Caregiver Program Canada

What is the Caregiver Program Canada?

The Caregiver Program Canada is the federal route to permanent residence for home care workers, delivered through the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots: one pilot for Child Care and one for Home Support, each granting permanent residence to a worker who holds a full-time home-care job offer in Canada outside Quebec. The two pilots split by the kind of care you provide, child care in a home setting under NOC 44100, or home support and personal care under NOC 44101.

These pilots replaced earlier programs, the Home Child Care Provider Pilot and the Home Support Worker Pilot, whose last day to apply was June 17, 2024. The thread that runs through all of them is the same: home care work in Canada that leads to permanent residence, rather than a temporary stay with no future. Each current pilot runs two streams, Workers in Canada and Applicants not working in Canada.

Two facts are worth stating plainly. First, the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots are the only direct caregiver-to-PR route open on paper, and their predecessors closed in June 2024. Second, IRCC paused intake to both pilots on December 19, 2025 and the pause runs until further notice, so no new application can be filed today. Applications submitted before that date are still being processed, and IRCC publishes the current status and criteria for the pilots on canada.ca.

A short history: from earlier pilots to the Home Care Worker pilots

Canada has run five caregiver permanent-residence programs since 2014, and four of them are now closed, which is why older guides mislead. For years, two ran side by side: the Home Child Care Provider Pilot, for people caring for children in a home, and the Home Support Worker Pilot, for people providing personal care and support, including to those with high medical needs. Both were designed to lead to permanent residence rather than leaving caregivers in temporary limbo.

The current framework, the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots, carries that same purpose forward and covers the same two broad kinds of work, child care and home support.

Each pilot runs two application streams: Workers in Canada, for people already living in Canada and authorised to work full-time in any non-seasonal job, and Applicants not working in Canada, which asks for proof of settlement funds instead. Both streams are currently closed. IRCC sets out the stream rules and the current status on canada.ca, and we confirm them before advising on your timeline rather than relying on how a previous pilot worked.

Who the caregiver pathway is for

The Home Care Worker Immigration pilots serve two groups of workers, split by the kind of care they provide in a private home rather than in an institution:

• Child care providers: the Child Care pilot is for home child care providers (NOC 44100) who care for children in a private home, not in an institutional setting such as a daycare.
• Home support workers: the Home Support pilot is for home support workers, caregivers and related occupations (NOC 44101) who provide personal care in a private home, not in a nursing home or similar institution.

IRCC assesses caregiver applicants on the pilot criteria rather than on nationality, so the practical questions are whether you hold an eligible job offer in NOC 44100 or NOC 44101 and meet the Level 4 language and high-school education standards. Demand is strong from the Philippines and many other countries, and the binding constraint today is the intake pause rather than any nationality rule.

Strong demand from the Philippines

Filipino applicants meet the same Home Care Worker Immigration pilot criteria as everyone else: an eligible NOC 44100 or NOC 44101 job offer, Level 4 language results, a Canadian high school diploma or its equivalent, and six months of relevant experience or a recent training credential. A move to Canada from the Philippines often runs through exactly these pilots, because home-care experience is widely held, English is widely spoken, and the destination is permanent residence rather than a temporary posting.

The practical obstacle now is the intake pause, not the criteria. We support applicants from the Philippines and around the world entirely online, by video call and phone, and our country guide for the Philippines sets out the wider picture.

Caregiver program requirements

The Home Care Worker Immigration pilots set six published requirements, and an application has to satisfy all of them. The table below states each threshold as IRCC publishes it.

