OTTAWA — Work permit applicants in Canada will no longer be refused when the government takes longer than expected to process their employer's Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) updated its documentation on October 28, 2026, CIC News reported.
Source: CIC News
The updated page, “Labour Market Impact Assessment Review – Temporary Foreign Worker Program”, is a public-facing version of the instructions given to immigration officers. It now directs officers not to make a decision on a Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) work permit application until a decision has been made on the LMIA. The previous version told officers to hold the application for a maximum of 90 days while awaiting the LMIA decision, CIC News reported. IRCC had raised that limit from 60 days to 90 days on August 21, 2026.
Source: CIC News
The change affects concurrent processing, which allows an in-Canada worker to submit a TFWP work permit application while the employer's LMIA application is still pending. To qualify, the worker's existing permit must expire in two weeks or less, and the employer must have submitted the LMIA with enough lead time that Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) could reasonably have been expected to process it before the worker's permit expires, according to CIC News.
Source: CIC News
A worker in Canada who applies before the existing permit expires keeps maintained status — authorisation to keep working under the conditions of the existing permit until a decision is made on the new application. VisaVerge, which also reported the October 28 change, said applicants are instructed to enter CPTS2026 in the intended occupation field for tracking, and noted ESDC's August 2026 processing averages of 90 business days for high-wage cases and 82 business days for low-wage cases — timelines that could outrun the old 90-calendar-day hold.
Source: VisaVerge
Thousands of Punjabi and Indian workers in Canada — in trucking, warehouses, farms, food processing and construction — hold employer-specific TFWP permits tied to an LMIA. Under the old rule, a slow LMIA decision could sink a worker's extension through no fault of their own. That refusal risk is now removed, but the worker must still qualify for concurrent processing, apply before the permit expires, and stay in Canada to keep maintained status. This report is information only, not immigration advice — workers should confirm their own case on IRCC's official pages or with a licensed adviser.
The change is effective October 28, 2026, according to both reports. It does not change the LMIA process itself, the low-wage LMIA restrictions in some metropolitan areas, or any other work permit rules — it removes only the fixed deadline after which a pending-LMIA application could be refused.
Source: CIC News