Canada to introduce 2-year work permit eligibility for spouses of temporary workers from Jan ‘23

Canada immigrants policy: Canada's government will introduce a two-year temporary measure to expand work permit eligibility to spouses, common-law partners, and working-age dependents of temporary workers across skill levels from January 2023. This would include families of workers in sectors such as healthcare, trades, and hospitality. The measure would impact around 200,000 foreign workers and their family members. 

The policy will be implemented in three phases, beginning with enabling family workers to apply for an open work permit. This will be followed by expanding policy ambit to family members of workers from the low-wage stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program after consultations and consultations with agricultural companies and other stakeholders to assess the operational feasibility for expanding the measure to family members of agricultural workers, as per the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada release.

Before this, spouses of those working in a high-skill occupation were only eligible for a work permit. As



per the release, “This temporary measure aims to improve the emotional well-being, physical health and financial stability of workers by keeping families together.”

Through this measure, the Canadian government aims at addressing the country’s labour shortages and helping employers with staffing needs across skill levels. According to Canada Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance Randy Boissonnault, labour shortage is the biggest challenge for the country’s tourism industry. 

Boissonnault said, “Labour is the number 1 challenge facing Canada’s tourism sector as we position ourselves for post-pandemic growth. Today, our government is bringing in innovative, family-based solutions to resolve this issue and help our tourism partners grow to meet the global demand for Canadian experiences from coast to coast to coast.”

Canada issued around 645,000 work permits between January and October this year, four times higher than the 163,000 work permits issued in the same period last year.