Canada’s Caregiver Pathway Frozen
Canada’s Home Care Immigration Pilots Won’t Reopen in 2026
If you’ve been eyeing Canada’s Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots as your ticket to permanent residency (PR) while working as a nanny or home support worker, brace yourself for some disappointing updates. These pilots – one for child care (NOC 44100) and one for home support (NOC 44101) – launched back on March 31, 2025, promising a straightforward path to PR right from the start, no LMIA drama for employers, and allowing spouses/partners and dependent children to join with open work/study permits.
The setup sounded perfect for addressing Canada’s growing need for in-home caregivers amid an aging population. Requirements were relatively straightforward: six months of relevant experience (or equivalent training), a Canadian high school equivalency, CLB 4 language proficiency, and a full-time job offer from a private household (outside Quebec).
When it comes to wages for home care workers in Canada’s pilot programs (like nannies under NOC 44100 or support workers for seniors/disabled under NOC 44101), pay has to meet or beat the prevailing median wage in your province—often landing around $18–$25 per hour, depending on location (higher in places like Ontario or BC). Nationally, averages hover between $16–$27/hour for full-time roles (at least 30 hours/week), which can add up to about $35,000–$55,000 yearly before taxes. Working conditions are a mixed bag: the new pilots ditched the old mandatory live-in rule to cut down on exploitation, so many now commute or work flexible shifts with better boundaries.
However, demand was off the charts, though. The 2025-2026 intake capped at around 5,500 applications total (roughly 2,750 per pilot, including spots for workers already in Canada and some for out-of-status folks), and those spots filled up in just hours on opening day. Thousands more were left scrambling.
Then, on December 19, 2025, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced the big change: No new applications will be accepted from March 31, 2026, all the way through March 30, 2030. That’s essentially pausing intakes for the remaining four years of the five-year pilots. Previously, everyone expected a reset and reopen in spring 2026, but IRCC decided to focus on clearing the massive backlog instead and keeping overall immigration levels in check.
This lines up with broader targets—Canada’s 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan allocated about 10,920 spots across all federal economic pilots (including these caregiver ones) for 2025, and the caregiver programs ate up a huge portion right away.
It’s a bummer for aspiring foreign caregivers, especially since the “Applicants not working in Canada” stream never fully opened. IRCC has mentioned possibly redesigning a permanent caregiver program later, but details are TBD.
So yeah, thousands of caregivers are now left rethinking their plans just before the holidays. But Canada’s caregiver crunch is real and getting bigger every year, with demand for home support workers projected to skyrocket as the population ages.
