting your primary occupation, your primary knock for the purposes of Express Entry, some people are saying, well, how does that work? If you only need six months of experience in one of these category based draws, then, well, don't I need to work for a full year in order to be eligible. So maybe Igor, you can just touch on that just briefly. But if we take, you know, the healthcare occupations here, let's just, we'll use that as an example. But can you just touch on this and explain it to our viewers so that they understand how this works? Oh, once again, I've got Igor muted. Here. There we go. Now he's on mute. All
Igor Kyryliuk 34:45
right, all right. So when you create an expert century profile, it asks for your primary occupation. And so if you don't qualify for a Canadian Experience Class, where you can have a combination of different work experiences to at least. One year. Then for Federal Skilled Worker Program, you have to have at least one year of continuous work experience in one occupation and one NOC code. Now, if you have one year of and we're talking about federal skilled worker at this moment, if you have one year of continuous work experience, and on top of that, you have either six months of work experience in one of the knock codes from the category within that one year, or an additional six months somewhere else, then you can qualify, so essentially, for Federal Skilled Worker Program. Yes, one year of continuous work experience is is mandatory. It can be one year of work experience in one of the, not one of the knocks in eligible categories, but can be one year in non eligible Knock Code for the category. But then on top of that, one year, you should have six months in knock eligible category for federal for Canadian Experience Class. This can be a combination. So you can have a six months of work experience in an in and out code that fits within one of the categories, and then you can have six months of work experience in another skilled occupation that doesn't fit the category. Combined, if you hit one year, then you are eligible for Canadian Experience
Mark Holthe 36:22
Class. And just to kind of summarize things too, the main point that I want to highlight for you guys is that when you are applying, you do not have to have your six months of welding experience as your primary knock when you're completing your profile, it can be any work history that you've listed that is eligible, right? So if we go back here again and we look at this like Igor indicated, so you just have to have accumulated within the last three years, at least six months, a full time continuous work experience, or an equal amount of part time experience in a single occupation listed in the below table, in Canada or abroad. So one thing I will give the category based draws, there's, we've got a lot of clients that are outside of Canada now, that are French speakers that are now getting drawn, whereas before, it was exclusively in Canada. And so what I'm saying here is, if you are in Canada and like you are identified, if you're in Canada and you're going through CEC, you're going to have multiple occupations at times to accumulate that one year of a full time work experience for the purposes of qualifying for the CEC. But you could be a, you could you could be a, you could be a software engineer, which is your primary knock but have six months of welding experience that's continuous full time paid within the last three years and and still be eligible. So you don't have to list this as your primary knock for it to be captured, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And yes, Mark, if you're outside of Canada and you have the one year of continuous full time, then that six months, once again, can be as long as it's within the previous three years and it meets its requirements, it will work. Yeah. Igor,
Igor Kyryliuk 38:06
yeah. And then one other thing that is kind of like this, this tip that people don't usually think about is, let's assume you need to obtain six months of work experience in a NOC eligible category, and in Canada, this profession is regulated. We'll take, for example, I don't know, I don't know what knock to pick, but regardless if that's an occupation that is regulated in Canada, but you work remotely for an employer who's outside Canada, not a Canadian employer. You can technically remain in Canada, physically and continue working for a Canadian employer, and at the same time work full time for your Canadian employer and for an employer remotely, you can accumulate Canadian and foreign work experience at the same time. Remember, it's not like in Europe, where you have 40 hours, which is a typical full time work load. In Canada, it's 30 hours. So as long as you hit 30 in Canada working for Canadian employer and 30 for a foreign employer, you meet both. You can, you can claim points for both work experience at the same time. Yeah. So there are many, many strategies like this, and they're not overly discussed over over the internet. It's just what you learn in practice, right? And so if you are finding yourself in a situation like, what do I do? How do I scramble around? How do I fit in? The best way is to reach out to us and speak directly to us to determine your specific solution. Yeah,
Mark Holthe 39:45
and part of the reason that we bring that up is you have to prove it. So you know, if I put my older immigration officer hat on and I've got someone who's in Canada who is working full time for I don't know, whatever. Ey. As a, as a, as an accountant, for example, and then they've got this side job as something else that they're working outside of Canada, also, 30 hours a week. I'm going to want to know how you can do both now I can tell you during my articles, when I was completing them, when I was working for one of the national firms, they're now International. Gallings. When I was working with them, there were days, you know, where I worked all day and did not go home and I didn't sleep at night and I worked all the way through the next day. There were very many weeks where I worked 80 hours a week during that period of time. So it is doable, it is possible. It's to just, you know, justifiable, 60 hours if you've got three, you know, two positions. So it is. But remember, it may be possible, but you have to prove it. You have to be able to justify it. And Igor was saying, well, which Knock Code should we choose? Well, I think the only place we can go realistically is probably the stem and say, well, maybe there's someone who can still work as an architectural manager, virtually, right, or someone who is a civil engineering technology or technician, I don't know, or an engineer, maybe you can, you can do your work virtually. You know, cyber security specialist, if it is going to work, it's likely going to be on the stem side, versus some of the other the other positions, because it's going to be pretty hard to be a trade and work virtually or or even agriculture, agri foods, education occupations. Can you be an online teacher? Online instructor? Probably, you know, I just, I'm so shocked, secondary school teachers, yeah, that's like high school. It's like elementary that are on the list. Luckily, there's
Igor Kyryliuk 41:37
a, there's a new occupation for insurance brokers.
Mark Holthe 41:42
Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I was so, yeah, yeah,
Igor Kyryliuk 41:45
you can be a remote insurance broker, and
Mark Holthe 41:50
there are someone's kicking a whole bunch of money into the political coffers of some parties to try to get I don't know. Okay, I better be kidding. And
Igor Kyryliuk 42:00
I wonder, Mark like, how education fits in, given the fact that now many international students will leave Canada and lots of colleges who were open just to get students in and get them the post grad work permits, when those colleges close and people run out of jobs, and they lose their jobs, they will become high school teachers.
