Express Entry’s category-based selection (launched in June 2023), allows Canada to attract candidates who meet specified economic priorities and goals, such as the need for French speaking and bilingual workers.
Through regional economic immigration programs, the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), the Atlantic Immigration Program and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot, provinces and territories, and communities, work with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to attract and retain French-speaking immigrants in a range of skill levels, including French-language teachers. Some PNP streams have been established to prioritize the selection of French-speaking candidates, with French-speaking PNP admissions steadily increasing over the last few years.
As part of the Action Plan for Official Languages 2023-2028, the Department is actively working to establish the Corridor for the International Recruitment of French-language and French-speaking Teachers at the elementary and secondary levels, to encourage their immigration and settlement in Francophone and Acadian communities. The Corridor is also a flagship measure in the five-year Implementation Plan of the Policy on Francophone immigration, launched in January 2024.
The Corridor is not a new program or pathway, but a set of measures integrated into our current programs and will seek to consolidate, optimize and improve current processes for promotion, selection of potential candidates, and settlement through targeted and adapted measures to attract French teachers to Canada and encourage their retention in Francophone minority communities.
Furthermore, the Department is currently reviewing its economic and permanent immigration programs to identify new initiatives that could be introduced to optimize the selection of French-speaking immigrants in the medium and long term, including the creation of a new economic program dedicated to francophone immigration.
