A First LMIA, a Ticking Permit, and a Landscaping Job in Etobicoke

The situation

Adaeze came to Ontario to study horticulture and landscape management, and after graduating she stayed on a post-graduation work permit — an open, time-limited permit issued to international graduates that lets them work for any employer while they build Canadian experience. She found steady work with a small landscaping company in Etobicoke, one of those five-person outfits that does residential grading, planting and snow contracts through the winter. Her spouse, Ngozi, an early childhood educator, held an open work permit of her own as Adaeze's spouse, tied to the fact that Adaeze held valid status as a skilled worker.

Post-graduation work permits are not renewable. Once the permit expires, the clock does not reset — the person either transitions to another valid status or their authorization to work in Canada ends. With about eight months left on her permit, Adaeze asked her employer, Dawit, whether the company would sponsor her for a permanent position so she could move onto an employer-specific work permit before her post-graduation permit ran out. Dawit agreed. He had never done it before, and he assumed it would work roughly like posting a job ad and waiting for a government stamp of approval.

What the process actually required

An employer-specific work permit tied to a genuine job offer usually needs a Labour Market Impact Assessment first — a document issued by the federal labour department confirming that hiring a foreign worker for that specific role will not have a negative effect on the Canadian labour market, and that no qualified Canadian worker was reasonably available to fill it. Getting one is not a formality. The employer has to advertise the position in the way the program requires, for the length of time the program requires, at a wage that meets or exceeds the prevailing wage for that occupation and region — and has to be able to show, honestly, that it considered every Canadian and permanent resident applicant who applied.

Dawit had already posted the job once, informally, before Adaeze's role even came up — the kind of ad a small business owner writes in ten minutes to fill a gap. It did not meet the program's advertising requirements: wrong duration, wrong wording, and it undersold the wage compared to what the position paid in practice. Restarting the recruitment properly meant weeks the company had not budgeted for, and Dawit was frank that he wanted to shortcut it. He had already decided who the job was for. From his perspective, the ad was theatre.

The firm was equally frank back. A Labour Market Impact Assessment obtained on a recruitment process that did not actually happen as described is not just a paperwork risk — it can be refused outright, and refusals leave a mark that makes the next application harder. Worse, if it were approved and later found to rest on inaccurate recruitment claims, both the company's ability to hire foreign workers again and Adaeze's status could be jeopardized. There was no safe shortcut. The recruitment had to be real, which meant it had to take the time it takes.

What we did

1. Mapped the calendar backwards from the permit expiry date. We laid out every step — recruitment period, application preparation, government processing time for the Labour Market Impact Assessment, then the separate work permit application after that — against the roughly eight months remaining on Adaeze's post-graduation permit. The math did not work. Even a clean application, filed immediately, was likely to land close to or past the expiry date once normal processing delays were factored in.
2. Ran the recruitment the way the program required, not the way Dawit had first attempted it. We advised on the advertising duration, the channels required, and the wage that had to be posted to reflect the prevailing rate for a landscaping role at that skill level in the region — higher than what the company's original ad had listed. Dawit pushed back hard on the wage figure at first; it meant a real increase to what he intended to pay, not just to Adaeze but effectively to the role itself going forward.
3. Documented the recruitment outcome honestly. Several Canadian applicants did respond to the properly run ad. Genuinely assessing and, where appropriate, interviewing them — rather than treating the process as a foregone conclusion — was uncomfortable for a small employer who already knew who he wanted, but it was the only version of the application that could withstand scrutiny if it were ever questioned.
4. Filed a restoration of status alongside the work permit application when the timeline still ran short. As the permit's expiry date approached before the Labour Market Impact Assessment had been decided, we prepared an application to restore Adaeze's status, filed before her existing permit expired. Restoration allows a foreign national to apply to regain valid status within a defined window after a permit lapses, provided the application is filed before that window closes and the person otherwise qualifies — but it does not authorize working in the interim, which meant a period where Adaeze could not legally work while the applications were pending.
5. Negotiated the wage and the timeline with Dawit as a package. Dawit's real objection was cost, not process. We worked out a compromise: he accepted the higher, program-compliant wage as the price of a properly supported application, and in exchange we helped him understand which parts of the paperwork he could reasonably prepare himself for future hires, reducing what he would need external help with the next time he sponsored a position.

The outcome

The Labour Market Impact Assessment came back positive, and Adaeze's new employer-specific work permit was approved on the strength of a recruitment process that could stand up to review because it had actually happened. But it was not a clean win. Adaeze went roughly seven weeks without lawful authorization to work while the restoration and work permit applications were pending, which meant lost income for a household that had been budgeting around two paycheques and roughly $6,000 in savings set aside for filing fees and the cost of settling the new application. Ngozi's own open work permit, tied to Adaeze's status, was briefly in the same limbo until Adaeze's new permit was issued.

Dawit ended up paying a higher ongoing wage than he had planned to offer, and lost the landscaping crew's most experienced hand for almost two months during a stretch of the season the company could not really spare her. Neither side got the fast, low-cost outcome they had each pictured at the start. What they got instead was a Labour Market Impact Assessment and work permit that were actually valid — not a paper approval sitting on top of a recruitment story that would not have survived a closer look — and a small employer who now understood, for the first time, roughly what a genuine sponsorship costs and how long it actually takes.

Adaeze is back at work, on status that reflects what actually happened rather than a shortcut version of it. Ngozi's work permit renewed cleanly behind it. Dawit has since asked about sponsoring a second position, this time starting the recruitment process months before he needs the hire.

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