Mark Holthe 42:25
Yeah, maybe that's exactly right. Because even though understand you guys, even though these this list, secondary, elementary, you know, Ece, the even though these ones here are and even teacher assistants is on the job that's on the list. Man, that's surprising. Anyways, maybe things in Alberta are just different than in Ontario. Maybe they are with there's a whole bunch of families and kids, and they're clamoring for teachers, and maybe my daughter should move to Ontario. Or maybe if her her husband gets into dental school in, you know, in Toronto, or somewhere, which he's got another year and a half of school before he applies, maybe there's going to be lots of jobs for her so, but yeah, when I look at this, and Igor is right, sure, maybe post secondary institution, instructors, colleges and universities, profs are might be losing their jobs. They could theoretically, you know, drop down and fill in some of these positions, although they're pretty expensive, and when you've got these unionized environments within teaching and you're paid by your education, definitely it's once you get more educated or too educated. It would be pretty hard for me to go back to teaching with my law degree, because theoretically they'd have to pay me based on my education levels. Maybe I would be more profitable. Maybe I'd make more money doing that. Igor, I should probably try and see. Oh, boy, that would be so fun going back to teaching. But hey, I get to do all the teaching all the time right here, with all of you amazing people. Okay, let's get back to some comments here, and then we'll and then we're going to talk a little bit about some of the strategies that Igor and I were hinting at and what this means for all of you in the future. We've We've danced around it, but we haven't really drilled right down. Okay, I want to just post some of these comments that just, yeah, it just breaks my heart. So yeah, solar says I'm in category 33109, hoping for the next health care draw in the coming weeks, only to find out they remove my category today. I know it's, it's just really, really tough man. Preet confirms, once again, the transport sector has been removed. He says, has it been removed? And yes, it has. Moy, thanks for responding to that. And, yeah, River. And then this is another comment I can see here. We'll pull it up here from River. He says, temporary people will leave without any force or choice. Well, like, that's, I don't know if that's a question. Like, I don't know. As far as I can tell, the the number of HNC applications is skyrocketing. The number of refugee applications is skyrocketing, and the number of people that have chosen to remain without status has never been as high as it has been right now. And. Igor this is another thing I'll just point out to minister Miller and his predecessors, Minister Fraser and minister Mendicino before him, made the decision to extend or create these 18 month post grad work permits that allowed people whose normally their post grad would expire and they would have to go home to obtain a new 18 month post grad work permit. And some of you may have very well benefited from that, which is great, but they did these crazy things that retroactively said, Okay, well, if you were out of status as of, I think, as far back as September of the previous year, and maybe it was like may now, you would still be eligible to apply for one of these and just magically fix your status. Like, I don't even know how it worked, Igor, but people who were out of status for 567, months, who had chosen to stay here illegally, essentially were given this amnesty. So there's a clear incentive on people to say, well, the other ministers did it, so why won't Minister Miller save us? And you've seen the post Igor online, where people are saying there's going to be some kind of amnesty, there's going to be something out there to help us. Well, guys don't believe that at all. The reality is they want people to leave, and that is why they've taken the stance that they have to this point. So so just please, please keep that in mind as we're trying to work our way through all of this, and
Igor Kyryliuk 46:21
I cannot help but mention the auto status construction workers in Toronto as another example of how, over time, there are some programs that provide amnesty to out of status individuals. And I, I would be actually surprised to see if, if, after the elections, a program like this would be, would be announced. I think there will be a lot more crackdown on out of status foreign nationals in Canada. Perhaps, if the Conservatives don't win the elections, maybe there will be some some programs. But yeah, it's hard to predict and Mark, there is a comment from Manasi. We'll come back to the honest comment in a second. But Manasi says there is a new construction industry announcement coming tomorrow, so I would not be surprised if that will be an announcement they have providing MST to someone.
Mark Holthe 47:16
Yeah. Minister Miller has repeatedly said this, that their focus is on building houses, right? And it's so amazing, like, there are so many different factors that play into why we do not have enough housing right now, it's not just people, it's materials, it's supplies, it's it's the permitting, like the process that's required to actually build and the you know, which are all it's important that when you're building a house, that the house is to code and that it's not going to fall down, right? Like those things are really important, but the building permits and the ability for developers to to build projects and houses, and whether they're multi family or single family or apartments or whatever they are, it is extremely difficult to do that, and that's one of the problems that exists all the levels of bureaucracy. But yeah, Manasseh, I have to assume that they're creating something that says, hey, if you guys that are here who are running out of work experience on your you know, your your software engineering, work permit, if you want to, you know, work construction, well, here's maybe a new path for you, maybe right, that could very well well be and minister Miller has hinted at that. So that's just one example of what's been happening at least more recently. Okay, Abby says I will need to apply to the French category, as in, Quebec is getting harder to get the PR, yeah. Understand, this is what some people are doing, too, that have originated and started all their work experience in Quebec. They're saying, Man, Quebec sucks like we do not have options for permanent resident. I don't mean it sucks from the standpoint of that. I mean that the immigration options suck. And so they are looking at leaving Quebec, going to another province, and then being able to go through Express Entry. And I got no issues with that at all. But one of the challenges is when people have LMIA based work permits, and they're based in Montreal, they're employers in Montreal, and they're trying to say, Well, I'm just going to go to Ottawa and work remotely. Be very careful with that, because Express Entry, they're looking for every reason possible to refuse. And I have just like, I'm gonna have to work this weekend for a couple clients. Late tonight, 630 I'm reviewing one with a client, and then tomorrow morning, actually, it's all a blur Saturday morning, because my Friday is all full. Saturday I'm gonna get up early to help someone who received a request letter and they just filed their application, like last November, and now they've got a request for a background declaration and a travel history. I will warn you guys right now, I will warn you if you get any requests like that from immigration and you're wondering, well, what's the big deal? Sure, I'll just resubmit it. If it's something that you've just submitted, it's because you're on a borderline situation of a miss. Rep finding either that or they found something that's an inconsistency, and they're just looking for you to say the same thing twice, so they can catch you in the lie twice, or your error twice, so they can then send you a letter that says, hey, we think you've misrepresented. And not only are you refused your application, but you're removed from Canada. So these are things you have to be super, super careful of super careful of Mark. And
Igor Kyryliuk 50:25
