Nova Scotia now charges to assess a provincial nomination application. The fees took effect on 1 September 2026, and if the province is part of your permanent residence plan, the number is not the part that should worry you. What the fee does not buy is.
It buys an assessment. It does not buy a nomination, it does not buy speed, and it is not refundable if the answer is no.
The amounts
| Stream | Application fee |
|---|---|
| Nova Scotia: Skilled Worker | $1,000 |
| Nova Scotia: Graduate | $1,000 |
| Nova Scotia: Express Entry | $1,000 |
| Entrepreneur stream | $2,000 |
Before this, the Nova Scotia Nominee Program charged nothing. The province says demand for nominations continues to exceed its annual federal allocation, and that the fee recovers part of the cost of assessing applications. It also brings Nova Scotia into line with most other provinces.
Submitting an expression of interest is still free
This is the part that gets misread, so it is worth stating plainly.
There is no fee to submit an EOI. You pay only if your EOI is selected from the pool for assessment.
But the date that matters is the date of selection, not the date you submitted. Any EOI selected for assessment on or after 1 September 2026 attracts the fee, no matter how long it has been sitting in the pool. The only people exempt are those who received a selection letter before 1 September.
So if you filed an EOI in June and are still waiting, you are in the new regime.
How long you have to pay
The deadlines are short on the worker side and easy to miss, particularly if the notification lands while you are travelling or between email addresses.
- Worker streams: 7 calendar days from the notification that your EOI has been selected for assessment.
- Entrepreneur, starting a new business: 90 calendar days from the Invitation to Apply.
- Entrepreneur, purchasing an existing business: 180 calendar days from the Invitation to Apply.
- Entrepreneur, international graduates: 90 calendar days from the Invitation to Apply.
Seven calendar days is not seven business days. Miss it and the EOI is closed and does not proceed to assessment. You may submit a new EOI if you still meet the requirements, but you go back into the pool and wait again.
The practical details that trip people up
These come straight from the province’s own guidance, and they are the sort of thing that turns a funded application into a closed one.
One payment, one card. Payment is online, in a single transaction, by Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express. You cannot split it across two cards and you cannot pay in instalments. If your card has a daily limit below the fee, sort that out before the clock starts.
Keep the emailed receipt. You will receive a receipt by email and you must submit it as proof of payment. A screenshot of the confirmation page will not be accepted.
A declined payment is not a paid application. If the card is refused, the application is treated as incomplete and assessment does not begin. If it is still unpaid when the deadline passes, it is not processed.
You cannot pre-pay. There is no way to pay in advance while waiting in the pool.
Reapplying means paying again. If you submit a fresh EOI later and are selected again, the fee is payable again.
What the fee does not do
It does not buy a nomination. The province is explicit that paying does not affect the outcome of the assessment or increase your likelihood of being nominated. It is a processing fee, not a nomination fee.
It does not buy speed. Payment has no effect on processing times. Submissions are handled according to program priorities and operational capacity.
It is not refundable. Fees are non-refundable except where refund is required by law or where an administrative error has occurred. A refusal is not an administrative error.
There are no waivers. The fee applies to all NSNP streams and all candidates selected for assessment. No exemptions, no hardship waivers.
Dependants do not change the amount
The fee is charged per principal applicant. Including a spouse or children does not increase it.
That said, this is one fee in a longer sequence. Federal permanent residence processing fees, the right of permanent residence fee, biometrics, medicals and language testing all sit on top, and several of those are charged per person. Budget for the whole pathway, not the provincial step.
The Atlantic Immigration Program is not affected
If you have been weighing Nova Scotia’s nominee program against the Atlantic Immigration Program, note that the AIP carries no provincial application fee and will continue that way, consistent with the other Atlantic provinces.
The two are separate programs with different employer requirements and different processes. A new $1,000 line item on one side does not by itself make the other the better route, but it is a genuine factor now, and for some profiles it changes the arithmetic.
What this should actually change about your planning
A fee is a small amount of money against the cost of a wrong pathway. The real lesson is that a nomination attempt is now a committed spend, and committed spends deserve a decision made in advance rather than discovered at the notification email.
Before you file an EOI anywhere, the questions worth answering are:
- Which stream actually fits your profile, rather than which one you technically qualify for?
- How competitive is your EOI against the current selections, and what would move it?
- Which documents will you need, and how long will the slowest of them take to obtain?
- What do the provincial and federal fees total across the whole pathway?
- Do you also qualify through Express Entry directly, or through another province?
- If this route does not work, what is the second one, and does pursuing this one foreclose it?
If you are nominated, the next question arrives immediately: what happens to your work permit while the federal application is processed. We have written about bridging open work permits and employer-specific permits after applying for PR, including a temporary measure for provincial nominees that expires at the end of 2026.
How we can help
We work on the strategy, not just the form. That means assessing which provincial and federal pathways are genuinely open to you, reviewing how your profile scores before you commit, organising the documents an assessment will ask for, and telling you plainly when a route is not worth the fee.
You can start with our free eligibility assessment or check where you stand with the CRS calculator. If the Entrepreneur stream is what interests you, our business immigration page covers what that route involves. When you want someone to look at your actual situation rather than a general article, book a consultation.
Where to check this yourself
Every figure and deadline above comes from the Government of Nova Scotia’s own notice, NSNP Update: Application Fees Effective September 1, 2026, published 6 August 2026. We link to sources in everything we write, because immigration facts change and you should never have to take our word for it.
This article is general information, current as at 22 September 2026. It is not advice about your case. Immigration programs, eligibility requirements, fees and procedures change. Verify the current position with the Government of Nova Scotia and with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada before you act, and speak to a licensed representative about your own circumstances.
