The NWT Nominee Program, a key immigration stream, will reopen on February 27, 2025, the territorial government said on Friday.
Ninety applications will be accepted at random once the intake window closes.
The program has been closed to new applicants since last summer, when the territory hit its 300-person limit for 2024.
Ottawa has since dropped the NWT’s cap to 150 – despite calls to increase it to 500 – which led to the last-minute scrapping of an earlier attempt to reopen the nominee program in January.
Since then, business groups and people seeking permanent residency have each lobbied the GNWT for steps to make the process clear and fair, particularly for workers whose work permits might be expiring in the near future.
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In a Friday news release, the GNWT said the nominee program will begin accepting applications at 9am MT on February 27 and close at 5pm MT on March 6.
“When the application intake reopens on February 27, 2025, 90 new applications will be accepted. This is because 60 applications were received in 2024 beyond the GNWT’s allocation for that year. These applications are being processed under the 2025 allocation,” the territory stated.
Of the 90 applications, 70 will be under the employer-driven stream from Yellowknife employers, 10 will be under the same stream from employers in other communities, and 10 will be reserved for francophone applicants.
More details about the specifics of how applications will be handled are available on the Immigrate NWT website.
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After pre-screening, 90 applications will be selected at random and not on a first-come, first-served basis, the GNWT stated.
“Applicants will be notified by email if their applications have been selected for assessment or not. Selected applications will be assessed in the order of work permit expiry date,” Friday’s news release stated.
The territory has maintained for weeks that whichever approach it takes will not be able to satisfy the hundreds of people and dozens of employers who were hoping to rely on the program, given the halving of the NWT’s cap by Ottawa.
“The GNWT recognizes that not every interested or eligible applicant will be able to use the NTNP in 2025, an outcome that will be challenging and disappointing to some prospective applicants and businesses,” the territorial government stated.
“The GNWT encourages NWT employers to consider other, federally run immigration programs to address critical labour shortages. The GNWT will continue to advocate for a higher nominee allocation from the federal government.”
Applicants are told to review new program guidelines before applying.