I also would probably propose that we return back to Diana Lopez, because I accidentally cut her comment out. She was saying that I think Canada needs way more healthcare personnel than insurance brokers or French speakers to improve the life of Canadians. And she says she speaks French, which I cannot agree more, we all found ourselves, on multiple occasions, trying to find a doctor, trying to come to an emergency care and just sit and wait in lines for hours and hours and hours, just because there is not enough personnel, and COVID was a good indicator of how bad the situation is. But if we look at the healthcare draws over the past year and a half, like just, I think in july 2024, they had a draw, and then two more draws since then, which is like, seriously, are we in such a desperate need for French francophones and not in such need for healthcare professionals? Like, I don't have an answer to that,
Mark Holthe 51:30
and I don't like in the same way, let's pull this up and let's just look at it, because this is something that really bothers me, because you can see here that just on the 19th so French language, 6500 Okay, and remember, Minister I've got you still here, remember that each of these individuals is already getting 50 points for their language, the French language, and because you need to qualify through the French language proficiency, like if we go To the rounds of invitations and we go back, oh, let's see here. Looks like they're messing with me here. I just want to how the rounds work. Maybe this is our link here. So if we go to new I'm going to pull up this one. So if we go to French here and we look at the requirements, it's an NCLC seven, right? You need to hit that seven in order to be eligible through this program. But here's the kicker, seven is also what you need. And if we go over here for the CRS criteria to get the extra 50 points for the purposes of the skill, basically the extra 50 points, the additional points here for French language, to get this extra 50, you also need a seven. So we break it down here. You can see an NC NCLC seven. And you if you speak no English, or even, you know, a four level, that's 25 and then if you have a CLB five with English plus the NCLC, you're getting 50 already. And that doesn't even include when we go to the point breakdown for the core human capital factors, there's additional points even here that some people just forget about first language, yes, but there's even additional points for second official language, up to 22 extra points. So you can see some people, if they if they have a or 24 points, if they don't have a spouse and they have perfect French, they could get an additional 74 points towards their their express entry. So I just don't understand, unless Minister Miller is truly just trying to, you know, he thinks, Well, if you're if you speak French, you're more likely to vote Liberal. I don't know. And I like maybe, is that the reality? Minister, is that, why? Because, why would you do a draw only to exclude? Because, even if you were to do the if you were to look at the previous rounds, how many of these people with the CEC were also French, to get up to 521, in the first place, and then on top of it, you drop it all the way down to 428, and if your overarching kind of purpose, let's see if we can find it here. Again, I've got so many things going on is to identify economic like economic goals and to meet these identified economic goals. Well, what is the economic goal for French so and when there's so many other people that are desperate, and a lot of these people, too, Igor, that are coming in here, through these this draw, there's a lot of them that are going to be outside of Canada, and so I don't see what the advantage is, other than the Liberals are just believed that if you speak French, you're more likely to vote Liberal in the future. Like, I don't know what other rationale, and that may sound, you know, very coming from Alberta, that I'm just some conservative and, you know, and I don't fully appreciate it, no, that is not the case. Like if you say that a program like express entry is to be based on economic factors, well, explain that to me. We have humanitarian, compassionate factors. We have a whole bunch of others you can create. And there's other Francophone programs, like the rural Francophone rural can. Unity program. So okay, well, I'll leave it at
Igor Kyryliuk 55:03
that, and Mark indeed, the priorities are questionable, especially given the fact that if you are a francophone and you're coming to an English speaking province, most likely you will use English language primarily at your work. So it's questionable how French language can help at work, and at the same time, like when, when you get 74 additional points for French, and the points clearly put you in a preferred position compared to other candidates. And that's that all happens at the time when, when there's talks about eliminating points for the lmias. So like, how does that align with removing points for lmias? And is French a new LMIA kind of thing, like a new skill set that you need to have, or a new kind of perk that you need to have to qualify. Like, remember how people were, like, trying to purchase lmas from, like, from, from bad actors, you know, and, and like they were, they would submit, like, I don't know, $50,000 $20,000 they would pay exorbitant amounts of money just to get an LMA. Unfortunately, that's practice. Still haven't gone anywhere, but now people would be spending money to buy fraudulent French language test certificates. And we've seen some some news articles when, people would fake their language test results, and sometimes that would work, and they would get to Canada, yeah, I wonder, like, how the black market where the French language test is doing right now? Yeah,
Mark Holthe 56:51
it's really frustrating. And I know Igor and I are just like, we're just talking right like the reality is we have no insight on what the government's doing. We have no insight on the priorities of Minister Miller, like we're speculating. I'm expressing my frustration and, you know, and sometimes I speak before I really think, and I have, I have some empathy for, you know, the department trying to figure out how to extricate themselves from the mess that they're in. But when I have consult after consult after consult with people whose lives are being just like they're being ruined, destroyed, when they were promised something, and I don't care what you say, like people that came there was a very clear message, whether it was minister medicinal, Minister Fraser, maybe Minister Miller, it hasn't come out of your mouth because you're in damage control, but both of your two previous ministers were highlighting the virtues of coming and studying in our glorious Canadian education system. And then we want those international students as our priority, as our priority, because they are the best and most likely to successfully settle in Canada, those are the words out of the your own liberal Minister's mouths. And so to now say, Oh, well, yeah. Well, we don't really mean that anymore. That completely 180 degree flip, not cool. And so it's hard to maintain respect for a party that does this, and I get the fact that they are concerned about getting reelected and being voted out, and having these crazy conservatives get elected, or whatever their feeling is, and so they're taking these drastic steps. But these are real people, real families. You guys deserve to be treated better, and I understand that not everybody can have a pathway to permanent residence. There just is not room. But the Liberal government did not have to open up the coffers, and you can't blame the provinces, like Minister Miller has tried to do, and you can't blame the schools for leveraging the programs that you have created. And whether it's schools that are like, I have no respect for any of these private schools that were created purely just as a as a scam to get people here and not even have them study like no, I have no respect for that at all, and that is on the provinces for accrediting them. But when it comes to the ultimate responsibility, it rests with you, Minister Miller. It rests with you and your and your party and and you can't shovel that off onto someone else. So
Igor Kyryliuk 59:18
mark a little disclaimer for those people watching us from outside Canada, views and opinions shared in those live Q A do not constitute the opinion of all Canada. It's the opinions of our ourselves only, and perhaps maybe some little part of Alberta.
