If you are sponsoring your spouse or partner from inside Canada, they can usually apply for an open work permit and work for almost any employer while the permanent residence application processes. It is filed alongside the sponsorship. Timing and status are what decide it.
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The open work permit goes with a sponsored spouse or partner who is in Canada — under the spouse or common-law partner in Canada class, and also under the family class where the outland applicant is living here. They must be at the same residential address as you in Canada, and IRCC must have confirmed the permanent residence application is complete. They also need valid or maintained temporary resident status, or to have applied to restore it, or to be covered by the public policy for spouses in Canada without status.
It is an open permit: any employer, almost any occupation, no job offer and no Labour Market Impact Assessment. The usual limits are that work in health care, childcare or agriculture requires an immigration medical exam first, and regulated professions still need provincial licensing.
If your spouse already holds a valid work or study permit, they can keep working or studying on it while the sponsorship processes. The open permit is still worth having, because it survives the loss of the job that the old permit was tied to.
File the open work permit application together with the sponsorship package. It cannot be approved before IRCC has confirmed the permanent residence application is complete, so filing it late simply adds months of unemployment to your household.
Nobody starts work until the permit is issued. Working before approval is unauthorised work, and it surfaces later in the permanent residence decision or in a future application. Get the document in hand first, however tempting the job offer is.
Where the file is being processed under the public policy for spouses without status, the open work permit generally waits until approval in principle. That gap is real. Plan your household finances around it rather than being surprised by it.
If your spouse's current permit expires while the sponsorship is processing, apply to extend before it lapses. Doing so gives maintained status, and they can generally keep working under the old permit's conditions until the new application is decided. Miss the expiry and that protection is gone entirely.
If status has already lapsed, there is a 90-day window to apply to restore it, and no work is permitted during that period. Past that window the options narrow quickly and usually involve leaving Canada.
Being out of status is not automatically fatal to an inland sponsorship. A public policy allows certain spouses in Canada without status to be sponsored from inside the country. It is conditional, and it is not permission to work in the meantime.
The open work permit used to be the main reason to file inland, but under the current public policy an outland applicant living in Canada with status can get one too, so the trade-off now turns on travel and appeal rights. The costs of filing inland are that leaving Canada during processing is risky, and an inland refusal carries no appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division. The only recourse is judicial review in the Federal Court.
An outland application is filed through a visa office abroad even where your spouse is physically in Canada. It usually allows freer travel, and a refusal gives the sponsor a full appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division, where new evidence can be heard.
The right choice depends on whether your spouse needs to work now, whether they need to travel, and how strong the relationship evidence is. We choose the route deliberately at the start, rather than by default.
Once the open work permit is issued, not when it is applied for. Filing it together with the sponsorship package is what makes it fast. Starting work before the permit arrives is unauthorised work and can damage the permanent residence application it was meant to support.
Often yes. The open work permit public policy covers applicants under the spouse or common-law partner in Canada class and also spouses, common-law and conjugal partners applying under the family class, provided they are in Canada, live at the same address as the sponsor, and hold valid or maintained temporary resident status or have applied to restore it. What decides it is being in Canada with status once IRCC has acknowledged the permanent residence application, not whether the file was made inland or outland.
Apply to extend it now. Applying before the expiry date gives maintained status, and she can generally keep working on the same terms while the extension is decided. If it has already expired, there is a limited window to apply for restoration and no work is allowed during it. Act immediately.
For almost any employer, in almost any job. Work in health care, childcare or agriculture requires an immigration medical exam first. Regulated occupations such as nursing, teaching or the trades still require provincial licensing, which no federal work permit provides.
Our flat fee is published, taxes included, and covers preparing and filing the sponsorship, the permanent residence application and the open work permit as one package. IRCC's fees, the right of permanent residence fee, biometrics and medical exams are separate and billed at cost, estimated in writing first.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.