Maple News reports that Canada’s Express Entry pool is undergoing a quiet but consequential reshaping of its skilled trades category for 2026. The most notable change is the removal of Cooks (occupation code 63200) from the trades category on February 18, 2026, signaling a shift in which foreign nationals are prioritized for permanent residence under the trade occupations stream. This adjustment is expected to lead to draws that invite a different mix of candidates and potentially different CRS cut-off scores.
IRCC data show that if IRCC had issued 2,000 invitations to apply for permanent residence in a trade draw on January 31, 2025, cooks would have received about 1,121 ITAs, compared with 401 ITAs for workers in twenty hands-on construction trades combined. This illustrates a substantial reallocation of invitations away from cooking toward other skilled trades.
In a broader sense, the construction trades pool would account for 401 ITAs in that hypothetical scenario, with individual occupations spanning from carpenters and electricians to welders and machinists receiving varied shares. For example, machinists and related inspectors would account for roughly 122 of the total, while welders and related machine operators would receive about 53, and carpenters around 48.
Historically, cooks in Express Entry carried higher CRS scores, with a median around 419, compared with a median of 399 for all other trades applicants, according to the IRCC data cited in Maple News’ review.
The shift comes amid policy signals from the 2024 Levels Plan, which identified trade occupations as a priority for 2025 to support housing affordability. Yet the January 2025 pool composition skewed toward food service, contributing to a limited number of trades draws in 2025—only one small trade occupations draw of 1,250 ITAs, far fewer than the 3,600 ITAs issued in 2024.
With the February 18, 2026 update, IRCC formally removed Cooks from the trades category. Maple News will continue to monitor Express Entry developments to help prospective applicants understand how this reshuffle may affect eligibility, invitation thresholds, and long-term labor market impacts for Canada’s skilled trades sectors.