Canada · work permits
Canadian work permits, explained properly
Almost every question about working in Canada comes down to two splits: whether your permit ties you to one employer, and whether it needs an LMIA. Understand those and most of the noise you have been sold falls away.
Start here
Two questions decide everything
Every Canadian work permit sits somewhere on these two axes. They are independent of each other.
Axis one
Employer-specific, or open?
An employer-specific permit names the employer, and usually the occupation and the location, on the permit itself. You may work for that employer and no one else. If you leave, you need a new application before you can lawfully start somewhere new.
An open permit lets you work for most employers in Canada. This is the one everybody wants — and the one most misunderstood. You do not apply for an open permit because you would prefer one. Open permits exist only in defined categories, most of which derive from something else: a spouse’s status, study completed in Canada, or a specific programme you were selected into.
Axis two
LMIA-based, or LMIA-exempt?
LMIA-based permits sit under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. A Canadian employer must first obtain a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment for the specific role before you can apply.
LMIA-exempt permits sit under the International Mobility Program. No labour-market test is required, because the category itself is treated as benefiting Canada — trade agreements, intra-company transfers, significant benefit, permits derived from family status, and others.
Exempt does not mean easier. It means the burden moves from the employer’s advertising file onto your evidence.
The thing everyone asks about
What an LMIA actually is
A Labour Market Impact Assessment is a decision made by Employment and Social Development Canada about a job, not about a person. The employer applies. The employer advertises the role in Canada, documents that recruitment effort, and asks for a ruling on whether hiring a foreign worker for that position would have a positive, neutral or negative effect on the Canadian labour market.
It exists for one reason: to protect the Canadian labour market. That framing explains almost everything that frustrates applicants about it. The employer bears the cost and the paperwork, so employers only do it when they genuinely cannot fill a role. It cannot be initiated by you. It is issued for a particular position at a particular business, so it is not portable and not a personal asset. And it is not a work permit — a positive LMIA is evidence you then use in your own application to IRCC, which is decided separately.
Government fees, wage requirements and processing times attached to the LMIA process are set by Employment and Social Development Canada and IRCC and are revised from time to time. We do not reproduce them here, because a stale figure on a website is worse than no figure. Check them at the source: ESDC publishes the employer requirements and the LMIA application fee under Hire a temporary foreign worker, and IRCC publishes application fees and current processing times on canada.ca. Check those before you rely on any figure quoted to you by anyone, including an employer or a recruiter.
The main routes
Where most real cases land
Not an exhaustive list — the International Mobility Program alone contains dozens of exemption categories. These are the ones that come up in practice.
LMIA-exempt · significant benefit
Work permit without a job offer
LMIA-exempt · intra-company
Intra-company transfer
LMIA-exempt · trade agreements
Trade-agreement professionals
LMIA-based
Employer-sponsored, with an LMIA
Open · status-derived
Spousal and family open permits
Open · after study
Post-graduation work permit
Read this before you pay anyone
The LMIA-for-sale trap
This pattern targets Pakistani applicants heavily, and it is the single most expensive mistake we see.
The offer sounds reasonable at first. Someone will arrange a Canadian job offer for you, or an LMIA position with a real company, for a fee — often a very large one, sometimes staged across payments, sometimes with a photograph of an approval letter as proof. The company name may even be genuine.
Selling a job offer or an LMIA position is illegal in Canada. That is not a technicality about the seller’s conduct that leaves you clean. When you submit that offer to IRCC, you are the one submitting it. If the offer is fabricated, or the job does not really exist, or you paid for a position that was never advertised in good faith, that is misrepresentation under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
The consequence is not simply a refusal. A misrepresentation finding carries a bar on entering Canada that runs for years, attaches to you personally, and follows you into every future application — including ones you would otherwise have qualified for honestly. The bar period is set by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and stated by IRCC at canada.ca; read it there rather than take our word or anyone else’s for the length. People lose the study permit, the visit visa and the spouse’s application too. Meanwhile the money is gone and there is no one to recover it from, because you paid a person in Pakistan for an illegal act in Canada.
The signals are consistent and worth memorising:
- You are asked to pay for a job offer, an LMIA, or a “position”. Legitimate Canadian employers do not charge you to hire you.
- An LMIA number or approval letter is shown to you as proof, but you are not put in direct contact with the employer.
- There is no interview, or an interview so cursory that the employer plainly does not care whether you can do the job.
- Payment is requested in cash, to a personal account, or through a third country, and nothing is put in writing.
- You are told the permit or permanent residence is guaranteed. Nobody can guarantee an officer’s decision.
- You are advised to leave a previous refusal, a previous name, or a relative in Canada off the forms.
If you are already in one of these arrangements, stop before anything is filed. A situation you have not yet submitted is recoverable. A misrepresentation finding largely is not.
Who these routes do not suit
If you have no employer, no business of your own, no family member with status in Canada, and no completed Canadian study — there may be no work-permit route open to you right now, and we will tell you that rather than sell you a file. Wanting to work in Canada is not itself an eligibility category. In that position the honest options are usually a permanent-residence route based on your skills, or building the underlying facts first. Paying someone to manufacture the missing piece is how people end up barred.
How a work-permit file is built
Sequence matters more than speed
Most refusals we are asked to fix were decided long before submission.
- 1
Establish which axis you are on
Before anything else: is there a real employer, or is your case argued on your own business? That single answer decides which body of rules applies to you and rules out most of what you have been told.
- 2
Test the route against your actual facts
Your work history, your ownership of a business, your funds, your family’s status in Canada, your refusal history. A route either fits those facts or it does not — hope is not an input.
- 3
Fix what is weak before filing
Thin evidence of running a business, funds that appeared last month, gaps in employment history. These are fixable before submission and very expensive to argue about afterwards.
- 4
Assemble the file as one argument
A work permit application is read by an officer as a whole. Documents that contradict each other — different job titles, different dates, different names — do more damage than missing documents.
- 5
File, and disclose everything
Previous refusals, from any country, are disclosed. So is anything else the forms ask. Concealment is what turns a refusal into a misrepresentation finding, and those consequences last years.
We cannot guarantee an outcome and we do not claim to — the decision belongs to an IRCC officer. Read our no-guarantee policy. If you have already been refused, start here instead.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask
What actually is an LMIA?
Can I buy an LMIA or a job offer?
What is the difference between an open and an employer-specific permit?
Does an LMIA-exempt permit mean it is easier?
How much are the fees, and how long does it take?
Does a work permit lead to permanent residence?
I have been refused before. Is that fatal?
Find the route that fits your facts
Which work permit is actually open to you?
Tell us about your work, your business and your family situation, and we will tell you honestly which route applies — including when the answer is none of them yet.