Cutoff rises 10 points as invitations nearly halve

This was the second TRHSI draw since the initiative opened on June 15, 2026, and one of only two the stream has held to date. The BCPNP's official "Invitations to apply" page shows that all 33 candidates invited on Sept 17 were cleaning and security staff employed by a public health authority in a rural or remote part of B.C. As in July's first round, the province did not disclose how the invited candidates were distributed across the three eligible occupations.

The first draw's 50-point cutoff was the lowest invitation score B.C. had set anywhere in its 2026 draws. Between the two rounds the bar rose by 10 points and the invitation count was nearly halved — even though, as of Sept 1, 2026, the Skills Immigration (SI) registration pool held 8,013 candidates, of whom only 212 scored below 60. As of writing, no immigration practitioner or analyst has published commentary on the change in threshold, and the province has not explained the reason for the adjustment.

A PR pathway built for cleaners and security guards

What sets TRHSI apart is that it opens a permanent residence pathway to roles that are not normally captured by skilled immigration frameworks. Only three occupations are eligible: building superintendents, janitors and heavy-duty cleaners (NOC 65312), light duty cleaners (NOC 65310), and security guards and related security service occupations (NOC 64410). Applicants must hold a long-term, indeterminate, full-time position with a B.C. public health authority, and must be direct employees of the health authority rather than contractors.

Eight health authorities can offer qualifying positions:

• First Nations Health Authority
• Fraser Health
• Interior Health
• Island Health
• Northern Health
• Providence Health Care
• Provincial Health Services Authority
• Vancouver Coastal Health

Each health authority runs its own internal process for deciding which employees it will support, and a BCPNP application must be backed by an authorized representative of the relevant health authority. Beyond the job requirements, candidates must hold a high school diploma, meet a minimum income requirement continuously across the full nine months before registering and submitting an application, and satisfy the general eligibility criteria for the SI category. The complete job requirements are set out in sections 3.5 and 6.6 of the BCPNP's Skills Immigration Guide.

Geography: three regional districts excluded, five islands carved out

The initiative's geographic limits are drawn tightly. Health authority cleaning and security staff whose positions are located in the following regional districts are not eligible to apply:

• Central Okanagan Regional District
• Metro Vancouver Regional District
• Capital Regional District

Exceptions are made for five islands: Galiano Island, Mayne Island, Pender Island, Salt Spring Island and Saturna Island. The design is consistent with B.C.'s broader regional orientation — when Ottawa added spaces in August, it simultaneously required that at least 35% of B.C.'s 2026 nominations go to candidates outside Metro Vancouver.

How the nine months of work experience are counted

On work experience, applicants must have completed at least nine months of continuous full-time work with the same employer, in the same region and in the same eligible occupation before submitting a registration. Several periods do not count toward those nine months: work performed on a study permit, work that formed part of a study program (a paid co-op placement, for example), and any leave longer than two weeks.

The position must remain valid throughout: the job offer has to stay in force from registration through the application stage, and the applicant must remain employed full-time for the entire processing period. Invited candidates have 30 days from receiving an ITA to submit a complete application, and the application fee is CAD 1,750.

Allocation growth and the Care pillar

TRHSI emerged from B.C.'s April 23, 2026 restructuring of its provincial nominee program. That overhaul rebuilt the program's selection logic around three pillars: Care (strengthening healthcare and related care services), Build (supporting infrastructure and major projects) and Innovate (driving long-term economic growth through innovation). The support roles that keep the health system running, which TRHSI serves, fall directly under the Care pillar, while structurally the initiative sits alongside Skilled Worker and Health Authority as a separate stream within Skills Immigration.

On allocations, B.C.'s year has been marked by sharp reversals.

In 2025 the federal government cut national PNP allocations roughly in half, leaving B.C. with just 4,000 spaces at the start of the year; two subsequent top-ups brought the total back to 6,214, all of which were used. In December 2025, B.C. became the first province in the country to publish its 2026 allocation, with a base of 5,254; a further 1,000 spaces were added federally in August 2026, lifting the total to 6,254. It is worth noting that reports citing B.C.'s allocation do not use a consistent basis for comparison — some compare 2024's 8,000 with 2026's base of 5,254, others compare year-end totals after top-ups, and the two approaches point in opposite directions.

The federal direction of travel is clearer: the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan sets the 2026 PNP admissions target at 91,500, an increase of about 66% over the 55,000 set for the same year in the previous plan.

Totalling the BCPNP's official draw-by-draw data, invitations by category in 2026 through Sept 17 break down as follows:

For some categories, where fewer than five candidates were invited in a single draw, the province reports the figure as "fewer than 5" for privacy reasons, so cumulative totals can only be given as a range.

A federal temporary measure fills the work permit gap

For TRHSI applicants, one federal measure may matter as much in practice as the draws themselves. Foreign nationals who receive a B.C. nomination become provincial nominees and can then apply to the federal government for permanent residence; those inside Canada can apply for a Bridging Open Work Permit (BOWP) after submitting the PR application, to cover the gap after an existing work permit expires.

The problem is the wait. Base PNP applications are subject to a completeness check, and the issuance of the Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) has fallen badly behind — data shows that 141 base PNP applications submitted in November 2024 did not receive an AOR until October 2025, a gap of eight to 11 months, long enough to cost an applicant legal work status. In response, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) introduced a temporary measure effective June 9, 2026: base PNP nominees and their spouses can use their online submission confirmation and payment receipt, or have an officer verify the application's status in the system, in place of an AOR when applying for a BOWP, an employer-specific work permit or a spousal open work permit. The measure runs to Dec 31, 2026.

Because TRHSI has no Express Entry-aligned option, every application is processed through the base PNP, making this group of candidates a direct beneficiary of the temporary measure.

What remains on the clock, and what is unknown

The registration window closes at 11:59 p.m. on Oct 7, 2026, leaving eligible health authority cleaning and security staff who have not yet registered a little more than two weeks. Whether a third draw will follow that deadline, and whether the province will keep issuing invitations until all 250 spaces are used, remains unannounced; no timetable has been published.

Equally undisclosed is the number of nominations actually issued: since the stream opened on June 15, 2026, B.C. has never said how many provincial nominations have been granted under TRHSI. The figure of 93 refers to candidates invited to apply, not to candidates nominated.

For context, Statistics Canada data shows that temporary foreign workers in Canada's healthcare sector grew from 3,200 in 2000 to 57,500 in 2022, with B.C. accounting for 13% of them, equivalent to 2.5% of the province's healthcare workforce. That count is not broken down by specific occupations such as cleaning or security, however, so the size of the pool potentially eligible for TRHSI remains impossible to estimate.