World Education Services (WES) is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to helping international students, immigrants, and refugees achieve their educational and career goals in the United States and Canada. The weekly roundup includes research, stories, and events of interest to the Canadian immigration and settlement community. This content has been created by WES and is reproduced here with their permission, in partnership.
Targeted immigration measures to boost Canada’s supply of doctors (IRCC)
IRCC has announced a new Express Entry category for international doctors, set to launch in 2026. Under this program, 5,000 spots will be available for provinces and territories to nominate international doctors with at least one year of Canadian work experience (within the past three years) in eligible occupations*. Nominated doctors will receive an expedited work permit, allowing them to continue working while their permanent residency application is processed.
This pathway targets doctors already working in Canada on a temporary basis and aims to provide a route to permanent residency while addressing critical healthcare workforce needs. These spots are in addition to existing Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) allocations, with invitations to apply expected in early 2026.
*The occupations eligible for these measures are general practitioners and family physicians, specialists in surgery and specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine.
Related news:
In Canada, personal support workers (PSWs) deliver essential care services across both public and private home care systems. In 2022, an estimated 28,854 individuals were employed as PSWs in Ontario’s home care sector, collectively providing approximately 36.7 million hours of care through the provincial system.
A new report from Social Planning Toronto and Dr. Naomi Lightman of Toronto Metropolitan University examines the experiences and working conditions of PSWs by interviewing 25 immigrant women employed in Toronto. In the Greater Toronto Area, immigrant and racialized women make up the majority of home care PSWs. The sector is marked by low wages, job insecurity, and precarious employment, often involving working alone in private homes.
The report highlights four key themes:
The report calls for a comprehensive, publicly funded, non-profit home care system that centers workers, clients, and families. It recommends replacing the current fee-for-service model with a grant-based funding approach to cover the full cost of care. Key priorities include establishing employment standards for PSWs, improving transparency through robust data collection, regular public reporting, and independent research.
Full report: Caring About Care Workers: Centring Immigrant Women Personal Support Workers in Toronto’s Home Care Sector
Report finds inequities in Canada’s refugee resettlement system (Toronto Star)
Slow processing times for African refugees have long been a concern for the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR). As a result, a study was conducted to assess whether wait times have improved since the 2023 Auditor General’s report, which highlighted serious inequities in the processing of refugee applications.
The report shows that African applicants sponsored by the Canadian government faced an average wait time of 42 months for cases finalized between February 1 and July 31, 2025. This is significantly longer than applicants from other regions, including the Middle East (26 months) Europe and Maghreb (15 months), the Americas and Caribbean (15 months), and the Indo-Pacific regions (13 months). By contrast, applications processed by the Resettlement Operations Centre in Ottawa averaged just two months.
For refugees sponsored by private community groups, the delays are even more pronounced: African applicants wait an average of 47 months, compared to 42 months for Europe and Maghreb, 40 months for Indo-Pacific, 39 months for the Middle East, and 30 months for Ottawa. Compounding these delays is the federal government’s recent decision to reduce the number of spots for privately sponsored refugees in annual immigration plans—from 23,000 in 2025 down to 16,000 over the next three years.
The CCR is calling on the federal government to increase targets for privately sponsored refugees to address backlogs; establish standard processing times by region and track/report on them; and implement a transparent, equitable emergency response to humanitarian crises.
Full report: “Every day we live with fear and uncertainty” – Canadian Processing of Resettled Refugees in Africa
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