Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has updated the
Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) application forms.
This update includes a new formula that relies on wages-paid,
instead of prevailing wage, for delineating between the
"high-wage" and "low-wage" application
streams. This change will likely result in a greater number
of applications qualifying as "high-wage", and will
increase access to 10-day expedited processing for the highest-paid
occupations. This change is retroactive to June 20, 2014 and
will affect already submitted LMIA applications.
Background
Recent reforms to the Temporary
Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) included the creation of two
application streams: "high-wage" and
"low-wage". In order to ensure the program was used
as intended, applicants in the "high-wage" stream are
required to prepare a plan to transition to a Canadian workforce.
This plan may include hiring and training Canadians and Permanent
Residents, actively