Mark Holthe 59:33
Yeah, yeah, that like and these are my opinions only, okay, my frustration being released in a live stream on a Thursday, not a Friday, but, but this like how these decisions are made. I just wish there was more transparency. I wish there was more effort to think things through and not just take these drastic swings and you could see it coming. I was one of the vocal people. Saying you are letting too many international students in. It's not fair to them. It's not fair to Canadians. It's not fair to those who want to transition to permanent residence and the 1000s and 1000s of dollars that they've spent. But okay, we'll let that go. Now. Let's jump to a few more questions and a lot of good comments here. And I really want to I don't want any to us to miss out on any of these. So he says, Do you have any insights on the delays? And I'm just going to talk briefly about delays around so you're talking about the Atlantic immigration program. Well, it doesn't matter. Pick the PNPs pick in Canada spousal sponsorships, when the government is now realizing, oh my goodness, we've spent so much money, we now need to start making cuts, because that's what Canadians think we're supposed to do now, and we want to get reelected, so we're going to start doing wholesale cuts, because that's what the Conservatives said they were going to do. So we're going to beat them to the punch. They are literally reducing just 1000s of positions, not only within immigration, within Canada Revenue Agency, within all the government departments, they've been given instructions to reduce their employees. And when you have a bunch of, you know, term positions or contractors that are processing applications and they're gone, well, the only thing that can be impacted is the processing time, and that has to go up so they shift to where they feel the priorities are. And if you're already here, you're already working in Canada, they don't see the Atlantic immigration program as being an urgent need to process quickly, and when it comes to acknowledgements of receipt for that program and then potentially bridging open work permits or other work permits through the international mobility program that can allow you to stay here and keep working while they process the application. Well, they're like, well, that's fine. It's just going to take longer and and we're going to try to get the spousal sponsorships outside of Canada, so that those couples are reunited in Canada, we're going to make those 10 months. And you know, in Express Entry, we have a commitment to express entry that we have to continue doing those under six months. That's our mandate. And we don't have the luxury of letting those get to 27 months like they did during COVID. And so the officers, if there are shortage of officers, they're assigned to express entry. They're assigned to, you know, the outside of Canada, disposal sponsorships, those priorities. That's how it gets the way
Igor Kyryliuk 1:02:10
it is. And on top of that, there is a shortage of employees, and they will reduce the number of RCC officers by 3000 which will make things even worse.
Mark Holthe 1:02:22
And that's happening already. Chris says, Concerning the weather's experience, I guess he's young as the CRS, score can also be an issue, yeah, like when, anytime you go back and you you just take time to gain experience, or whatever, your age is still rolling. And everybody knows, once you hit 30 years of age, you're losing five points every you know, every birthday Rich says, Excuse me, I'm going to be, I am going to be eligible under two different categories, stem and health care. Do I have to choose one while, while filing my application? So we go, we kind of talked about this. So Rich is watching on x, so
Igor Kyryliuk 1:03:00
they will choose for you. Yeah, regardless of what you want, whatever draw happens first, you either have to accept an ita or deny an ITA and wait for another category.
Mark Holthe 1:03:11
Yeah, and you're just, all you're doing is entering in your work history, into your work history section, and then it's it's IRCC that makes all the other decisions. Melissa says, Oh, how do we reach out to you? Well, in the description of the video, there should be one for x, but if wherever you're watching it, you can easily find the link to connect with us. I'll just show you on our firm website here. This is where we have Igor s blog post here, but in in here, you can see, speak to a lawyer. Just go to Holthe law.com, H, O, L, T, H, E, L, A, w.com, and then just click to speak to a lawyer. And it's really easy. You can actually book a console right now. It's all automated. So Alicia, myself, Igor, we're all here to assist and help in any way. Okay, Steph says you can, okay, he says you can be the next prime minister. Mark, no. Thank you, my friend. No. Thank you. And then Debbie says, is the not code 20012, part of STEM category. Okay? Anyone who's wondering, and there's a bunch of questions, I brought this up just so that we could show you guys, anyone who's wondering if their if their occupation is on the list, all you do is you just go to the Express Entry category based selection, and you choose the the section that you want. So who's eligible for each category. So if we go to stem then you simply can go here, and you can see the not codes. You can punch in your code. And I can't remember what was this code. It was 20012, so if we just punch in here, 20012, and nope, not on the list. Simple as that sad, sad, but a reality. All right, let's keep diving through here. I know there's a ton of questions and comments that have come through. Okay? Let's get to Amy's question. She says, Does this mean someone with six months of foreign work experience as a cook without Red Seal certification be drawn for the trade category? So if you're talking about category based, yes, because the employment requirements are not a requirement for this. If you're claiming experience from outside of Canada, it's the duties and responsibilities that were performed that are listed in the NOC that are what is assessed, and the regulations specifically exclude the employment requirements. So if someone is outside of Canada and has gained the experience and they can show that they performed a substantial number of those main duties, then you're you're good to go. So yeah, all right, let's see what else we have here.
