Rural communities filling skilled jobs through new federal pilot
The Rural Community Immigration Pilot has placed 800 people in permanent residency in two months, but demand far exceeds available spots.
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A federal pilot program aimed at helping small communities find skilled workers for hard-to-fill jobs has placed 800 people in permanent residency in the first two months of this year, with hundreds more applications streaming in for a limited number of available spaces.
The Rural Community Immigration Pilot, or RCIP, began in 2025 and allows 14 small communities across Canada to recommend people with skills and jobs in selected sectors for permanent residency. Each community can select up to 25 fields as priority professions—anything from health and manufacturing to skilled trades and transport.
Ward Mercer, RCIP program manager for the North Okanagan Shuswap region in British Columbia, said his region recommended 340 people for permanent residency last year and 90 had received PR status as of February 28. The number of immigrants looking for permanent residency "massively outpaces" the number of spaces available, so communities have to be strategic when selecting priority professions.
Pictou County, Nova Scotia, with a population of about 44,000, is using the program to address an aging workforce. The county is a regional hub for manufacturing but jobs are hard to fill. Many of the 70 people Pictou County has recommended for permanent residency were already living and working in the area as temporary foreign workers, so the RCIP is acting more as a worker retention program than a means to attract newcomers.
Similarly, the city of Brandon, Manitoba, has recommended 59 people for permanent residency, nearly all of whom were already in Canada on work visas. Several of the jobs being filled have been vacant for a long time, including roles in the health sector and physicians.