Why Haven’t We Seen a Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Draw in December 2024?

The reality is: we don’t have a direct line to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) so we don’t know for sure why there hasn’t been a CEC draw yet this month. But, thanks to some news that dropped via the Immigration Minister Marc Miller about points being eliminated due to LMIA-fraud, we have a good guess as to what’s going on.

Key Takeaways

• Canada may be holding off on CEC draws while it finalizes changes to the CRS points system.
• The CRS points changes will impact around 20% of Express Entry candidates – reducing their scores by 50-200 points.
• A silver lining, the CRS for CEC draws in 2025 may decrease to 500-510.

Will The CRS Cut-Off Decrease For The Canadian Experience Class in 2025?

We would guess that there will be a modest decrease in CRS cut off after the points are eliminated for those with an LMIA job offer.

The last look into the Express Entry candidate pool revealed that there are almost 20,000 candidates with a score of 501-600 (19,885 to be specific). If we assume 20% of these candidates have a valid job offer, then we can predict that about 4,000 candidates will have their points reduced by 50-200 points (usually 50). This will drop the number of candidates in the 501-600 point range to somewhere around 16,000.

*The 20% figure is based on data about the percentage of candidates who had points for arranged employment in 2023 (see the data here).

As you can see, this is still a pretty big pool of candidates with a CRS score higher than 500. So, it’s possible – likely even- that we’ll see the CRS cut off for CEC draws decrease from recent draws (the last CEC draw had a cut-off score of 539, for example). But we would be surprised to see it drop much below 510 – based on the pool and data as it stands today.

What’s Next For Canadian Experience Class Candidates?

We hope that Canadian Experience Class candidates will see a draw in early 2025.

If You Have Points for a Job Offer

If you’re one of the CEC candidates currently in the pool with additional points for arranged employment, you may want to look into how competitive your CRS score is without the additional points for your job offer.

We suggest using our CRS calculator for this task.

On the day of publishing (December 18), we have not updated the CRS calculator to remove points for the job offer. The Canadian government has not yet confirmed when the points will be eliminated and, again, we do not know for sure that these impending changes are the reason behind the lack of CEC draws in December 2024.

But our CRS calculator tool does provide an overview of how many points you receive and why you receive them.

So what you can do is compare your CRS score with and without the additional points for the job offer.

Then, take note of how competitive your CRS is without the additional points, and if it has dropped below 510, you will likely want to consider a strategy to increase your CRS score in 2025.

If You Do Not Have Points For A Job Offer

This may come as welcome news for you (many people are commenting online about how this levels the playing field for those who cannot afford to ‘buy’ the extra points through LMIA fraud). But the reality is that the CRS may not decrease that much due to these changes.

The Express Entry pool is going to remain extremely competitive in 2025. So, if your score is not competitive, you will want to work on improving it.

We’ve mentioned before (and we still believe) that learning French is a strong strategy for candidates who are very motivated to immigrate to Canada in 2025-2027.