After November 28, 2008, the question about alternatives to the Federal Skilled Worker program became much more important.

A brief overview of provincial immigration programs, showing how they differ from federal ones.

It was not announced officially, but on November 28, 2008, not only Ministerial Instructions were introduced. Along with that changes were made to the correlation table used to calculate immigration points based on IELTS band scores. Now certain applicants get more immigration points for the same IELTS results.

Beginning from February 27, 2008, an applicant is eligible for processing under the Federal Skilled Worker immigration program, if he had a work experience of at least one year in one of the occupations on the list. The complete list as of January 30, 2009 is provided here.