Hacksaros says, I think insurance brokers Knock Code is a straight up typo. It would be if it wasn't for the fact that they actually listed the name too. So John David, he says the country is going down the drain by permanently killing the immigration. Well, here's the thing, like, let's go back here and let's just look at let me see if I can find this one. I've got so many pages. So this is the reality. Okay, guys, they're not killing immigration. So yes, the numbers are lower. But in the Liberals tenure, they have increased the numbers substantially. So when I started my practice, oh boy, early 2000s the annual levels plans were around, I don't know, 250 260,000 total. And what the Liberals have done for 2025 is they've taken their ramped up projections of 500,000 and they've reduced them down by 105,000 down to 395,000 then those 395,000 they've pegged for this year, they have obviously, you can see this used to be four 4.4% only a few years ago. Now it's ratcheted up to 8.5% and you can see here they have this 29,325 target that they're trying to hit for this year. So if you go into the rounds of invitations and you're trying to figure out, okay, well how many have actually been issued so far, you can see that it's easy for them to say, well, look for Gen for 2025 we've only issued 6500 but the reality is, because so many points are attributed to French, a large portion of these PNPs could be French speakers. A large portion of these CECs could be French speakers at 521, because, like I said, if you're a fluent, completely fluent, French speaker, you can get up to, what was it? 74 extra points, 50 plus, 24 for the second language, and, and so, yeah. So, yeah, keep that. Keep that in mind when we're doing the calculations. So how many of these? So have they already hit their their threshold, I don't know. Like, this is, this is early, so they're and who knows, maybe they're concerned, if the Conservatives get elected, I'll bring Mr. Miller on. I wish he could answer the question, are you concerned that if the Conservatives get elected, that they're going to stop doing French language, and therefore you won't have as many new votes for your party? I don't know. Boy, I'm glad Lisa's not on this call. She'd be like, she'd be like, losing her mind, because I'm speaking so freely here. I'm gonna get my channel canceled by YouTube. Is what's gonna happen, because I'm so critical. I don't mean to be so critical, but it's hard not to look at these situations and and just this is, this is my baby, like, immigration is, is the thing that I have spent the last 20 odd years or more of my life, and I'm just so sad to see what's happening to it. When the Liberals got elected in 2015 I don't think there was, there was very, very few, like, maybe, like, there's maybe one party that was kind of anti immigration, everybody. It was a no brainer. Canada needed immigrants to continue. We're a socialist country. We need that. We need the workers to then, you know, pay into our social systems to then help with the retirement of the baby boomers. I think everybody felt that way. But, you know, the liberals just went a little crazy. Cray. Cray, okay, all right, and I apologize to anyone that I'm offending in the process of giving this diatribe here, whatever you want to call it. Well, apparently John David says Francophone is politically motivated, but everybody has their own, their own views. Okay, to says, Can you work for an employer outside Canada, even if you're on a closed work permit in Canada while in Canada? Of course, yeah. Can do whatever the heck you want. You can be a digital nomad to you can be here as a visitor and continue working for your employer abroad. Right? Jeff says housing crisis is caused from NIMBY liberals not wanting to lose money on their Airbnbs. Permitting is not hard when things aren't corrupt. There's an opinion I once. Again, these, all the comments that we pull on are in no way a reflection of the opinions of Holthe immigration law or the Canadian immigration Institute or the Government of Canada or the Minister of Immigration or anyone else related. These are all everyone's individual opinions, and that's all they are. All right. Okay, so Evie says hi. Is all of these new categories will come from 4100, slots. Does it mean lower draw sizes, we, we, you know, I don't know exactly. I think he means within, like tier, the 40, the 444, 1000, whatever, four level tier. We'll just have to see Evie. We'll just have to see, okay, all right, let's see here. All right. Spidey says, I said this long time ago, they should have some data showing francophones would vote Liberal more mark I'm sure there is something. Anyways, let's see here. We've got a lot of people asking, Is this, you know, is my occupation still on the list? And you guys, we've showed you, you can just go there and type it in, and you can see if it's there.
Igor Kyryliuk 1:11:04
And you can also go to our website and check out the latest blog post. I have to I have to admit, the whole blog post was written very fast without as much analysis as I could put in there, but I will be working on fine tuning the article and making sure that it is as accurate as possible.
Mark Holthe 1:11:25
We wanted to get it out as quickly as possible so that people kind of have a breakdown of what's changed. So you can see here we have the occupations. We've got each, each of the individual categories we've tried to identify what's changed. We probably missed some occations or, you know, but in our haste to get this one out for you, like Igor said he's going to be going through revamping it and just making sure that there's that everything is 100% in line with what's happened here. Okay, all right, okay, let's go to a few more questions here. Igor, I don't know if you have any other comments, as I've been rambling on here like a crazy person, but I feel like it. I feel like I'm a crazy person right now.
Igor Kyryliuk 1:12:07
No, I think our sentiments align with people. We are frustrated. People are frustrated. It's hard to predict what's going to happen next. It's hard to digest how whatever is happening aligns with whatever people were promised before they came to Canada, and how the economic needs are met by the decisions that they make. So lots of questions and not so many answers.
Mark Holthe 1:12:36
Yeah, Gagan says Now there will be only category draws, no regular draws. Well, no. Remember, if we go back to the annual levels plans here, you'll see that they expect to have federal economic priorities, which are these targeted draws, and then in Canada focus, which is theoretically CEC. And they also still do have provincial nominee program draws. So if we go back to I've got so many pages open here. Let's see. Okay, if we go back here, you'll see that there has not been a true general draw, which means Federal Skilled Worker Program, the PNPs can include federal skilled workers, but the CECs and the cat and technically, the category based draws can also be considered for Federal Skilled Worker consideration if you're eligible under the FSW. But if we look back for a true general draw, and you know what, maybe it's better to just go here and just type in the filter. I remember when I did a session with IRCC just testing this system out. So April the 23rd was the last time we had a true general draw. And then that was also the so weird federal this was the weirdest one ever, though February 2, 2023 when they did a Federal Skilled Worker, one that was just so strange. So strange because even then, the number of people in Canada was skyrocketing, right? People were just, you know, there were so many people, then, why are you bringing more in when you have all these people here that have already, you know, become settled in Canada. So, all right, Mark,
Igor Kyryliuk 1:14:12
maybe while we answering this question, you could pull up, pull up the web page. I sent you the link in teams. It's the actual news release from today.
