FIDERA LAW
Canadian immigration law

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For employers · By province

The federal layer is the same everywhere. The provincial layer is not.

The labour market impact assessment, the work permit and the compliance regime do not change when you cross a provincial line. What changes is which nominee streams need you at all, what the job offer and the wage have to be, and whether the province makes you register or be designated before any of it starts.

Book a discovery call Choose a province What varies by province

What is the same everywhere

Three things do not change when you cross a provincial line, and they are the three that cost money. Read them once and you can treat them as fixed for every province below.

  • The labour market impact assessment, or an exemption from it. Whether you need one, what it costs and what it asks of you is a federal question decided by Employment and Social Development Canada, and it is the same in Halifax as it is in Kelowna. How the assessment works, and what it asks of you.
  • The work permit itself. Permanent residence is what a province nominates for. The permit that lets someone work while that is decided is issued federally, and where it is employer specific you submit the offer of employment through the federal Employer Portal and pay the $230 compliance fee before the worker applies. Subsection 303.1(6) of the Regulations remits that fee, and requires it to be repaid to whoever paid it, if the permit is refused or if the offer is withdrawn and a remission requested before the permit issues.
  • The compliance regime. Inspections, record keeping, the duty to provide the same job at the same wage, and the penalties for getting it wrong are federal and identical across the country. What compliance actually requires.

One rule inside all three deserves saying on its own. The Regulations prohibit you, and anyone recruiting for you, from charging or recovering any recruitment cost from the worker, directly or indirectly. The compliance fee is inside that prohibition. Two of the provinces below repeat it in their own guides, which tells you how often it is breached.

What changes at the provincial line

Three things, and they are the reason this section exists. A page about hiring in Canada that does not answer them is not answering the question you actually have.

  • Which streams need an employer at all. Some provincial routes are built around your job offer and fail without it. Others reach people already working for you and need no offer, only your records. The difference decides whether you are running a recruitment file or a documentation exercise, and it is often cheaper to be in the second.
  • The job offer and the wage rule. Whether the offer must be permanent and full time, which occupations qualify, and above all how the wage floor is set. Ontario measures the offer against the median wage level for the occupation and region on the federal Job Bank. Nova Scotia measures it against provincial employment standards and the published wage range for the occupation. New Brunswick asks that the base wage sit inside the Job Bank range for that occupation and region and be consistent with your own pay structure. Those are three different tests and a wage that clears one can fail another.
  • Whether the province makes you register, or be designated. Ontario requires you to register your business in its Employer Portal and then obtain approval of the specific employment position, which is a decision made about you rather than about the candidate. Nova Scotia requires a commercial employer to be registered with the Registry of Joint Stock Companies and to have operated in the province for two years, and may require an Employer Registration Certificate from the Director of Labour Standards. New Brunswick requires a valid registration with the Registry of Employers of Foreign Workers, which is free, runs for one calendar year and is renewed annually. In the Atlantic provinces there is a fourth possibility, being designation under the Atlantic Immigration Program, which is a separate status you hold before any candidate exists. Designation is set out on its own page.

Underneath all of this sits a question no province asks in writing and every province assesses, which is whether the job is genuine. Revenue tests, headcount tests, signage and telephone tests, and the two years or three years of operating history are all proxies for it. That is worth knowing before you read them as bureaucracy.

Choose a province

Nine provinces, each written for the employer rather than the candidate. Each page carries the date it was last checked against that province's own published material, because these rules move.

a

Ontario

Eight streams became one in June 2026. You register in the Employer Portal, submit the job offer, then seek approval of the employment position inside 14 days of an invitation. Revenue and headcount tests by region.

Explore → b

Nova Scotia

Registration with the Registry of Joint Stock Companies, two years operating, and a recruitment file of three advertisements unless you hold an assessment naming the worker.

Explore → c

New Brunswick

The most restricted program we have reviewed. Registry of Employers of Foreign Workers, 24 months operating, and sector bars that decide files before the requirements do.

Explore → d

Prince Edward Island

The province that publishes its draw dates a year ahead, and the one that asks a designated employer for a Certificate of Legal Advice.

Explore → e

Newfoundland and Labrador

Three quarters of the nominations are reserved for people already in the province, and no invitation is issued without a job offer.

Explore → f

British Columbia

Rebuilt on 23 April 2026 around care, construction and high wage work, with targeted draws only.

Explore → g

Alberta

The one program that did not restructure. Four streams intact and a published points grid your candidate is scored against.

Explore → h

Manitoba

No general draw has been held all year, and the province changed how graduates are selected in June 2026.

