Ontario Workforce Priority Stream (OWPS): employer requirements and job offer conditions

What requirements must an employer meet to give me a job offer

The following is taken from Ontario.ca, the OINP employer guide. This section does not apply to self-employed physicians.

General business requirements: the business must have been in active operation for at least 3 years before the application; it must have a place of business in Ontario where the employee will work; it must have no outstanding orders made under Ontario's Employment Standards Act, 2000 or Occupational Health and Safety Act; and it must meet the revenue and full-time employee requirements based on where the employee works. If the position is NOC 73300 or NOC 73301, the business must also hold a valid CVOR certificate with a safety rating of Excellent or Satisfactory, and submit a CVOR Abstract (Level 1).

The revenue threshold has three tiers, determined by where the employee works or reports:

Two points are easy to misread. First, this geographic breakdown is not the same as the regional split used in scoring factor 11. Windsor is in Essex, which scores 10 points as Southwestern Ontario, yet its revenue threshold falls in the $500,000 tier, not the lowest $250,000 tier. Second, only the $250,000 tier looks at the two most recent completed fiscal years; the other two look only at the most recent one.

If the employee works at more than one location, the reporting location is where the employee's direct supervisor or manager is based, or the administrative office where the employee receives their work assignments.

Number of full-time employees: if the work location is in the Greater Toronto Area, that location must have at least 5 full-time employees who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents; outside the Greater Toronto Area, at least 3. Full-time means at least 30 hours of work per week. This requirement must be met at the time the application is submitted.

Domestic recruitment: unless the employee is already authorized to work in Ontario, or the employer holds a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) for the same NOC and position, the employer must show that reasonable domestic recruitment was carried out before the position was offered to this employee. The official requirement is at least two recruitment or advertising methods, with the advertisement posted publicly and visible for at least 4 weeks before the offer is made, stating the company's operating name, address, position and duties, skill requirements, wage (if a wage is posted, it must meet the required wage level), town or city of work, contact information, and start and end dates.

The official guide also sets out the following on immigration representatives:

Requirements for the job offer itself: full-time means at least 1,560 hours of paid work per year and at least 30 hours per week; permanent means the position has no end date, and seasonal and contract positions do not qualify; the position must be urgently necessary to the business, meaning it is consistent with existing business activity and needs to be filled as a priority; the job offer must not affect the employment of anyone involved in a labour dispute. Under OWPS, the position may be anywhere in Ontario and in any NOC occupation.

Wage: the wage must meet or exceed the wage level for the occupation in the Ontario region where the employee works, and must be no lower than the median wage level; if the employee is a recent Ontario graduate and the position is TEER 0 to 3, the low wage level may be used. If there is no wage data for the employee's economic region, Ontario data is used; if there is none for Ontario either, Job Bank historical data or national data may be used. If the employee already works in the position, the offered wage must be no lower than the wage currently paid, and must also meet the required wage level. These wage levels do not apply to positions covered by a collective agreement. Piece rate, bonuses, commissions, vacation pay and non-cash compensation do not count toward the wage.

There is no single province-wide minimum hourly wage under OWPS. The official term "required wage level" links to the Government of Canada Job Bank occupation trend search, where the figure is looked up NOC by NOC and region by region. Any fixed dollar figure presented as "the OWPS minimum hourly wage" has no official basis.

Employer-side internal review: if an employer's position approval application is refused, the employer may request an internal review within 30 days of receiving the notice of refusal, using the Notice of Request for Internal Review form, submitted by email. The request must identify a specific error in the decision or order, that is, an error but for which the outcome would have been different, under section 10(1)(a) of Ontario Regulation 421/17. New information that was not in the original application may not be added, unless that information was objectively unavailable at the time of submission. Submissions are accepted by email only, not by mail, fax or in person.

Can a submitted job offer be changed?

No. Once the employer submits the job offer in the Employer Portal, every field is locked, the hourly wage included. The official wording is You cannot make changes to the job offer once you have submitted it, and the "Review submitted job offers and applications" section of the same page repeats it: a submitted job offer can only be reviewed by clicking Open, and no fields can be updated.

So there is no way to change the wage field alone and leave everything else in place. Any change means withdrawing the whole job offer and creating a new one, which carries three consequences:

1. The EOI the employee has already registered is withdrawn automatically, and the employee is notified by email
2. The employee must register a new EOI using the new Job Offer ID
3. It is a fresh entry into the pool, and the 30-day EOI registration window starts again

The official wording on withdrawal is For the employee to be placed in the EOI selection pool again, you will need to register a new job offer, and the employee will need to register a new expression of interest.

The one point at which the wage can be updated

After an invitation is issued, the employer has 14 calendar days to submit the application for approval of an employment position, and the wage field can be updated at that step. The official wording: The employee's NOC and hourly wage are prepopulated from the job offer. The NOC cannot be changed; however, the hourly wage may be updated to reflect the employee's current wage if they received a wage increase since the job offer was initially submitted.

The permitted reason is narrow: the employee received a wage increase after the job offer was submitted, and the figure is being brought up to the wage actually being paid. The NOC cannot be changed. Whether the position is full-time and permanent, the work location, and whether it is in the Greater Toronto Area are also carried over as read-only values at this step.

Once the position approval application is submitted, it cannot be updated in the Employer Portal either. Corrections go through the OINP webform.

Why it is locked

The hourly wage is itself an EOI scoring factor, and the official page notes This is prepopulated in the EOI if applying with a job offer, meaning it is carried into the EOI from the job offer and the employee cannot change it either. For the bands and points, see the OINP points calculator. Changing the wage after entering the pool would change the score and the ranking, so the route is closed by design.

Two deadlines also apply: after the job offer is submitted, the employee has 30 calendar days to register an EOI, or the Job Offer ID expires; an EOI is valid for up to 12 months, and if no invitation is issued by then, the EOI and the job offer are both withdrawn automatically and the process starts over.

Wage changes after nomination

Nomination does not end the obligation. The OWPS page states that the employer must comply with the terms of the job offer and pay the approved wage once the employee is nominated and starts work, and that Any change to the terms of employment, including job duties, wage, hours, or term, must be reported to the OINP immediately.

Common questions