Mark Holthe 1:14:23
Oh yeah, that was actually, I pulled that one up here. I already had that tab on open here. So
Igor Kyryliuk 1:14:27
if you go to the third paragraph, there's the answer. So
Mark Holthe 1:14:34
focus, yeah.
Igor Kyryliuk 1:14:38
I don't think there will be many general draws, if any at all, it's going to be all CEC, in my opinion,
Mark Holthe 1:14:46
yeah. And so remember, when we talk about this, the focus will be to invite candidates with experience working in Canada to apply for permanent residence. It doesn't mean it will be exclusive, but what it does mean is that. If there are individual draws like we were identifying here, oh, I got so many these round types, it's unlikely that we're going to see Federal Skilled Worker. It's unlikely that we're going to see a general draw like this that is open to anyone from inside or outside Canada. More likely than not, it's going to be exactly as we're seeing here, a lot more French PNPs, and then if we go back to the last healthcare it'll be these category based draws. That's what we can expect. You guys. Okay, Spider Man says, don't market fake tests. Igor, so cut it out. None of that you're bringing attention to them. Okay, all right, let's see what else we have here. Abby says, I love the way you guys speak, where you speak guys, I can see that comes from the bottom of your hearts. Well, we try to be genuine, right? The whole practice we've built around us working directly with people and not taking more clients than we have capacity to take and and just caring. That's what the whole basis of our firm is. That's why we do these live streams. That's why we go on late at night. And yeah, it is what it is. And at 630 in about 40 minutes, I have a Express Entry review for someone who unfortunately had a challenge with their existing consultant, and they're switching over. Harbinger is forever hopeful. I am too my friend, I'm hopeful as well. Anket says, Is there, is there still any chance for agricultural? Jaw, yeah, but let that's not one that we have. The culture is crazy. It's agriculture has been decimated. So once again, here you can see, if you look at the occupations, we have a grand total of one. So we used to have the farm workers on here. And so once again, Canadians, you better get ready, because I think PV marked. And actually I think PV Mark shutting down all of you Canadians out there who are looking for jobs, there's going to be jobs on the on the farms. There's going to be jobs at the feed lot. So get your gum boots out, because you're going to be sloshing around and cow manure up to your knees. So get the high ones, because according to our government, yes, agriculture and the specialized livestock workers and not kind of occupations farm managers are just not a priority. Igor, I can tell you that here in Lethbridge, if I was to look north of Lethbridge, where we have all of our feed lots, there are 1000s of Mexican workers who are working on these feed lots, who, fortunately, Alberta is Lethbridge is under 6% on unemployment, so they have the ability to continue getting lmias for them, because Canadians just don't want to do that. I grew up on a farm with the cattle and my gumboots and the manure and everything else, and my personal favorite was when it came time I don't want should I tell that story? Sure, I'll tell it. When we were on the farm, sometimes cattle would have problems with the birthing process, and you'd have to reach in and, you know, and help to arrange and get the calf pointed in the right direction. If you watch, well, if you watch some of the vet shows on Netflix or whatever, you'll see, well, the worst is when the cow also simultaneously decides they need to kind of relieve themselves in multiple forms. So the soft kind of form, the watery form. It just Yeah. So you can imagine, like it's kind of spraying in your face and little bit getting in your mouth, yeah. So some people may not, may not necessarily want to do that as an occupation for a long time, and but there are some wonderful people that are willing to step up and do that right, if it means an opportunity to come to Canada, and I have the utmost respect for them. And some days I feel like I'm back on the farm, but that's a separate discussion. So yes, if we look at the if we look at agriculture, it's decimated. So unless you're a butcher, retail and wholesale, there's no longer, no longer on the list. Like, I don't even know why they have the list, other than maybe Minister Miller really likes the butcher down the street and has decided, Oh, I'll keep it open for you and then I'll shut it down after you're done. Okay, I'm this could just to qualify here, like I'm just talking kind of goofy right now, and I don't mean 90% of the things. I don't mean 65% of the things that I'm saying, but when the situation is created, I think we're all in a position where we're just frustrated and anyways, okay, oh, I've got myself into so much trouble. Okay, let's continue down the path here.
