You found the person you want. Now you're working out what it takes to employ them, and a search for "canada work visa" is usually where that starts. Before we get too far into it, it’s worth calling out one piece of jargon. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) issues work permits, not a document called a work visa. The term on every form you'll fill in is a Canada work permit.
As a Canadian company looking to bring in a new team member living outside of the country, the first thing to consider is if you actually need them in Canada. Does this role require the person to be in Canada, or does it require the person, wherever they already live and work?
There are two paths. If your hire needs to relocate to Canada, you're looking at work-permit sponsorship, and this guide covers what that asks of you. If they don't, you can often skip Canadian immigration by employing them where they are through an employer of record (EOR), a company that acts as the legal employer on your behalf in a country where you have no entity.
Please note this is practitioner guidance for HR and People teams, not legal advice. Every government figure below is sourced to IRCC or ESDC and dated.
What This Comes Down To
- Canada work permits are an employer-led process. You apply for the labour market test, not your candidate.
- The first question isn't which permit. It's whether the role requires Canadian presence at all.
- If your hire already has the right to work where they live, an EOR employs them there and no Canadian immigration applies.
- An EOR is the alternative to sponsorship, never a route to a work permit.
On this page
- Where does your new hire actually need to work?
- When do you actually need to sponsor a Canadian work permit?
- What is an LMIA, and how heavy is it really for an employer?
- Which work permits skip the LMIA, and when do they help?
- How long does visa sponsorship take, and how fast is the alternative?
- Sponsor a permit, engage as a contractor, or engage via an EOR?
- Canada work visa FAQs
Where Does Your New Hire Actually Need to Work?
Whether you need Canadian immigration depends first on where the role is performed and where your candidate already holds the right to work, not on which permit exists. Four questions settle it, and most employers can stop after the first.
1. Can the role be done from where they already live? If your candidate has the right to work in their own country and the job doesn't require Canadian soil, you likely need no Canadian immigration at all. What you need is a way to employ them locally, which an EOR does without you opening an entity.
2. Do you need this person physically in Canada? A client site, a lab, a regulated facility, a role that can't be remote. Only then does work-permit sponsorship enter the picture.
3. Do they already hold Canadian work authorization? A citizen, a permanent resident, or an open work permit holder needs no sponsorship from you. If you also lack a Canadian entity, an EOR can employ them compliantly.
4. If sponsorship is required after all, is the role LMIA-exempt? This can move your timeline by months, and it's worth checking before you start recruiting.
If you don’t need the person physically in Canada, and the person already holds the right to work where they live, Oyster can employ them in their current country of residence on a compliant local contract in as fast as 48 hours, so your Canadian company can work with them without a country move and a visa process.
If you do need the person physically in Canada, two authorities matter from here. IRCC issues work permits. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) runs the labour market test that most permits depend on, through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP).
When Do You Actually Need to Sponsor a Canadian Work Permit?
You need to sponsor a Canadian work permit when the role requires the person to be in Canada and they don't already hold Canadian work authorization. If either of those is untrue, sponsorship is usually the wrong tool for the job you're trying to do.
Three situations require it: relocating a hire to Canada, a role that has to be performed on Canadian soil, and an intra-company move into a Canadian office. Canada job visa requirements are, in practice, employer requirements, so read them as a description of your workload and not your candidate's.
There are two permit types, and the difference matters to you more than to your candidate. An employer-specific work permit names your company and the specific job on the permit document itself. It requires a job offer, and in most cases an LMIA. An open work permit lets the holder work for most compliant employers in Canada with no job offer and no LMIA, and IRCC limits it to specific situations.
That second type deserves a deliberate step in your process. Screening a shortlist for existing open work permit holders takes minutes and can remove months from your timeline. Most hiring processes raise the permit question after the offer, too late for that check to pay off.
Fees change, so check them at source. IRCC publishes current work permit and employer fees, covering the application fee, the employer compliance fee, the open work permit holder fee and biometrics. Budget for those and for the recruitment spend the labour market test obliges you to make.
Sponsorship also puts your own record on the line. IRCC publishes a list of employers found non-compliant under Canada's temporary worker programs, and says non-compliance can bring a monetary penalty, a temporary ban on hiring temporary workers, or both.
For a role that doesn't require Canadian presence, none of this applies, and employing the person where they already are is both faster and less exposed.
What Is an LMIA, and How Heavy Is It Really for an Employer?
A Labour Market Impact Assessment is a document from ESDC that determines "if the hiring of a temporary foreign worker will have a positive or negative effect on Canada's labour market." You apply for it, not the worker, and it's the single heaviest part of bringing someone to Canada.
A positive LMIA shows that no Canadians or permanent residents were available for the job and that a temporary foreign worker is needed. Two programs sit underneath that fact. The TFWP is the LMIA-based route ESDC administers, and the International Mobility Program (IMP) is the LMIA-exempt route IRCC administers. Everything in this section belongs to the first.
For high-wage positions, ESDC requires at least three different recruitment activities before you apply, including a Job Bank advertisement, with at least two of the others national in scope. The posting must run for a minimum of four consecutive weeks within the three months before you submit. You pay the highest of the Job Bank median wage or the range you pay current employees in the same role, counting guaranteed wages only.
