At a time when Canada is clamping down on immigration, there is now a clear strategy for settling permanently in the country: Learn some French.
In 2025, the federal government invited 48,000 people to apply for permanent residency through the Express Entry program for skilled workers because of their French-language abilities. This was substantially higher than invites sent to people with recent work experience in Canada (35,850) or those in health care (14,500) or the trades (1,250).
Over all, the government sent just shy of 114,000 invitations through the Express Entry system for skilled immigration, which ranks candidates by a score. A candidate’s points are based on such factors as age, education, work experience – and crucially, English or French.
For years, Ottawa sent invitations that were based strictly on points, regardless of someone’s field of work or which of Canada’s official languages they spoke. The idea was to select people with the best odds of integrating economically.
But starting in 2023, the Trudeau government brought in what it called “category-based selection,” which seeks to match immigrants to certain areas of need in the labour market, and to bolster Francophone communities outside Quebec. That approach has been maintained under the Carney administration.
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Labour economists have generally taken a dim view of those changes, because it means that stronger candidates can be passed over in favour of those with lower scores.
For example, on Dec. 16, the government invited 5,000 people with recent Canadian work experience to apply for permanent resident status. The cut-off score to get an invite was 515 points.
A day later, 6,000 people were invited to apply in the French category, and the cut-off score was 399 points.
Someone with a lower score may be older, have less education or work experience, weaker language skills – or some combination thereof.
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