February 12, 2012 – Citizenship and Immigration Canada published on Tuesday a notice on Changes to strengthen employer accountability under the International Mobility Program. These changes will not affect performing arts presenters.
The notice states that “employers hiring foreign nationals who are exempt from the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) process will be required to submit information about their business or organization, the Offer of Employment form, and pay a fee to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.”
This new policy will not apply to performing arts presentation engagement. Presentation engagement are “time-limited engagements” that fall under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program stream. This new policy applies to the International Mobility Program stream created in June 2014. Moreover, information obtained from CIC specifies: “Employers will be exempted from paying the $230 fee only when foreign nationals are already exempted from payment of $155 work permit fee.” Time-limited engagement of foreign performing artists are indeed exempt from work permit.