A Labour Market Impact Assessment is Employment and Social Development Canada's decision that hiring a foreign worker will not harm the Canadian labour market. It costs $1,000 per position, it is not refundable, and the rules have tightened. Check the exemptions before you apply.
Our charges include applicable taxes. Disbursements are extra and billed at cost — itemized upfront, in writing, never hidden.
From $3,388.87 taxes included
More than fifty LMIA exemptions exist under the International Mobility Program — intra-company transferees, professionals under CUSMA and other trade agreements, reciprocal employment, significant benefit, and more. If your hire fits one, you skip the LMIA entirely, save the $1,000, and move in weeks instead of months.
Exempt hires are not obligation-free. The employer submits the offer of employment through the Employer Portal, pays an employer compliance fee, and takes on the same inspection exposure as a Temporary Foreign Worker Program employer.
We test the exemptions first on every file. The employers who lose a quarter to a refusal are usually the ones who went straight to an LMIA because a recruiter told them to.
Which stream you are in depends on whether the wage you offer is above or below the wage threshold for the province or territory where the work is located — since 8 November 2024 that threshold is the applicable provincial or territorial median hourly wage plus 20 percent. The figure is published and updated, and being a dollar under it changes everything about your application.
Low-wage positions carry a cap on the proportion of temporary foreign workers at a given work location — currently 10 percent, with sector exceptions — plus obligations around transportation, ensuring housing is available, and providing an employment contract in the worker's chosen official language.
Service Canada may also refuse to process low-wage applications in census metropolitan areas where the unemployment rate is at or above 6 percent. The list is refreshed quarterly. An application filed in the wrong quarter, in the wrong city, is never assessed on its merits at all.
Recruitment. Each stream has mandatory advertising requirements: where the ad must run, for how long, and what it must say. Advertising placed on the wrong platform or run for too short a period is the single most common technical refusal.
Business legitimacy. Service Canada wants proof the business is real and genuinely needs the position: financial statements, payroll records, a business licence, and a consistent account of why the role exists. New businesses attract more scrutiny, not less.
Wage and job description mismatches. If the advertised wage, the LMIA request, the employment contract and the actual duties do not line up, the file stalls. So does a job description visibly written around one person rather than around a role.
The worker still needs a work permit. A positive LMIA is a required input, not the permit itself, and it is time-limited. It has to be used within its validity period or the whole exercise repeats at your expense.
You are now an inspectable employer. Employment and Social Development Canada can inspect for years afterwards, checking that wages, duties and conditions match what you promised. Consequences range from warnings through substantial monetary penalties to a public listing of non-compliant employers.
Note that an LMIA-backed job offer no longer earns points in Express Entry — those points were removed in 2025. If the plan was to move a worker toward permanent residence, an LMIA is no longer the lever it used to be, and the PR-support stream has to be assessed on its own terms.
Employment and Social Development Canada charges $1,000 for each position requested. It is not refunded if the application is withdrawn, cancelled, or refused on the merits. It is not charged where the application is refused processing, or where the employer is ineligible. Our legal fee is separate and published up front.
Often, yes. More than fifty exemptions exist under the International Mobility Program, including intra-company transfers, CUSMA and other trade agreement categories, and significant benefit. Exempt hires still require an offer of employment submitted through the Employer Portal and payment of the employer compliance fee.
That is usually a refusal to process. Service Canada can decline to process low-wage applications in metropolitan areas where the unemployment rate has reached the published threshold, and applications above the low-wage cap for a work location may also not be processed. Both depend entirely on where and when you file.
It has a defined validity period, and the worker's permit application has to be made within it. Plan the recruitment, the LMIA and the work permit as a single timeline. Treating them as three separate projects is how employers end up paying for the same position twice.
Not the way it once did. Points for an arranged employment offer were removed from Express Entry in 2025. There is a separate LMIA stream designed to support a permanent residence application, and provincial nominee programs still value employer support, but each has its own requirements and its own timing.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.