Eligibility in more detail

Four specifics decide whether a Home Care Worker Immigration pilot application holds together: the job offer, the language result, the education credential and the experience or training. We work through each with you early, because a gap is far easier to fix before you apply than to explain afterwards:

• Job offer: the offer must be genuine, permanent and full-time at 30 hours a week or more, in NOC 44100 or NOC 44101, from an employer holding a Canada Revenue Agency business number, and paid at or above the Job Bank median wage for that occupation. A recruitment agency, a diplomatic mission, or a close relative such as your spouse, parent or child cannot be the employer.
• Language: you must sit an approved English or French test and reach Level 4 in all four skills, writing, reading, listening and speaking, measured on the Canadian Language Benchmarks or the Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens. Even confident speakers take the test, because IRCC accepts only the test result.
• Education: you must hold the equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma or higher, and a credential earned outside Canada needs an Educational Credential Assessment to prove that equivalence.
• Experience or training: you must have six months of continuous, full-time, relevant work experience in the past three years, or a relevant training credential completed in the past two years. Experience in NOC 42202 or NOC 33102 can count here even though a job offer in those codes cannot.

How the caregiver pathway leads to permanent residence

The Home Care Worker Immigration pilots grant permanent residence directly, so an approved applicant lands as a permanent resident rather than serving a qualifying period of Canadian caregiving work first. The stream you would use depends on where you are: Workers in Canada if you already live here with full-time work authorisation, or Applicants not working in Canada if you are abroad and can show settlement funds.

Timelines are the hard part. IRCC publishes a processing time of about 77 months for caregiver permanent-residence applications, with roughly 36,900 people waiting in that inventory (IRCC processing times, September 3, 2026). That backlog is the stated reason for the intake pause, and it is why we plan around alternatives rather than around a caregiver pilot reopening on a date nobody has published.

If a caregiver pilot is not open or not the right fit, related routes may still help. A work permit can sometimes come first, while skilled applicants might explore Express Entry or a Provincial Nominee Program. If you have close family in Canada, family sponsorship may be relevant too. We help you compare honestly rather than forcing a single route.

How caregiver routes connect to work permits and other PR pathways

With the pilots paused, four other routes carry most caregiver applicants forward, and each of them connects back to home-care work in a different way:

• Work permits first. A work permit can sometimes let you begin caregiving work in Canada while a permanent residence route is arranged, and Canadian experience you build can strengthen later applications.
• Express Entry. Skilled applicants who meet the criteria may be competitive in Express Entry, scored under the Comprehensive Ranking System; the Canadian Experience Class can reward Canadian work, while the Federal Skilled Worker program suits foreign experience.
• Provincial Nominee Programs. Several provinces run streams for in-demand occupations through their Provincial Nominee Programs, which can add 600 CRS points with a nomination.
• Family sponsorship. If you have a spouse, partner or close relative who is already a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, family sponsorship may open a separate path.

You can estimate where you stand for the federal route with our free CRS calculator, and our team compares all of these against the caregiver pilots before you commit to one.

Costs and timelines

A caregiver permanent-residence application carries IRCC processing fees, the right of permanent residence fee, biometrics, an approved language test, an Educational Credential Assessment if you studied outside Canada, an immigration medical exam and police certificates, on top of your own relocation costs. IRCC publishes the current amount for each of those government fees on canada.ca, and we itemise them for your case before you commit.

On timelines, IRCC publishes about 77 months for caregiver permanent-residence applications as at September 3, 2026, which reflects an inventory of about 36,900 people and a paused intake. Our fees guide explains how our professional fee works and how it differs from government fees.

How Wild Mountain Immigration helps with caregiver applications

Wild Mountain Immigration is a CICC-regulated practice led by a licensed RCIC (R706497). Because intake under the Caregiver Program Canada changes so often, much of our value is simply telling you the truth about the live position before you spend a penny, then building a complete, well-documented application if a route is realistic for you. From confirming an eligible job offer through to settling in Canada as a caregiver and reaching permanent residence, our scope is standard RCIC work, and we represent clients entirely online.

1. 01

   Check the live position

   We confirm whether the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots have reopened and what the current criteria say, so you are not planning around a stream that IRCC paused in December 2025.

2. 02

   Assess your profile

   We review your job offer, language, education and experience against the current requirements and flag any gaps early.

3. 03

   Prepare and apply

   We build a complete, well-documented application and represent you with IRCC through to a decision on permanent residence.