Canada scraps time limit for work permit applicants awaiting LMIA decisions

Work license candidates will no longer be declined when the federal government takes longer than anticipated to process their company’s Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA).

On October 28, 2026, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) upgraded its paperwork, which now directs officers not to decide on an application for a work license through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) till a choice has actually been made on the LMIA.

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The upgraded websites, “Labour Market Impact Assessment Review – Temporary Foreign Worker Program,” is a public-facing variation of guidelines supplied to migration officers.

The previous variation of the directions informed officers to hold the work authorization application for an optimum of 90 days while waiting for a choice on the pending LMIA.

The modification impacts work license applications sent under IRCC’s guidelines for concurrent processing, which enables an in-Canada employee to send an application for a TFWP work allow while their company’s application for an LMIA stays pending.

To receive concurrent processing, an employee’s existing authorization needs to end in 2 weeks or less, and their company needs to have sent the LMIA application with enough preparation to have had the sensible expectation that Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) would have had the ability to have actually processed the LMIA prior to the expiration of the employee’s existing authorization.

When an employee in Canada requests a work license prior to the expiration of their existing license, they take advantage of kept statuswhich provides permission to operate in Canada under the conditions of their existing license up until a choice has actually been made on their application for an extension.

On August 21, 2026, IRCC raised the time limitation for concurrent processing from 60 days to 90 days.

A company needs to have a favorable or neutral LMIA for a foreign employee to be released a brand-new work license or to extend an existing work authorization through the TFWP.

ESDC problems a favorable or neutral LMIA to verify that no competent Canadian person or irreversible local is offered to fill the company’s position.

Since the time of composing, companies in thirty metropolitan locations go through a restriction on LMIA applications for non-exempt tasks paying less than 120% of the average provincial/territorial wage.

Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau, Halifax, Fredericton, and Regina are amongst the census cities (CMAs) based on the restriction from Oct. 9, 2026 to Jan 7, 2027.

The restriction uses to locations with 6% or greater joblessness under a moratorium that the federal government developed in Sept 2024. ESDC keeps a list of impacted areas on its websites “Refusal to process a Labour Market Impact Assessment application,” and updates the list on a quarterly basis.

The areas of Montreal and Laval likewise stay based on a different moratorium developed by ESDC at the demand of the Quebec federal government in Sept 2024, and consequently extended in Nov 2025.

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