Updated September 27, 2026. Since I first wrote this in July, three communities have closed or filled up for the year, Timmins raised its entry score to 79, and Pictou County rewrote its grid. Everything below reflects the current rules. For the list of what changed and when, see my September 2026 update.
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’ve now read all fourteen scoring grids and intake policies twice, once in July and again at the end of September. Here’s what’s actually in them.
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 only accepts applications scoring 79 or more. That isn’t the score to be selected, it’s the score to be looked at. The real bar is higher: across six draws in 2026, the lowest score selected ran 88, 87, 87, 88, 89 and then 90 in late August. 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. Two intakes are left this year: September 28 to October 2, and November 2 to 6.
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. North Bay also posts monthly results, and they’re high: successful candidates averaged 97 points in June, 91 in July and 97 in August. It had 98 recommendations left for the year at the end of August.
Timmins weights trades, resources and manufacturing (15) over health and education (10), which is unusual. It also reset its rules this summer because of demand. Since July 30 you need 79 points to enter the pool, each employer can send at most four applications per intake, and no employer gets more than five recommendations for the year. Administrative assistants and health information roles came off the list in June; railway track workers and greenhouse labourers went on. The last intake of 2026 is October 13 to 16.
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. Its August intake was the last one for 2026, and the office says clearing that backlog will take several months. It also swapped a sector in July: natural and applied sciences is out, and sales and service is in, limited to two applications per employer for occupations that aren’t already listed. If Sault Ste. Marie is your community, your realistic target is now 2027.
Thunder Bay publishes more statistics than anyone, and the numbers are sobering. The minimum is 50; by August it had recommended 338 people with an average score of 89.34 and a high of 116. Retail salespersons hit their 24-recommendation annual cap in June. Two newer rules: since August, an occupation that isn’t on the list can be considered case by case if it’s TEER 0 to 3 and the candidate has already worked that job for the employer for six months. And you still need a work permit with at least four months left when you submit. 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 first business day 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, although health occupations are now exempt from those limits. If your occupation was recommended in January and February, you’re waiting until next year. Early childhood educators have already run out of spots for 2026.
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 week, 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. Cooks and retail supervisors are already full for 2026. 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, handed out about three a month to the top scorers, 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. It’s also finished for the year: the September intake was the last of 2026, applications were reviewed from a preliminary score of 93, and the next intake is in 2027.
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. Those points matter more every intake: the cut-off went from 91 in January to 93 in March and 94 in the summer.
Peace Liard (Northeast BC) reveals its economy in its grid: aircraft mechanics and pilots get 15 occupation points, the highest in its list. It had 60 recommendations for 2026 and issued 56 of them by June, so it’s effectively full unless IRCC grants extra allocations, which the community expects to hear about around October.
Pictou County, Nova Scotia, used to give every sector a flat 5 points and let occupations do the talking, with tech jobs at 20. That changed in August. Every sector is now worth 15, and occupation bonuses run from 2 to 10: data scientists, cyber security specialists, mechanical engineers and pharmacists get the top 10, most trades get 5, and cooks and bakers get 2. Software developers are off the list entirely. If you read the July version of this post and were counting on Pictou as the IT-friendly option, that advice no longer holds.
So what do you do with this?
Four things. First, check that your community is still taking applications this year, because three aren’t. Second, find out which model it 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. Third, look up your exact occupation in your community’s grid before you get attached to a number. Fourth, 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. The communities page shows who is open right now.
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.