Why Express Entry Went Quiet for FSW and CEC Candidates From Late 2020 Into 2022
If you were researching Express Entry between late 2020 and mid-2022 and found almost nothing happening for candidates without a provincial nomination, you weren’t missing anything — that gap was real. The express entry pause 2020 2021 2022 period is one of the most significant interruptions in the program’s history, and it’s worth laying out on a timeline because the reasons behind it, and the way it ended, both still shape how the system behaves today.
December 2020 — FSW invitations stop
Federal Skilled Worker (and Federal Skilled Trades) invitations paused entirely. Fsw draws paused history from this point runs for well over a year, with no FSW-specific or general round issuing invitations under those streams.
September 2021 — CEC invitations stop too
Roughly nine months later, Canadian Experience Class invitations paused as well. Cec draws stopped 2021 left only Provincial Nominee Program rounds running in the gap — for the better part of a year, PNP was effectively the only door still open inside Express Entry.
March 2022 — signals of a restart
IRCC begins signalling that FSWP and CEC invitations will resume sometime during 2022, after the extended pause.
June 2022 — the legal groundwork for what comes next
Parliament passes Bill C-19, amending the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to give the Minister authority to select Express Entry candidates by category — specific work experience, French ability, and similar attributes. This is the legislation that, a year later, would make category-based selection possible.
26 June 2022 — a firm date is announced
Minister Sean Fraser announces all-program draws will resume on 6 July 2022, alongside a commitment to return to a six-month application processing service standard.
6 July 2022 — the pause ends
Round 226 becomes the first all-program draw after the pause: 1,500 invitations at a CRS cut-off of 557 — notably high, reflecting the backlog of candidates who had been waiting in the pool through the entire gap. Cut-offs then fell steadily as draw sizes grew through the rest of 2022, down to 491 by late November.
Express entry covid era pause explained, in one sentence
The pandemic disrupted processing capacity broadly across IRCC’s operations, and FSW and CEC invitations were paused rather than continuing to add candidates to a system that couldn’t process them at the pace it normally would — PNP kept running because provinces manage their own nomination pipelines separately.
Why this history still matters today
The same Bill C-19 that ended this pause is the legal basis for every category-based round that has happened since — the physicians, French-language, healthcare and every other category running in 2026 exist because of authority Parliament granted in direct response to this gap. It’s also a useful reminder that Express Entry’s rules and rhythms have shifted substantially before, and can shift again.
If you’re trying to work out how a historical pause like this one might inform your own timeline expectations today, that’s a conversation worth having with a licensed RCIC, who can speak to current processing realities rather than a four-year-old precedent.