Igor Kyryliuk 1:19:36
Okay, let's see here. I
Mark Holthe 1:19:43
um, we've got so many comments. I'm trying to pull some out here that work. Uh, Emmanuel says, Can nurses claim points for certification of qualifications and express entry? That's a perfect question. Emmanuel, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you to go to our website. Uh, not that one. This one go to our blogs. And I think did we? Maybe we didn't actually, you need to go to the podcast. That's where it is. The last the very first one in our new series, our new podcast series, we'll just go right here to the one on Apple here. So the very first one in our new Express Entry, getting it right is certificates of qualification points. So this is determines and in short, no, you can't. Okay, that's the short answer there. But this certificates of qualification points, we talk about this at length. And if you go to our YouTube channel where some, many of you are watching this live, Alicia and I just did one on this exact topic, so that you would so, because there's so much confusion. So, in short, no, nurses are not considered to be trades. Cooks are like we indicated. And actually, I think I still have that window open. Oh, I've got so many things open here. So this one, this one, this one, if you want to know whether or not, in short, you go to the Federal Skilled Trade Program and then go to the the not codes, because your work experience, if you want to classify it as a tray, to be eligible, you have to be in one of these. So group 72 major. Group 7273 8283 blah, blah, blah. But there are exclusions in here, and then this is like your chef, cook kind of combo there. But these are okay, all right, so that's what you need. Watch if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, subscribe to it. If you haven't subscribed to the YouTube channel, do that, and you can get notified. And you can listen to an awesome, little, entertaining podcast while you're commuting to work, while you can commute to work. Okay, okay. And you can see here, harbinder says User Support text eligible for any of these draws. I don't see it, but help No. Okay, we just talked about this. It has been gutted, decimated. If we flip back to our list here, and we go to we go to stem, which is where it used to be housed, you will see here that there are no, we'll drop that one out there are no it left standing. I don't think there is Igor. I look at the limited list here, mechanical engineers. Seems like the list even shrunk further since we opened this up. Wow. Yeah, it's very, very you can see agric architectural managers, civil engineering, techs, engineers, civil engineers, cyber security, electrical technicians, electrical engineers, geological industrial insurance agents and brokers. Man, this is so goofy, Minister, Miller Sam,
Igor Kyryliuk 1:22:31
but not stem
Mark Holthe 1:22:35
and then mechanical engineering, technology technicians. So you can see that that's it, you guys, that's it. It has been gutted. I would love Minister Miller, like, explain, like, how in the world did insurance agents and brokers get on that list? I just don't know. All right, guys, well, there's an occupation for you. But once, one of the things that I want to point out, most insurance agents and brokers work on commission, and when you're working on commission, that usually means you're an independent contractor. Well, I shouldn't say that you have to be an employee to claim Canadian work experience, if that brokerage just treats you as an independent contractor and pays you as such. That is not employment. There was another person who asked, How does this affect self employment? Well, you can't claim self employed work experience, Canadian work experience. All right, let's see here. Oh, this is funny. Bill Nye says liberals are tied in the polls. Now we'll see. Come vote day, we'll see. All right, let's see. I
Oh, this is a, okay, this is John's got an interesting question here. He says, Mark, I'm a New rcic and regularly attend your CPDs at L pen. Yes, that's awesome. I'm in a disguise here. What do you suggest me? I left a high paying job to be an rcic. I don't know, like, like, obviously, Igor and I and Alicia have worked really hard over the last five years to build this new little firm up to where it is to have the presence we have to to, you know, to be where we're on. I where we're at. I can't, like, I can't really speak to, you know, your decisions and whether you stay in our CIC or whether you go back to your other high paying job, but you know, ultimately, that's a decision you're gonna have to make. That's a tough one. That's a really tough one. I feel for you. Okay, okay, here we go. Evie said I meant there are only 41,000 numbers for all categories. Now we have new categories, and does it mean lower draw sizes? Possibly, yes, possibly, all right, let's see people asking about a bunch of different programs. They're asking specific stuff. Let's see Bill okay, I'm glad to see what side you're on Bill. Yeah, I get it. You're right. And it's really strange to insinuate all French immigrants vote Liberal, you're right, and that that's just, it just goes to show my my lack of 100% careful consideration when I'm speaking. I'm just kind of venting. I'm just trying to make sense out of why this minister here is doing so many French language draws, okay, but fair point. Bill, fair point. And as you can see, I don't screen out the comments that I want to see and and only the ones that I think are favorable, like everybody gets a shot here. This is Open Season. Okay, this is a good question. Deepak Igor, you answer this one. Just a minute. I have something to help you. There it is. There it is okay. You want to rub it? What? Sorry. I know you got to figure out which way it is. Stick your hand there. There it is when 50 points of LMA will get removed so that crest score can come down.
Igor Kyryliuk 1:25:56
Yeah, it's impossible. To say it's impossible. I have to be honest, I was quite surprised to see that they decided to change the categories. They decided to extend the COVID work permit extension deadline. But we've been talking about the LMI Floyd elimination for some months now, and nothing has been done on this front. And I will tell you this. I think when l may points will get eliminated. This will be unexpected without any prior announcements, and you will know about it by us doing an emergency live, live video, yeah, because it will not be publicly announced in any way. That's, that's what I what I The bigger the change, the less fuss
Mark Holthe 1:26:44
about it. Yeah, there's guaranteed for sure. Minister Miller is not going to go do a press release. That's for sure. He's already done that four months ago or whenever it was. Faith, I'll give you one of these applauses here, faith, and we'll get rid of our little crystal ball there. This live stream just came up on my YouTube main page. After many months, I am now a proud Canadian. Thank you so much for all your help throughout the process. Congratulations. And I thought maybe it's fatty, fatty, but yeah, that like this is why we do what we do. Okay, Annie says, I jumped your question. I jumped a lot of questions. Annie, let's see what you got for us here. I'm trying to okay, just meeting for the first time. Just following you now, are long term care workers eligible to apply for home care workers dreams starting on March 31 Igor, do we know anything for sure about the program?
Igor Kyryliuk 1:27:39
Well, actually, Mark, they've released some, some requirements about the home care pilot, but our day has been so busy and we're having
Mark Holthe 1:27:49
that's that has not been on our radar. Yeah, yeah.
