Hiring Foreign Workers

Four practical options, in the order we usually consider them.

Raise the wage above the threshold. The closure applies only to low-wage positions. Crossing the line moves you into the high-wage stream, where the closure and the cap do not apply, and shortens advertising from eight weeks to four.

Use a route that needs no assessment. An intra-company transfer, a CUSMA professional, or Mobilite Francophone for a French-speaking hire outside Quebec each skip the process entirely.

Hire at a location outside the closed area. The test is where the job is, not where your head office is.

Get designated under a community pilot. If you operate in a participating rural community, designation removes the assessment requirement altogether.

The government fee is $1,000 per position and it is non-refundable, including where the outcome is negative. It cannot be recovered from the worker in any form, and attempting to do so is a compliance violation.

Some applications are exempt: on-farm primary agriculture occupations, positions supporting permanent residence only, and certain caregiving roles where the person needs medical care or where childcare is for a child under 13 in a household earning $150,000 or less.

For processing, as at July 2026: low-wage averages 73 business days, high-wage 88, agricultural 23, seasonal agricultural 8, and the Global Talent Stream 10. Add the advertising period beforehand, which is four to eight weeks, and the worker permit afterwards. A positive decision is valid for six months.

For low-wage positions the general cap is 10% of the workforce at that work location. It rises to 20% for construction, food manufacturing, hospitals, nursing and residential care, and in-home caregiving in private households.

There is also a temporary easing for rural employers outside metropolitan areas, running from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, allowing a 15% cap or retention of an existing higher proportion. It requires the province to opt in. Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador and the Northwest Territories are participating. Alberta, Ontario and Nunavut are not.

If you have fewer than ten employees at a location, the formula still uses a workforce of ten, so the practical maximum is one worker under the 10% cap or two under the 20% cap. Part-time staff count as half. On-farm primary agriculture is not capped at all, and high-wage positions are outside the cap entirely.

It depends on the stream, and the low-wage requirements were tightened in 2026.

High-wage: four consecutive weeks within the three months before you apply, using three recruitment activities. One must be the national Job Bank and one must be national in scope.

Low-wage: eight consecutive weeks, using the Job Bank, mandatory outreach to youth aged 15 to 30, and two further methods each targeting a different underrepresented group, such as Indigenous peoples, newcomers, persons with disabilities, or asylum claimants holding valid work permits.

For both, Job Match must be set to default rather than strict, Direct Apply must stay enabled and applicants genuinely considered, at least one activity must remain live until the decision, and records must be kept for six years. Two online methods of the same type count as one.

Some occupations have variations. Primary agriculture needs only 14 calendar days, the entertainment sector needs none, and academics, air pilots and religious instructors each have their own rules.

No, and this is one of the most common compliance findings we see. The $1,000 fee cannot be paid by or recovered from the worker in any form, including a deduction from wages, a repayment agreement, or an informal arrangement.

The same principle applies more broadly. You must pay the wage and provide the working conditions set out in the offer, even if the worker agrees to something different afterwards. Consent is not a defence.

Penalties run from $500 to $100,000 per violation, capped at $1 million over one year, with bans of one, two, five or ten years, or permanent for the most serious findings. In the 2025 to 2026 year, 1,488 inspections were finalised, 12% found non-compliance, and penalties exceeded $10.2 million.

Yes, and for many employers it is the better answer. Four routes are covered on this page.

Intra-company transfer moves an existing employee from a related company abroad. It needs a genuine corporate relationship, and franchise or licensing arrangements do not qualify.

CUSMA covers citizens of the United States and Mexico, with 63 listed professional occupations plus traders, investors and transferees.

Mobilite Francophone covers French-speaking workers destined outside Quebec, at NCLC 5 or above in speaking and listening. It is badly underused, and it bypasses the wage threshold, the closure, the cap and the $1,000 fee.

Community designation under the Rural or Francophone Community Immigration Pilots costs nothing, needs no assessment, and leads to permanent residence for the worker.

Each still involves an offer of employment through the Employer Portal and the $230 compliance fee, but none requires advertising or an assessment.

The community designates employers, not IRCC, and there is no cost. Sault Ste. Marie is one of the fourteen Rural Community Immigration Pilot communities, and we work with it directly.

To qualify you must have operated continuously in the community for at least two years, be in good standing under employment standards and health and safety law, be hiring into a priority occupation the community has identified, and have at least 75% of your business work inside the community boundaries. You also complete two free training courses and agree to support the newcomer settling in.

Staffing agencies cannot be designated. Neither can a business owned or controlled by the candidate or their spouse, including indirect ownership above 50%, nor a business owned by an immigration representative.

The job offer must be full time at 30 or more paid hours a week, non-seasonal and indeterminate. There is an optional two-year employer-specific work permit while permanent residence is processed.

Talk to us before your next renewal rather than after. Several changes since 2024 apply to renewals as well as new hires, and employers are often caught out when a role that was straightforward two years ago is now in a closed city, over the cap, or limited to one year instead of two.

If you think something in your current arrangements may not match what was approved, raise it early. Voluntary disclosure before you receive a notice of inspection is treated as a mitigating factor. After a notice arrives, it is not.

Practical housekeeping that pays off: keep every recruitment record for six years, keep wages and duties aligned with the approved offer, and diarise the six-month validity of any positive decision so it does not quietly expire.