You have a signed job offer from a Canadian employer. Maybe ESDC has already issued a positive LMIA. It feels like the hard part is behind you, and the work permit is just paperwork.<\/p>\n
But an officer looks at your employer again, against four separate tests, and a positive LMIA settles none of them. IRCC refreshed its instructions on 17 September 2026, and now, when an officer has a doubt, the letter arrives in your inbox while the evidence has to come from your employer within 15 days.<\/p>\n
These apply to every employer-specific work permit application, renewals included. Fail any one of them and the application is refused, because the requirements of section 200 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations have not been met.<\/p>\n
| The test<\/th>\n | What it means in practice<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n |
|---|---|
| The employer is “actively engaged” in the business<\/td>\n | The company genuinely trades \u2014 it provides goods or services and has a physical address in Canada. This one does not apply to offers of employment as a live-in caregiver.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| The offer is consistent with the employer’s reasonable employment needs<\/td>\n | A business of that type and size would plausibly need this role<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| The employer can reasonably fulfill the terms of the offer<\/td>\n | They can actually pay the wage, provide the hours and the benefits, for the whole length of the permit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| The employer, or a recruiter acting for them, has complied with employment and recruitment law<\/td>\n | Past and current violations of federal, provincial and territorial law can count<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n Open work permits sit outside all of this. There is no specific employer and no job offer, so there is nothing to assess.<\/p>\n “Actively engaged” is where small employers get caught<\/h2>\nIRCC gives officers two worked examples. In the first, a Toronto restaurant owner wants a sous-chef. The business has been open six years and employs 36 people, eight of them foreign nationals. An officer may well be satisfied.<\/p>\n In the second, the owner of a meal-delivery company wants a cook. The business is five months old, it has two other employees, and there is little trace of it online. The employer cannot produce T4s because the business is too new, cannot produce a lease because he runs it from home, and ends up sending order slips for produce bought last week. Here the officer may not be satisfied, because there is no evidence of employees being paid consistently, of goods being bought, or of a stable place for the worker to work.<\/p>\n Working from home is not itself the problem, and IRCC says so explicitly. A business selling handmade goods or providing digital services can reasonably run from a residential address, whereas a restaurant usually cannot. But a company with no employees that exists in name only, set up to bring foreign nationals into Canada, is not an operating business at all.<\/p>\n An officer looks harder when the business is less than a year old, when a search turns up something negative such as a closure, or when the employer appears on the public list of employers found non-compliant.<\/p>\n Does the job make sense for this business?<\/h2>\nThe occupation has to be one you would reasonably expect at that organization, and the employer has to show they actually need someone in it. IRCC’s three examples of offers that do not add up:<\/p>\n
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