Igor Kyryliuk 1:27:53
But I know that, yes, we know some details now we can actually try to search for those
Mark Holthe 1:27:59
Sure. I'll let you work on that. I'm gonna have to. We will. We're like, just about hour and a half here. I think we might have to shut this down. Any last questions. Throw them in there. Harbinder says, I agree. They should call it sem T knock. Missing is true. They should just call it Sam. That is so true. Okay, I sent you the link, okay? And yes, Ghost Dog. IRCC wants FSW to leave. You know what? Igor maybe for that question, we'll hold off. This one really is about category based draws and so every just for those of you who are on the YouTube channel and follow us, remember every Wednesday morning at 10am we do our live Q and A where we answer anything this one, we're going to try to limit it, at least to the craziness that's going on. But it looks like we've kind of whipped through a lot of the questions. And you know, if you're asking about, can I do something? That's something Shane here, and then I encourage you to ring the bell. I ring the bell. And that means you need to slide over here to our firm website and just click on, speak to a lawyer and and you can book a consult. And if you're wondering what's going on with us, you can check out our Google reviews at the end of the day. We do our very, very best to try to provide the best service that we can for our clients, to give you practical advice. And I'll be honest sometimes, yes, I skipped your question, Praveen, I skipped a lot. The reality is, there's a lot of a lot of times where the advice that we have to give people is, look, you have this option and this option, but you need to consider that going home may be the best option for you. That leaves the opportunity to come back in the future. And we have, in our podcast, a series, if you are first new to the channel, called our time's up series. And it goes back. It starts on episode, I think it was 149 and it is all directed to all aspects of the difficult decisions that you guys have to make. Canal. So let's see if I can just increase this just a little bit so people can see a little bit more clear. But episode 149 what to do when your work permit is expiring. This is the kind of the initial kickoff of our time's up series. Then the high cost of staying in Canada illegally. My work permit expires soon. Can I change to a visitor status? We had a little jump in here of a different one. 152 was about the US election and moving to Canada. Then no extensions for post grad, work permits, agencies. What you need to know when not to claim refugee status in Canada, which is for the vast majority of you, that is your situation. And then no points for LMIA. So that was January 11. But the reality is, like we've heard nothing any further on that topic applying for a bridging open work permit, there are tons of times people make mistakes because they're not doing it properly. And then now we've transitioned now to our Express Entry, getting it right. So I want to finish off with just a couple things, but one is the fact that express entry of all the programs actually increased. So if we compare the number of of allocations that are being given to express entry candidates, it's actually more in 2025 than it was in 2024 and the reason is because Minister Miller, bring him on board, the man of the hour, chose to reduce the Provincial Nominee allocations from 110,000 to 55,000 and it was deliberate. It was on purpose. He's expressed why he did that. Largely, it was to punish the provinces for not taking more refugees, but also they have this big mandate to reduce the number of people in Canada, the number of foreign works to get it down to 5% of the population, which means, what is it like, 2 million or something by 2027 or something like that, they're expecting maybe up to a million will leave this year. So, but you can see here, this used to be about 100 and I don't know, was a little over 100 It was similar. It's like 110 115 last year, and now it's, it's increased. So some of these have actually come back. So there's more that they've pulled back into these categories. So because of that, we know that a lot of people are going to be if the future immigrants are going to be coming through Express Entry, even more so than before. So absolutely, you guys, you know, go and subscribe to our podcast. You can access the podcast on right from our channel, if you go to blog and it's in the link below, but you can, you can what listen to it on Spotify or Apple podcast. I think there's another one we're gonna we're gonna connect it into that we were contacted by to ask. They asked us to put it on theirs as well, so we might slide it over there. But this is a great thing that you can listen to when you're when you're commuting to work, and it hopefully won't be quite as opinionated as it was today. So my apologies if I fan anyone. I was a little bit passionate today, and I recognize that, yeah, this is, this is dark times for not just potato head here. I don't know if I've been much of a ray of hope for for many of you, but we appreciate your love. There lots of love to Alicia, Mark and Igor. So we appreciate that potato head. That's a great little handle there That's hilarious. So go to our YouTube channel, subscribe, subscribe to the podcast, go to our firm website, Holthe law.com, H O, L, T, H, E, L, A, w.com, and go to our blogs. And definitely slide over and read Igor s blog that he just put together that breaks down all of these things, what you need to know, and the category based draws. So go check that out, and it will constantly. We'll be updating you as we go. I also want to point out, as you've seen right from the beginning, that this video and all of them is sponsored by the Express Entry accelerator DIY course, and for those of you who are new to everything that we do, we offer courses, and right now, we've had a lot that have come through, some have come, some have gone. But the courses that we have right now, we have our citizenship one that's coming soon, but we have our temporary resident visa course and my Express Entry accelerator and master class. So just yesterday, I had a phenomenal group of people that were in the master class. And essentially how it works is I have over 10 hours of on demand content. You can choose the videos that you need, choose the ones that you want that are available. And if you go to the link in the description below, you can subscribe to it. When you subscribe to my accelerator, it gives you basically every piece of information that you need to manage your way through the whole express entry process, and not just that. It is chock full and module six of sample documents like the police clearance video that we just did the and the podcast that we just done on police certificates and. I highlighted in there that we have a ton of sample PCCs in here, if you're wondering if you've got the right one or not. But each of these, including our records of employment, lesson, is all designed and how to draft your reference letter, everything for express entry. And we've customized a little custom GPT to help build, not only build your reference letter, but to help you choose the correct Knock, and there's just tons of sample documents and checklists and templates and everything that you could ever need. And on top of all of this, all of these, over 70 lessons. On top of all of these, it's the master class. So every two weeks, and you can come as many times as you want, because we know people are coming in and then they're popping out. They're coming in, and then they're popping out because they're getting their permanent residence. But sometimes people may subscribe now so that they understand what Express Entry is, and then after that, they will be able to get the benefit. Because I have to now update this because the lessons that I did on the category base, I now have to recreate them. And this accelerator right here is it's, it's your access for life. So if you purchase it once, and there's an upgrade that I do here in a couple months, or, you know, a couple weeks, then you get benefit from that, and you can come back and attend the master class with me every two weeks from essentially four to 6pm Mountain Time on Wednesdays. And so it'll be two weeks from less this past Wednesday, we'll do another master class. And that alone, it's me, and you you know, we had, I think, 20 or 25 people that were in and, you know, people, when they asked their question, I pulled them on to the screen. It's not like this. So it's more like a webinar environment in our in our Kajabi community, which is where I host the courses. So the links in the blog and yeah, Evie says the blog post is great. Thank you so much. That's awesome. So there you go. Yeah. And like I said, hope I didn't I didn't offend too many people about my French comments. It's more just trying to make sense of what Minister Miller was doing with all of them. So yep. So peace and love to you as well. Bill Nye here, who's will pull you up here? I love that. Are you a science guy? Bill, are you all right? Signing off, everybody. Thanks, Igor, thanks for being here.
Sponsor 1:37:12
Thank you for listening to the Canadian immigration podcast, your trusted source for information on Canadian immigration law, policy and practice. If you would like to book a legal consultation, please visit www dot Holthe law.com, you can also find lots more helpful information on our Canadian immigration Institute YouTube channel, where you can join mark on one of his many Canadian immigration live Q and A's See you soon, and all the best as you navigate this crazy world we call Canadian immigration. You.
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