Along with the myriad of pronouncements prioritizing and reprioritizing those eligible to travel to Canada for work since the onset of COVID-19, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has now announced, that priority processing will be extended to foreign workers coming to Canada to work in the film and television industry.
While processing of work permits at ports of entry for non-visa nationals travelling from the United States continues to be done essentially as it was done prior to COVID restrictions, IRCC has now indicated that applicants in the film/television industry arriving from non-U.S. destinations (or in the U.S. but requiring a visa) may now have their work permits processed under an expected 14 day service standard. Note that IRCC also indicates that identifying relevant applications could take 5 days, so in essence, this must be added to the 14 days, and of course, all time frames provided are estimates only.
To seek to take advantage of this new provision, applicants must submit their work permit applications online (as would any work permit applicant), and then submit a request using specified language through the IRCC web form platform. Thereafter, the request will be reviewed, and if qualified, will be processed in a priority fashion as noted above.
There are other priority work permit ‘streams’ that the government identifies as the COVID situation lingers (notably, those in essential services), and employers and employees should be aware of the availability of legal tools that can assist them in expediting work permits. This latest announcement will be important to anyone (employer or employee) involved in the film and entertainment industry.
The information in this article is for general purposes only, and not intended as legal advice for any particular situation.