Service Canada provides an LMO to the employer and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The LMO is an assessment of the likely impact that the hiring of foreign workers may have on the Canadian labour market.

Categories of Occupations Generally Requiring LMOs

High-Skilled Occupations: Requests to hire skilled foreign workers (i.e., in high-skilled occupations) usually require an LMO, but as previously noted, some categories of work do not require an LMO.

Lower-Skilled Occupations: Requests to hire foreign workers in occupations that usually require at most a high school diploma or job-specific training will likely require an LMO.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers: Requests to hire seasonal agricultural workers from any foreign country will require an LMO.

Live-in Caregivers: Requests to hire live-in caregivers (i.e., under the Live-in Caregiver Program) will require an LMO.

If the Job Offer Requires an LMO

You will be required to complete an Application for a Labour Market Opinion and submit it to the appropriate Service Canada Centre serving your region.

Service Canada considers the following factors in an LMO application:

• The occupation in which the foreign worker will be employed
• The wages and working conditions offered to the foreign worker
• The employer’s advertisement and recruitment efforts to hire Canadians/permanent residents
• The associated labour market benefits that may occur from hiring the foreign worker (e.g., transfer of new skills/knowledge, creation/retention of jobs, etc.)
• Consultations with organized labour if the position the foreign worker will fill is part of a bargaining unit
• Determination of the entry of the foreign worker is likely to affect the settlement of an ongoing labour dispute

Please note that for certain occupations, you (the employer) may also be required to submit an employment contract which will be considered as part of the LMO assessment.

Employers applying to hire temporary foreign workers will now have to pay a processing fee under promised changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Jason Kenney, the minister of employment and social development, announced on Wednesday.

Changes that went into effect on July 31 include a $275 processing fee per position, along with new language and advertising requirements.

The new fee is intended to cover the administrative costs of processing requests for a labour market opinion, which is usually required to prove the need to hire a temporary foreign worker. There is no refund if the LMO is rejected, and employers are not to recover the fee from the workers.

The new fee will ensure that “taxpayers no longer pay the cost of processing employer applications for temporary foreign workers,” Kenney said in a news release issued Wednesday.

In 2012, 60 percent of positive LMOs did not lead to a work permit being issued to a temporary foreign worker, which means taxpayers’ dollars were spent to process applications that were never used, Kenney explained.