BC PNP (British Columbia)

It starts with a registration. Yours goes into a pool along with everyone else's, and every so often the province runs a draw. It picks out the registrants who look like the best fit for what it needs, going by what they put in their registration, and sends them an invitation to apply. That invitation is what allows you to submit a complete application; you cannot apply without one. Both workers and entrepreneurs receive invitations, and only registrations that came in before the day of the draw get counted, as the invitations page notes.

Ottawa caps how many nominations each province can hand out in a year. B.C. always uses up its whole allocation, so every spot is genuinely contested.

This year the province has run draws about every one to three weeks, and each one aimed at a particular group instead of the whole pool. The cutoff score and the invitation count shift each time, so something that got you picked in July might fall short by October. The figures for each draw are taken from the province's official invitations record.

For the high economic impact draws, no score was involved. The province instead checked what you were paid and the TEER level of the job you were offered. TEER is the skill category Canada assigns to each occupation, and B.C. wanted level 0, 1, 2, or 3. The pay bar slid downward over the summer, starting at $62 hourly in June and landing at $52 by September, even as the invitation count climbed.

Two draws before those ran on a slightly different basis. On 22 April 2026 the province sent invitations to 484 people. Of those, 252 qualified by earning at least $62 hourly plus $125,000 a year, while the remaining 232 cleared a points bar of 138. On 11 February 2026, in that same category, it invited 460 people. The province warns that future high economic impact draws may weigh different factors, so judge each draw on its own terms.

The points B.C. uses are its own system, separate from the federal CRS score you might know from Express Entry. B.C. calculates them from what you enter in your registration, and the scoring rules appear in the Skills Immigration Program Guide, under rule 7.3(a). That guide has gone through plenty of changes lately, with new versions released in December 2025 and again in May and June of 2026, so a score estimate made under an old version might not line up with the rules today.

When you see a minimum score in the table, measure it against the points you would score under the current guide. Childcare workers have needed somewhere from 99 to 115 points this year, and rural health support roles from 50 to 60 points.

Your CRS score is still worth watching if you are in the federal Express Entry pool too. A provincial nomination adds a big pile of points there. That boost explains why 752 people received invitations in the federal PNP round of 13 October 2026, with the lowest invited score sitting at 772, per IRCC's round data.

After B.C. nominates you, the federal government takes over and rules on your permanent residence application, and that stage has its own timeline. Right now IRCC's processing times tool shows roughly seven months for provincial nominees going through Express Entry and roughly 13 months for nominees outside it. Both figures are estimates drawn from recent applications, so your wait could run shorter or longer.