Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) says selection under its In-Canada Workers Initiative comes down to two things: the program a worker applied through; and the date they applied. Eligible workers must have applied through the Provincial Nominee Program, the Atlantic Immigration Program, a community immigration pilot, a caregiver pilot or the Agri-Food Pilot, and lived in a smaller community for at least two years. The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot, which ran from 2019 until it stopped taking new applications in 2024, used a published, community-led scoring process. Its successor, the Rural Community Immigration Pilot, does the same across 14 designated communities today. In Sechelt, B.C., Mayor John Henderson has spent months pushing Ottawa for a two-year automatic extension of work permits, arguing that anything shorter doesn’t give rural communities time to plan.