ESDC charges a processing fee of $1,000 CAD for each position requested in most streams, per its published high-wage program requirements, checked August 2026. The same page sets a separate obligation: you must keep records of your recruitment and advertising for a minimum of six years.
That retention rule is the one employers underestimate. An LMIA isn't a form you file and forget. It's a six-year documentation obligation that ESDC can inspect, and ESDC publishes the names of employers found non-compliant.
The weight of that obligation is where the hidden decision sits. If the role can be done from where your hire lives, the LMIA question never arises, and neither does the six-year file. That's the planning value of the local-employment route.
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) sits at the end of this chain and decides admissibility at the port of entry, a separate judgment from the one IRCC and ESDC make. For the compliance picture beyond immigration, our guide to employment law in Canada covers what changes once someone joins your Canadian payroll.
Which Work Permits Skip the LMIA, and When Do They Help?
LMIA-exempt work permits fall under Canada's International Mobility Program and skip the labour market test, which removes months from the timeline. Exempt doesn't mean paperwork-free. You still submit an offer of employment through IRCC's Employer Portal and pay the employer compliance fee, which IRCC lists at $230 CAD unless you're exempted, checked August 2026.
Two routes matter to most employers. IRCC lists workers under a free trade agreement among the people you can hire without an LMIA, and CUSMA (formerly NAFTA) covers professionals, traders and investors from the United States and Mexico. For a qualifying US or Mexican professional, CUSMA is usually the shortest route into Canada, because it skips the labour market test entirely.
The second route is the intra-company transfer, and here is the structural catch worth naming. IRCC treats intra-company transferees with specialized knowledge as LMIA-exempt on significant-benefit grounds, and the route moves an existing employee into a Canadian arm of the same business. A company exploring an EOR usually doesn't have a Canadian arm, which is precisely why it's exploring an EOR. Knowing the door is closed is more useful than reading the category description.
International Experience Canada and reciprocal agreements cover a handful of other cases. Your role in those is small, since the participant drives the application and arrives with authorization in hand.
A word on sequencing. Exemption categories reward companies that already have Canadian structure or a candidate holding the right passport. If neither describes you, the exemption route closes and a full LMIA is what remains, which is worth knowing before you make an offer. Permanent residence sits outside this decision, and IRCC's site is the place to start if that becomes the plan.
How Long Does Visa Sponsorship Take, and How Fast Is the Alternative?
How long it takes to get a Canada work visa depends on stages that stack instead of overlapping. Sponsored timelines run in weeks to months, and the LMIA sits on top of the permit stage. The honest planning number is recruitment plus LMIA plus permit plus onboarding, not the permit figure alone.
Stack the stages and the gap between an accepted offer and a legal start date becomes visible:
- Recruitment before you can apply: a minimum of four consecutive weeks of advertising for a high-wage LMIA, per ESDC.
- LMIA processing: ESDC's published processing times reported averages of 88 business days for the high-wage stream, 73 for the low-wage stream and 10 for the Global Talent Stream in July 2026. ESDC notes these figures vary month to month with application volume.
- Work permit application: varies by the country your candidate applies from. Check IRCC's processing times tool for the current figure.
- Relocation and onboarding: whatever a move takes, including housing, schooling and a partner's job, plus a start date your candidate can plan a life around.
Now set that against the alternative for a hire who doesn't need to be in Canada. Employed in their home country through an EOR, they can be onboarded in as fast as 48 hours, with no entity to incorporate and no immigration queue to sit in.
Scope that comparison carefully. The 48-hour figure describes employing someone where they already have the right to work. It is not a claim about immigration speed, and no EOR shortens a Canadian permit timeline. What the local-employment route does is remove the immigration question from roles that never needed it.
There's a buying lesson underneath the numbers. When you're comparing speed figures, ask which stages each one covers, because a figure that quietly excludes the labour market test isn't describing your timeline.
Sponsor a Permit, Engage as a Contractor, or Engage via an EOR?
Employers hiring for a Canada-connected role have three routes. Sponsor a work permit and employ directly, engage the person as a contractor, or employ them in their home country through an employer of record. The right one depends mostly on whether the person needs to be in Canada at all.
Where relocation is the answer, Oyster's Visa Sponsorship service supports that case as a distinct piece of work from employing someone locally more often than the EOR model gets credited for. If the work has to happen on Canadian soil, or you're building a Canadian team you want direct control over, the sponsorship route and the entity route are what fit. Where relocation is the answer, Oyster's Visa Sponsorship service supports that case as a distinct piece of work from employing someone locally.
The contractor route deserves an honest word. A contractor in their home country can be the right engagement, and Oyster supports engaging contractors as well as employees. The exposure is misclassification, and it lands on you.
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) assesses the total relationship between worker and payer, weighing control, tools, subcontracting, financial risk and profit opportunity. Where CRA finds an employment relationship, "an employer who fails to deduct the required CPP contributions or EI premiums has to pay both the employer's share and the employee's share of any contributions and premiums owing, plus penalties and interest." Other countries apply their own tests, and the bill arrives retroactively.
For the EOR column, the things worth comparing aren't features. Oyster handles payroll, benefits administration, compliance, and local employment management for people in 180+ countries.What matters is who advises and manages the situation when a termination or a sick-leave dispute arises in a country where you have no in-house expertise
Oyster puts a dedicated in-country specialist on that call instead of a ticket queue, and our team reviews every local employment agreement before it goes out.
