Hire a nanny or in-home caregiver in Canada: the closed Home Care Worker pilots, the past process, and household payroll setup.
Applies in: CA
The Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots are closed to new applications. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced on December 19, 2025 that it will pause intake until further notice, and that the pilots' intake will not re-open in March 2026. This guide leads with that closure, states the pilot process in the past tense for existing applicants and households planning around it, and then sets out the household payroll mechanics that apply whenever a nanny or in-home caregiver is hired as an employee in Canada. It gives no immigration advice beyond the published pilot process, and no advice on whether a household qualifies for any program.
Do not plan a hire around a new pilot application. IRCC's pause notice states the reason plainly: ongoing high demand meant interest in the pilots continued to exceed the spaces available, leading to longer wait times, so IRCC paused intake to prioritize processing existing applications. The pilots' application page shows both streams closed: Workers in Canada, and Applicants not working in Canada. IRCC states it will continue to process applications received to date, in line with the Immigration Levels Plan, and that any future updates will be shared publicly. The pilots ran from 2025 to 2030 as a pair, Child Care and Home Support, and reached their annual online cap the same day they opened on March 31, 2025, according to IRCC's transition binder material. A household that needs care now must hire through a route that is actually open, such as hiring a worker already authorized to work in Canada, and must not pay a recruiter or consultant who claims to file a new pilot application while intake is paused.
When the pilots were open, they tested a one-step process that did not require applicants to obtain in-Canada work experience in the occupation first, with reduced language and education requirements compared with earlier caregiver programs. Applicants needed a minimum language proficiency of Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4, the equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma or higher, recent and relevant work experience or training, and an offer of employment for full-time work in a home care occupation, as IRCC's briefing material states. The pilots also expanded the employers who could make job offers beyond private households to include organizations that directly employ home care workers full-time but deploy them to clients' homes. The overall intake cap was 2,750 applications per year, per pilot.
That description is history, not a current application route. It is included so households and workers with an application already in the system can recognise which program their file belongs to, and so no one mistakes an old checklist or an old consultant page for a live intake. Do not submit forms, fees, or documents for a new pilot application while the streams show as closed.
For a hire outside the pilots, start with the job itself: full-time home child care work or home support work, performed in the home, with duties, hours, and pay set out in writing before work starts. Then confirm whether the worker is an employee or an independent contractor, because payroll duties follow the employment relationship. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) states that an individual is an employee if the worker and the payer have an employer-employee relationship, referred to as employment under a contract of service, and generally considers you an employer if you pay salaries, wages including advances, bonuses, vacation pay, or tips to your employees. A nanny or in-home caregiver who works set hours in your home, under your direction, on a regular schedule, is in most household cases an employee, but this guide makes no finding for any individual arrangement: if the classification is unclear, confirm it before the first pay, since getting it wrong leaves the household responsible for deductions that should have been made.
Also confirm, before hiring, that the worker is authorized to work in Canada, and check your province or territory's employment standards and workers' compensation registration for household employers. Those rules are provincial and territorial, vary by jurisdiction, and are not set out on the federal pages, so this guide states no wage, hour, or coverage figure for them. Check the provincial or territorial pages that apply where the work is performed.
An employer is required to register for a payroll account with the CRA. You must register before the first remittance due date, which is the 15th day of the month following the month in which you began withholding deductions from your employee's pay, unless the CRA tells you to remit on a different frequency. If you did not open an account before hiring, you still need to calculate deductions and remit them by the due date, and you may be assessed a penalty if you do not. If you have a place of business in Quebec, in addition to registering for source deductions with the CRA, you may have to register with Revenu Québec.
Register through the CRA's Business Registration Online service, by phone, or by mail, using your Business Number, and keep the payroll program account number for every remittance and filing. New employers remit quarterly unless the CRA states a different frequency on the statement of account, provided the monthly withholding amount is less than $1,000 and the compliance conditions are met, as the CRA's remittance page states. Confirm your remitter type on your CRA statement rather than assuming quarterly remittance applies.
Before the first pay, collect the employee's Social Insurance Number and completed federal and provincial or territorial TD1 Personal Tax Credits Return forms, which determine how much income tax to deduct. As an employer, you must withhold Canada Pension Plan contributions, additional Canada Pension Plan contributions where they apply, Employment Insurance premiums, and income tax from the employee's taxable, pensionable, and insurable income, and remit those amounts together with the employer's share of Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance to the CRA by the due date for your remitter type. Amounts withheld from an employee are held in trust for the Receiver General of Canada and do not belong to the employer. Use the CRA's payroll deductions calculator or the published payroll deductions tables to calculate each pay, rather than estimating, and keep books and records for at least 6 years from the end of the year they relate to.
At the end of each calendar year, report the income and deductions on a T4 information return, with T4 slips for each employee and a T4 summary, and give copies of the T4 slips to employees before the last day of February. That reporting duty is stated in the CRA's payroll responsibilities material. No rate, maximum, or threshold figure is stated in this guide, because the CRA pages do not state current-year Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance figures: confirm the current figures in the CRA payroll deductions tables for the pay period before calculating a paycheque.
No official page states current-year Canada Pension Plan or Employment Insurance rates, maximums, or thresholds, the pilot application fees, pilot processing times, or National Occupational Classification codes for the pilot occupations, so this guide states none of them. The 2,750 figure is the published annual intake cap per pilot when intake was open, not a current availability figure. No current IRCC page states a reopening date, a work permit route for new caregiver hires outside Quebec, or a Quebec pilot equivalent, so none is stated here; the pause notice states only that intake is paused until further notice and that future updates will be shared publicly.
No. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced on December 19, 2025 that it will pause intake until further notice, and that the pilots' intake will not re-open in March 2026. The pilots' application pages show both streams, Workers in Canada and Applicants not working in Canada, as closed. Do not pay anyone who claims to file a new pilot application for you while intake is paused.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada states it will continue to process applications received to date, in line with the Immigration Levels Plan. The pause applies to new intake, not to applications already received. This guide states no processing time for an existing application, because no official page states one.
When open, the pilots gave a direct route to permanent residence for home child care and home support workers with a full-time job offer in a home care occupation, Canadian Language Benchmark 4, the equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma or higher, and recent and relevant work experience or training. Employers beyond private households could make offers, including organizations that employ home care workers full-time and deploy them to clients' homes. Those requirements are stated in the past tense here because intake is paused.
Yes, that hiring is separate from the pilots. If the worker is a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or otherwise already authorized to work, the household hires as an employer: define the job, confirm the employment relationship, register for payroll, collect the Social Insurance Number and TD1 forms, withhold and remit source deductions, and file T4 slips. This guide does not assess whether any worker is authorized to work; check authorization before hiring.
Yes, if the worker is your employee. The Canada Revenue Agency generally considers you an employer if you pay salaries, wages, bonuses, vacation pay, or tips to employees, and an employer is required to register for a payroll account before the first remittance due date. A household that pays a nanny as an employee is an employer for this purpose, even though the workplace is a home.
Quebec runs its own system and did not use the federal pilots in the same way, and payroll differs too: if you have a place of business in Quebec, in addition to registering for source deductions with the Canada Revenue Agency, you may have to register with Revenu Québec. Confirm the Quebec route on the current Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Revenu Québec pages before hiring, since this guide does not set out the Quebec process.