When people ask me which RCIP community is “easiest,” I ask what their job offer is. That usually ends the conversation, because the honest answer is that you don’t choose a community from a menu. Your designated employer chooses it for you. What you can do is understand how your community selects people, because the fourteen of them do it three very different ways.
I spent a lot of hours reading all fourteen scoring grids and intake policies. Here’s what’s actually in them, as of July 2026.
The shared skeleton
Nine communities score candidates out of 125 points using the same federal template. Five factors, each worth 10 to 25 points: job offer, work experience, language, education, and intent to reside (10 base points plus up to 15 bonus points for community ties). You need 50 points overall and at least 10 in every factor just to enter the pool.
The template’s human-capital rows are identical everywhere. Four years of work experience is 25 points in Timmins and 25 points in Pictou County. What changes between communities is the job offer section: which sectors and occupations get how many points. That section is where communities quietly tell you who they want.
Ontario: five communities, five strategies
Greater Sudbury raised its pool entry score from 50 to 79 for 2026. Not the score to be selected, the score just to enter the pool. Health, natural resources and trades jobs get 15 sector points; registered early childhood educators get the single biggest occupation bonus at 12. Truck drivers get 2. That tells you exactly where Sudbury’s labour shortage is and isn’t.
North Bay flattened its grid completely: every priority sector is worth 15, every listed occupation is worth 10. What stands out instead are the rules around the edges. All fast food and retail jobs are excluded, and the intent-to-reside statement must be written without AI tools. They check. Write it yourself.
Timmins weights trades, resources and manufacturing (15) over health and education (10), which is unusual, and pairs a generous occupation list with hard caps: from July 2026, a hundred applications per intake, two per employer.
Sault Ste. Marie is the odd one out in the whole program: no points grid at all. The community reviews complete files against its priorities and takes about six weeks. Intake paused in June 2026 and reopens in August, so if that’s your community, your job right now is document preparation.
Thunder Bay publishes more statistics than anyone, and the numbers are sobering. The minimum is 50; the average successful score in June 2026 was 88.67, and the highest was 116. Retail salespersons hit their 24-recommendation annual cap in June. One more 2026 rule that catches people: you need a work permit with at least four months left when you submit, and maintained status doesn’t count.
The Prairies: no points at all
All three Manitoba communities and Moose Jaw skip scoring entirely.
Steinbach opens an intake on the 1st of each month and closes it on the 15th, or after seven applications, whichever comes first. Seven. One recommendation per NOC code per month, two per year. If your occupation was recommended in January and February, you’re waiting until next year.
Altona/Rhineland takes applications year-round, first come, first served, across six sectors (health joined the list in 2026).
Brandon is also first come, first served, but reserves 15% of its annual allocation for healthcare occupations and requires job offers to meet the Canada Job Bank median wage.
Moose Jaw is pass/fail: up to twelve recommendations per monthly intake, doors open at 8:00 a.m. on day one, and an application with a single missing document goes back to the employer and loses its place in line. In a first-come system, a perfect file beats a strong profile.
The West and the East Coast
Claresholm, Alberta, has the steepest sector weighting in the program: Health is worth 22 points, sales and service 10 (and sales jobs are capped at six allocations for the whole year). With only 30 recommendations for 2026 and the top four scores pulled monthly, a health job offer here is close to a golden ticket.
West Kootenay, BC, pays trades, health and education jobs 20 sector points, and only accountants get a meaningful occupation bonus (10). The job itself must be performed at least 75% inside the region. Food service roles carry a 5% cap.
North Okanagan-Shuswap, BC, does something no one else does: wage points. Pay $2 above the position’s minimum and the candidate gets 3 extra points; $5 above gets 5. It’s the only grid where an employer can directly buy their candidate a better score, and honestly, I think more communities should copy it.
Peace Liard (Northeast BC) reveals its economy in its grid: aircraft mechanics and pilots get 15 occupation points, the highest in its list, with 60 recommendations authorized for 2026. Up to 20% can go to occupations off the priority list, which earn sector points only.
Pictou County, Nova Scotia, gives every sector a flat 5 points and lets occupations do the talking: data scientists, cyber security specialists, software developers, pharmacists, machinists and carpenters all get 20. It’s a small-town grid with a tech company’s wish list, and it makes Pictou the best-scoring community in the program for IT workers.
So what do you do with this?
Three things. First, find out which model your community uses, because “improve my score” is the right goal in Sudbury and the wrong one in Moose Jaw, where “submit a flawless file at 8:01 a.m.” is the whole game. Second, look up your exact occupation in your community’s grid before you get attached to a number. Third, run your own numbers on our community calculators, which mirror each of these grids, and see how far you sit from the real bar rather than the theoretical minimum.
I’ll keep this post updated as communities revise their 2026 grids. If your community published a change I haven’t caught, I want to know: tell me here.