Ottawa, November 8, 2013 — Today, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander announced changes to improve the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) so that the program continues to attract top quality candidates.
“The Canadian Experience Class has allowed more than 25,000 people to stay in Canada permanently to contribute their skills and talents,” said Alexander. “The government is taking concrete action to reduce backlogs and processing times. By making these changes to the Canadian Experience Class, we are moving toward a more effective and efficient immigration system.”
In order to manage intake, maintain reasonable processing times and prevent a backlog from developing in the CEC, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) is introducing an annual cap on the number of new CEC applications. CIC will accept a maximum of 12,000 CEC applications from November 9, 2013, to October 31, 2014.
CIC wishes to bring in as diverse a skill set as possible, and as such, the department will introduce limits on the number of applications under certain occupations. Because of an overrepresentation in the CEC applications received to date, the following six occupations will no longer be eligible for the CEC starting November 9, 2013:
- cooks (NOC code 6322);
- food service supervisors (NOC 6311);
- administrative officers (NOC 1221);
- administrative assistants (NOC 1241);
- accounting technicians and bookkeepers (NOC 1311); and
- retail sales supervisors (NOC 6211).
In addition, CIC will establish sub-caps of 200 applications each for National Occupational Classification (NOC) B occupations. These are mostly technical and administrative jobs or those in the skilled trades. NOC 0 and A (managerial and professional) occupations will not be sub-capped, but they will be subject to the overall cap of 12,000 applications.
Please contact us as soon as possible regarding any current or upcoming applications that may be affected, as we are here to continue to make every effort to meet the needs of our cliente.