What is LMIA?
Before we can discuss employer requirements for LMIA, we have to understand what LMIA stands for. Labour Market Impact Assessment or LMIA is a process where companies that want to hire a temporary foreign worker can get permission for that worker to come into the country. LMIA is the proof that no Canadian citizen or permanent resident is ready, willing or able to fill a specific role within the organization.
The results of the LMIA are determined by the department of Employment and Social Development Canada or ESDC. The ESDC will check to see if the organization has met the employer requirements for LMIA before issuing the document which can take up to two months to process. It can be a long process to finish all the LMIA employer requirements so make sure you start early.
Before applying for the Labour Market Impact Assessment, your organization must have the following criteria:
- Have a legitimate business
- Offer goods and services to the public
- Can pay the salary of a foreign worker
- Has a genuine need for a foreign worker
- Has not laid-off employees in the previous 12 months
If your company meets all of these criteria you are eligible to apply for LMIA.
What are LMIA employer requirements?
The process of receiving an LMIA is one that takes a lot of preparation by an organization. The biggest employer requirement for LMIA is proving that the job you are hiring for has been advertised and offered to a Canadian or permanent resident before the foreign worker.
Employers must advertise the position for at least four weeks and hold candidate interviews to prove that they have tried to find a Canadian worker. When a candidate was interviewed but not chosen, the employer also has to prove that the candidate did not have the proper skills, job experience or qualifications in order to fill the position.
For the LMIA to be properly processed there will be a lot of statistical analysis. The department of Employment and Social Development Canada will break down the number of Canadian applicants for the position, the number of offers made to Canadian workers and the number of unqualified Canadian or permanent resident workers who applied for the job. These numbers will determine if the company is qualified for an LMIA.
Once this process is done and the LMIA is granted, the foreign worker is able to apply for a worker’s permit and come to Canada. To truly understand just how detailed the process is, we need to discuss the details involved in the employer requirements for LMIA.
Employer requirements for LMIA
Employer requirements for LMIA are broken down into four different streams:
- Higher-Skilled Occupation with High-Wage Workers
- Higher-Skilled Occupations with Low-Wage Workers
- Lower-Skilled Occupations with High-Wage Workers
- Lower-Skilled Occupations with Low-Wage Workers
These different streams each have employer requirements for LMIA which we will discuss below.
When looking at the streams it can be easier to understand the employer requirements for LMIA if we further break down the streams into “High-Wage Workers” and “Low-Wage Workers”.
Higher-Skilled Occupations / Lower-Skilled Occupations with High-Wage Workers
- Advertising must be done on a national or provincial job bank for at least 28 days and remain posted until the LMIA is issued.
- There must be two other sources of advertising the role, one of which must be national in scope
- Employers must complete a detailed transition plan (explained in the next section)
Higher-Skilled Occupations/Lower-Skilled Occupations with Low-Wage Workers
- Advertising must be done on a national or provincial job bank for at least 28 days and remain posted until the LMIA is issued.
- There must be two other sources of advertising the role, one of which must be national in scope
- Instead of a transition plan, there is a cap on how many temporary foreign workers you are allowed to have.
- Cap on Low-Wage Temporary Foreign Workers: If an employer is hiring for a sector with a demonstrated labour shortage, they may hire up to 30 percent of their employees through this stream. Otherwise, employers may hire up to 20 percent of their employees through this stream.
The above employer requirements for LMIA when hiring temporary workers are important to understand and obey as without following these requirements you will not be able to get a Labour Market Impact Assessment and your foreign worker will not be allowed into Canada.
LMIA employer requirements: employer transition plans
As we saw above, LMIA employer requirements are different for workers with higher wages than those with lower. Employers of foreign workers with higher wages must submit a transition plan that will explain how they will reduce their reliance on foreign workers over time. Employers have to be proactive when it comes to recruiting, hiring and training Canadian workers.
LMIA requirements for employers to prove they have a transition plan are:
- Participating in three additional recruitment activities that are not mentioned in the advertising requirements. This could be something such as using a recruitment agency in future searches for people to fill a position.
- One additional activity that targets under-represented groups within the Canadian population. This could be a recruitment technique that encourages candidates from the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities to apply for the position.
- One activity to help temporary foreign workers become permanent residents of Canada. An example of this type of activity would be to offer the foreign temporary worker a full-time permanent position that would allow them to apply to be a permanent resident.
Related: How Employment and Recruitment Agencies Work
Once the employer has explained how they will fulfill the above employer requirements for LMIA, they then have to prepare projected estimates of the numbers of Canadians/permanent residents they expect to recruit through these activities. They will also need to supply proposed timelines for the activities outlined.
Lastly, employers are required to report back to ESDC with the results of the activities they implemented as part of their transition plan. The results will be compared to their submitted projections and will be evaluated if the employer is audited or seeks to re-apply for an LMIA in the future.
Something important to note is that employers can request an exemption from the requirement to submit a transition plan. If they can prove that the position being applied for requires a unique skill set or is a contract or project-based position, they may not need to create a transition plan at all. This can be important for workers such as architects, engineers or professors who are coming to Canada for a specific purpose.
The LMIA process for organizations looking to hire temporary foreign workers is not easy. There are a lot of rules and procedures to follow, but with this article, it should be easier to understand and follow the employer requirements for LMIA.
