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Foreign workers and personnel need a federal permit to work in Canada. Canadian-based employers who want to hire or transfer foreign personnel must first provide "labour validation" to confirm that Canadians are not available to fill the position, unless the potential employee qualifies for a validation exemption.
Validation exemptions exist under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade in Services and special programs.
NAFTA validation exemptions:
- Intra-Company Transferees (executives, managers and specialists)
- Professionals (about 60 designated occupations)
- Investors (key U.S. personnel involved in starting up a Canadian business)
- Business Visitors (U.S. and Mexican citizens engaged in specified activities, such as research, manufacturing, after-sales service, sales and distribution)
GATS validation exemptions:
- Intra-Company Transferees (executives, managers and specialists) to be employed in service activities specified in the General Agreement on Trade in Services
- Professionals (nine designated occupations, such as engineers)
Special program exemptions:
- Information Technology Workers, (designated specialists, such as Telecom Software Designers, Senior Animation Effects Editors, Embedded Systems Software Designers): A Simplified Entry Process for designated categories are effective until March 31, 2011. Employers who wish to hire foreign workers eligible for IT facilitated processing after March 31, 2011 will be required to apply for a Labour Market Opinion.
- Spousal Employment (spouses of managers and highly-skilled personnel): Spouses or common-law partners of skilled people coming to Canada as temporary foreign workers may themselves be authorized to work without first having a confirmed job offer. Eligibility requirements of the principal foreign worker which allow the spouse to qualify for a work permit can be found under section 5.38 of the Temporary Foreign Worker Guidelines (PDF, 1.26 MB) document.
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