Every caregiver route to permanent residence is closed to new applications.

The distinction that matters here is between paused and ended. The two classes still exist in law. What has been set to zero is the number of new applications Canada will accept, which produces the same practical result as closure for anyone who has not already applied, but leaves the programme available to be restarted by a further instruction without new legislation.

No reopening date has been announced. Anyone telling you that intake resumes on a particular date is describing an expectation, not a published decision.

There were two pilots, launched together on 31 March 2025. One covered child care, the other home support. Each was structured with two streams, and understanding which stream did what explains why so few people got through.

• Workers in Canada. The stream that actually operated. It opened on 31 March 2025 and reached its annual cap in April 2025, within roughly two weeks of opening.
• Applicants not working in Canada. Never opened. It was allocated zero application slots from launch, and the published intake schedule gave it no slots before 2027 in any event. The programme wide pause arrived first.
• The first year cap. 2,610 applications that could be processed for each of the two pilots, split between online and alternate means submissions, all of it inside the Workers in Canada stream.
• Permanent residence directly. Unlike the predecessor pilots, these granted permanent residence on approval. There was no requirement to complete a further qualifying work period in Canada first, which is what made them significant while they lasted.

These are set out because they still govern applications already in the queue, and because they show how far the bar sat from the usual economic routes.

• Job offer. A full time offer as a home child care provider or a home support worker, outside Quebec.
• Language. CLB or NCLC level 4 in all four skills, with test results less than two years old. This is the lowest language floor in any federal permanent residence route.
• Education. The equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma or higher, with an educational credential assessment where the credential was obtained outside Canada.
• Experience or training. Six months of continuous full time relevant work experience in the previous three years, or a completed relevant training credential in the previous two years.
• Occupations, child care pilot. NOC 44100, home child care providers, or NOC 42202, early childhood educators and assistants, with exclusions.
• Occupations, home support pilot. NOC 44101, home support workers, caregivers and related occupations, or NOC 33102, nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates.

Your application is unaffected by the pause. IRCC stated when it announced the pause that it would continue processing applications received to date, in line with the Immigration Levels Plan, and repeated that position in 2026.

Two things are worth checking on a pending file rather than assumed. Whether your status in Canada remains valid throughout processing, because a lapse creates a separate problem that the pending application does not cure. And whether the evidence supporting your six months of experience actually demonstrates the duties of the occupation, rather than simply carrying its job title, which is the failure we see most often across every work based route.

There is no caregiver specific permanent residence route open to new applications, and we are not going to suggest otherwise. What follows is what genuinely remains, including the parts that are commonly misunderstood.

• Working in Canada as a caregiver is still possible. Work permits for these occupations remain available through the temporary foreign worker system, normally requiring a labour market impact assessment. That gives temporary status and a Canadian work history. It is not permanent residence and it does not convert into permanent residence by itself.
• Express Entry does not count this experience. NOC 44100 and NOC 44101 sit at TEER 4. The federal Express Entry programmes count skilled work experience at TEER 0 to 3, so time spent in these occupations is not qualifying experience for the Federal Skilled Worker Class or the Canadian Experience Class. Experience you hold in other occupations may still count.
• Ontario is currently open to these occupations, and the federal programmes are not. Since 25 June 2026 Ontario's single nominee stream has a pathway for any occupation at TEER 4 or 5 with a qualifying job offer, with no restricted occupation list. Home child care providers and home support workers sit at TEER 4. It requires nine months of paid work in that specific position within the previous two years and language at CLB 4. The Ontario stream.
• Other provinces have to be checked one at a time. Provinces set and change their own occupation lists, so which ones include care work has to be established when you are looking rather than taken from a page written earlier. We do that in a consultation rather than publishing a list here that would be wrong within months.
• The route may not be the occupation. Caregivers frequently hold education, licences or earlier professional experience in another field, sometimes at TEER 0 to 3, that opens a route the care work does not. Establishing that is the point of looking at the whole record rather than the current job title.