What Alberta asks of you
Reviewed 21 August 2026 against alberta.ca
Alberta assesses your business, not only your candidate. Before it looks at the person, it has to be satisfied that the business is legitimate, that it provides a good or a service in Alberta, that the job on offer is consistent with what the business actually does, and that you can deliver everything the offer promises. All of that has to be verifiable, and an application is declined where it is not, with no refund of the fee the candidate has already paid.
- Registered, and operating here. Incorporated or registered by or under an act of a province, a territory or the Parliament of Canada, and operating an established production capacity, plant or place of business in Alberta.
- Two complete fiscal years. Continuous and active operation in Alberta for at least two complete fiscal years before the application is submitted.
- A place people report to. A place of doing business in Alberta where employees can report to work regularly as needed and where work assignments are issued.
- A demonstrated need for the position. Either a valid work permit issued under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program or the International Mobility Program, or evidence that you made reasonable efforts to fill the role with a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Where the candidate is not already living and working in Alberta, the province uses the federal recruitment and advertising requirements as a broad guideline.
- Revenue and headcount, or a cap. At least $400,000 gross annual revenue for the most recent fiscal year and at least three full time or full time equivalent employees in Alberta, with independent contractors not counting. Fall short and you still qualify, but you are capped, at one nominee at two years of operation and one more for each further year.
- A signed declaration. The Employer Declaration and Authorization form has to be completed and signed by you. Alberta cannot consider the application without it, which makes it the single document most capable of stopping a file on your side.
Which streams need you, and for what
Alberta kept all four worker streams through the federal allocation cuts, and your role differs sharply between them.
| Stream | What you provide | How exposed you are |
|---|---|---|
| Alberta Opportunity | A full time job offer in the person's current occupation, plus the employer requirements and the signed declaration | High. Your paperwork is most of the file |
| Alberta Express Entry | Often nothing, because the stream selects from the federal pool. Where a job offer is claimed, every job offer and employer requirement applies to it | Lower, unless the offer is doing work in the score |
| Rural Renewal | A job offer in a designated community, and an endorsement letter from that community's economic development organisation which must set out your efforts to fill the role locally and what came of them | Highest. Your recruitment history is written into someone else's letter |
| Tourism and Hospitality | Approval as a tourism and hospitality employer, membership of an eligible sector association, and a role the person has held full time with you for at least six consecutive months | High, and it starts long before the application |
Alberta sets these criteria and revises them without notice. The stream pages linked here are written for the applicant and carry the eligibility detail.
The Tourism and Hospitality gate is a membership, not a form. Your business has to be a member of one of the sector associations Alberta lists, from the Alberta Hotel and Lodging Association to Restaurants Canada to Indigenous Tourism Alberta. If you genuinely cannot qualify for any of them, the province will consider an exemption where the associations say so in writing and you are listed as an Experience Provider with Travel Alberta. That is months of lead time, not days.
The job offer, and the two exclusions that catch people
The offer has to be bona fide, signed by you, and it has to be for work in Alberta. That last point is doing more work than it looks.
- Continuous paid work in an employer and employee relationship. Fee for service contracts are eligible for Alberta health care providers, and not otherwise.
- Full time, meaning at least thirty hours a week, for twelve months or more. Part time, casual and seasonal employees are excluded whatever their hours actually are.
- The wage rule. Provincial minimum wage, and then either the wage set out in your labour market impact assessment where there is one, or the lowest starting wage for that occupation across all industries in Alberta. Nothing from company ownership counts towards it.
- Not owners, contractors or agency workers. Independent contractors, business owners and temporary agency workers cannot be nominated, and that includes anyone listed as a director, shareholder or agent of your business on the Corporate Registry System.
- Home based work is excluded, but stream by stream. A place of employment in Alberta that is not zoned for commercial or industrial operations, such as a home based business, is excluded from the Alberta Opportunity, Rural Renewal and Tourism and Hospitality Streams. The province's sentence about the position under the Alberta Express Entry Stream is cut off mid clause on the live page, so we do not state it.
- Work outside Alberta is excluded outright. Someone working online from a location outside Alberta, or at premises outside the province, is not eligible under any of this, and no stream qualification is attached to that one.
