Canada Scraps 90-Day Cap on Work Permits Awaiting LMIA Decisions, Effective October 28
Ottawa, Canada, October 28 — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has updated its processing instructions and scrapped the 90-day cap on concurrent processing of work permits under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. For eligible in-Canada workers, officers must now wait for a decision on the employer's Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) before deciding the work permit application, and may no longer refuse it simply because the wait has run long. The change took effect the same day and directly affects foreign workers in Canada, including Chinese workers renewing their permits.
Concurrent processing applies to workers already in Canada whose existing permit expires within two weeks and whose employer submitted the LMIA application with enough lead time that Employment and Social Development Canada could reasonably have processed it before the permit expired. Workers who file a compliant extension application before their current permit expires generally keep maintained status and may keep working under the conditions of their existing permit until a decision is made.
The waiting cap had only just been raised from 60 days to 90 days on August 21, 2026; it has now been removed entirely.
The change is separate from the Express Entry change taking effect November 3, under which LMIA job offers will no longer be mandatory for extra points in high-wage occupations, and separate from the new penalties for paid immigration and citizenship representatives that also took effect in Canada on October 28.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 加拿大议会山中央大楼与和平塔（渥太华）。图：Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0。 / Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Photo via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