Explore → i

Saskatchewan

A sector tier system that now decides more than the stream does, against a published points grid.

Explore →
j

Elsewhere in Canada

Yukon and the Northwest Territories run their own nominee programs and Nunavut has none. Quebec selects its own economic immigrants under a separate agreement and is outside the scope of this practice.

Not covered

Where a province's page is newer than this one, take its date rather than ours. The descriptions above are program shape, not requirements.

The order to do this in

Most employer files that fail were sequenced wrongly rather than argued wrongly. This is the order that works.

  1. Fix the work locationIt decides which province's rules apply, and inside Ontario and several other provinces it decides the wage floor, the revenue threshold and the headcount test as well.
  2. Classify the role honestlyThe occupation code drives the wage, the language floor, the experience requirement, and in some provinces whether the occupation is barred outright. It is defined by the duties, not by the title on your letterhead.
  3. Check the province's restrictions before its requirementsA candidate can satisfy every published criterion and still be outside the program, because sector and occupation bars usually sit on a notices page rather than in the stream description.
  4. Sort your own statusRegistration, designation, operating history, revenue and headcount are assessed about you and are slow to fix. Start them before the candidate conversation, not after it.
  5. Build the recruitment file as you recruitAdvertisements, dates, publications and the reasons candidates were not hired. Reconstructing this afterwards is the single most expensive thing we are asked to do.
  6. Then decide the immigration routeIncluding whether the person you already employ has a route that needs no offer and no assessment at all.

Tell us where the work is

The work location decides which of these regimes you are in, and often the wage floor and the tests applied to your business as well. Tell us that and the role, and we will map what each route asks of you before you commit to one.

Book a discovery call Email us

Employer discovery calls are free. Where a matter goes beyond a single hire, the discovery call leads to a scoped proposal or a monthly retainer rather than an hourly estimate. Where an applicant and their employer both want it, and both give informed consent, we can act for the two of you together on the immigration file. Where a joint retainer would not be appropriate, we say so at the outset.

Frequently asked questions

Which province's rules apply to a hire?

The province where the work is done, not the province your head office is in. Every nominee stream we have reviewed fixes the employer's obligations to the work location, and several set the wage, the revenue test or the headcount test by the region inside the province where the employee will work or report to work. If you have offices in more than one province, the choice of work location is a choice of legal regime.

Does a provincial route replace the labour market impact assessment?

Not by itself, and this is the most common misunderstanding we see. The nominee programs decide permanent residence. The assessment, or an exemption from it, decides whether the person may work in the meantime. They are separate instruments and they run on separate timetables. What a provincial route can do is remove the need for an assessment as evidence of recruitment, which is not the same thing. Ontario, for instance, waives its recruitment evidence where you hold a positive assessment for the same occupation and position.

Do we have to register as an employer?

It depends on the province, and there are two different things that go by that name. One is registration with the nominee program, which Ontario requires through its Employer Portal before a job offer can exist in the system at all. The other is a labour standards registration for employing foreign workers, which Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both operate and which has nothing to do with immigration selection. New Brunswick's is free, lasts one calendar year and must be renewed. Each province page states its own position and carries the date it was checked.

Can we recover our costs from the worker?

No, and this is the one rule we would ask you to read twice. The federal Regulations prohibit an employer, and anyone recruiting for them, from charging or recovering any recruitment cost from the worker, directly or indirectly. The employer compliance fee of $230 sits inside that prohibition. Nova Scotia says separately in its own guide that you must not deduct the costs of bringing a foreign worker to Canada from their wages, and New Brunswick says the compliance fee cannot be recuperated from the worker in any way. Provincial application fees charged to the candidate are a different matter, and who pays them is a commercial question.

We already employ the person. Is that easier?

Usually much easier, and it is the case employers most often overlook. Several provinces now reserve most of their capacity for people already living and working in the province, and some of their routes need no new recruitment file and no assessment. What they need instead is documentation only you can produce, being reference letters that track the occupation, payroll that reconciles to them, and dates that sit inside authorised work.

Is Quebec covered here?

No. Quebec selects its own economic immigrants under a separate agreement with Canada and is outside the scope of this practice. Yukon and the Northwest Territories run their own nominee programs, which we have not written up, and Nunavut has none.

Where to look next

The same nine, for your candidate

Provincial nominee programs

Every province written from the applicant's side. Worth reading, since it is what your candidate will have read before they speak to you.

See the programs → Everything else

All employer services

Hiring from abroad, hiring someone already here, keeping people whose permits expire, transfers, designation and compliance.

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