Considerable media attention has been cast this past month on the issuance of work permits for Chinese miners to work in Northern BC.

Response to this news has resulted in lawsuits by unions and politicians promising to review Canada’s foreign worker programs.

However, the current process to obtaining work permits is far from easy.

There are numerous ways that foreign workers are able to obtain work permits in Canada, but the standard process is for an employer to obtain a labour market opinion (LMO) confirming

that there are no Canadians available to perform the job in question.

An LMO process is not a simple process - it is the choice of last resort.

The LMO application process requires employers to advertise for a minimum of two weeks in several different publications and often at considerable expense.

Job applications must be reviewed and assessed by employers, and in many cases applicants get interviewed. If there are Canadians citizens or permanent residents available for the job, employers are obligated to employ them first. Employers must demonstrate the results of their advertising efforts before a LMO will be issued.

LMO’s are frequently refused due to insufficient advertising efforts or insufficient information about the position being offered.

For large projects such as many of the projects being taken place in Northern BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, employers are able to get pre-approval from Service Canada for an LMO for a large volume of workers in a particular occupation and those workers can be identified at a later time. Those workers then have to individually apply for work permits at a Canadian visa office abroad.

The review of applications by Service Canada takes a long time with applications processing time varying across the country from 6 to 14 weeks.

It is not a process that employers can undertake lightly.

As an alternative to an LMO process there are several alternative options for obtaining work permits such as, intercompany transferees and bilateral trade agreement provisions such as the

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Corporations with offices abroad that choose to establish operations in Canada may transfer personnel from one corporation to another, but

only if they are coming as an executive, manager, or specialized knowledge worker.

Canada has several bilateral trade agreements, such as NAFTA which allow for the exchange of workers between these specific countries that are parties to the agreement, but it does not

mean that all workers can flow freely between those two countries. Each agreement has a schedule which lists the specific occupations that allow for the transfer of workers between the

two source countries.

Canada is currently involved in nearly a dozen ongoing negotiations for further bilateral trade agreements from across the globe, including the E.U, India, Israel, the

Ukraine, the Caribbean, and several other countries.

Canada also has a number of youth exchange provisions to allow for the exchange of young people between participating countries. These are often referred to as working holiday visas or

student work abroad program work permits. Under these programs young people from countries such as Australia, the UK, Ireland, Mexico, Poland and numerous others are able to obtain work permits from the Canadian visa office servicing their home country abroad, which will allow them to come and work in Canada. Similarly Canadian youth are able to seek work opportunities in foreign countries pursuant to these agreements.

Current statistics indicate that Canada is facing and will continue to face significant labour shortages for years to come. CIBC has just released a report identifying the top 25 occupations

in Canada facing skills shortages and listed among them are underground mine workers. The circumstances leading to the current scrutiny of Canada’s foreign worker system is interesting.

But a close review of the current process for employers to bring foreign workers to Canada demonstrates that it is anything but easy.

For more information contact Catherine Sas (csas@millerthomson.com). She is a Vancouver immigration lawyer.