The high-wage LMIA in Canada

Required with every high-wage application. It sets out what the employer will do to recruit, retain and train Canadians and permanent residents, and to reduce reliance on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program over time.

It is also cumulative. Where an employer has filed a transition plan before for the same position at the same work location, the new application reports on what came of the earlier commitments. A plan written as boilerplate the first time becomes a problem the second.

ESDC exempts a defined set of positions from the requirement: in-home caregiver positions with private household employers and health care provider positions at health care institutions, under specified industry and occupation codes; positions under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, the agricultural stream and other primary agriculture occupations; and a specialized occupation qualifying for Quebec's facilitated process, on the first request only.

Three different recruitment activities before the application is filed, not one. ESDC sets that as a minimum.

One of them has to be the Government of Canada Job Bank, and an employer choosing an alternative has to submit a written rationale explaining it. Where the position is advertised on Job Bank, the Job Match service has to be used.

The advertisement runs for a minimum of four consecutive weeks within the three months before the application is submitted. Consecutive is the operative word, and three months is the window, so advertising done a year earlier does not count.

At least one of the three activities has to remain ongoing until the day a positive or negative decision is issued. That is the requirement most often missed, because it runs past the filing date rather than stopping at it.

An employer may request an employment duration of up to three years, and ESDC states the duration has to align with the reasonable employment needs of the business. Longer is possible in exceptional circumstances where the employer provides an adequate rationale.

Three years against the low-wage maximum of one year is the practical reason the threshold comparison is worth doing carefully before anything is filed.

ESDC also prioritizes certain occupations it treats as essential, across every province and territory except Quebec, which runs its own list. That prioritisation is not a trump card: ESDC states that any refusal to process supersedes it.