The occupations Alberta will not take
The Alberta Opportunity Stream bars thirty four occupations, among them school teachers, teacher assistants, school principals, judges, real estate agents, athletes, actors, musicians, visual artists, artisans, casino occupations, taxi and limousine drivers, and harvesting, mine and landscaping labourers. Early childhood educators are barred unless certified in Alberta above level 1.
The Rural Renewal Stream bars seventeen, and most of that list is not on it. For teachers, teaching assistants, principals, real estate agents, taxi drivers and those labouring occupations, a job offer in a designated community is the difference between no Alberta route and a live one. Home child care providers and home support workers are on both lists, so these streams are closed to caregivers. Alberta revises both tables without notice, so we check them against the live page for each file.
Where these files actually fail
Rarely on the candidate. Usually on something on your side that was decided casually at the start.
- The declaration is never signed. Alberta cannot consider an application where the employer will not complete and sign the Employer Declaration and Authorization form. Establish that you will sign it before anyone pays a fee.
- The occupation code was chosen for convenience. The NOC code decides the language floor, whether the occupation is on either exclusion list, and which pathway the candidate is drawn in. A code that flatters the role is not a neutral choice.
- The wage sits below the lowest starting wage. It is a floor across all industries in Alberta, not a market judgement, and a wage under it undermines an otherwise strong candidate.
- Nominee capacity was never checked. An employer under the revenue and headcount thresholds can support only a set number of nominees, counted by years of operation, and a nominee who has left still counts. The candidate's fee is not refunded where you support more people than you are permitted to.
Where this sits against the rest of what we do. Hiring from abroad and the labour market impact assessment where the federal assessment is engaged, hiring someone already in Canada, keeping someone whose permit expires, moving staff between offices, becoming a designated employer, and staying compliant once someone is working for you.
Fees, and who pays each
| Fee | Amount | Who pays |
|---|---|---|
| Expression of interest | $135, payable within 24 hours of filing, non refundable | The candidate |
| Alberta application fee | $1,500, payable within 24 hours of submitting the complete application, non refundable. Alberta cancels an application that is not paid within 24 hours, and a cancelled application cannot be reinstated | The candidate |
| Labour market impact assessment | $1,000 for each position, where an assessment is needed | You, and it cannot lawfully be recovered from the worker |
| Employer compliance fee | $230, where the offer is exempt from an assessment, remitted and repaid under s. 303.1(6) if the permit is refused or if you withdraw the offer and request a remission before it issues | You, through the federal employer portal |
Alberta's own position is that an employer or an employment agency cannot charge an employee a fee for a job or an employment offer. The federal Regulations go further and prohibit recovering any recruitment cost from the worker, directly or indirectly.
The application fee is spent whether or not your side holds up. Alberta declines the application where the employer requirements are not met and does not refund what the candidate paid. That is the practical reason to settle the employer questions before the expression of interest goes in rather than after an invitation arrives.
The $1,500 runs on a clock, not a day count. Alberta requires the fee to be paid within 24 hours of submitting the complete application, online with a single credit or debit card. If it is not paid in that window the application is cancelled, and Alberta states that cancelled applications cannot be reinstated. The candidate must then submit a new expression of interest, pay the $135 again, and wait to see whether another invitation comes. Alberta does not qualify the 24 hours as business hours, so treat it as 24 hours from submission and have the card ready before the application goes in.
Status and currency
Alberta carries no open or closed wording for its worker streams. A statement that a stream is open is therefore an inference from live draws and remaining allocation, and we say so rather than dressing it up as the province speaking.
What Alberta does publish, and updates as the year runs, is better than a status label. For each pathway it gives the 2026 allocation, the nominations issued, the spaces remaining and the result of every draw. Read the line for the pathway you are in. At the last publication the Tourism and Hospitality Stream had twenty two nominations left against a pool of 3,490 people, which is the whole answer for anyone whose plan depends on it this year. Those figures and the ones on the Alberta worker streams page were taken at 12 August 2026. Allocation numbers move, so check the pathway line on the day you rely on it.