Your LMIA says two years and your work permit says one: how the dates actually work
An LMIA that says two years does not give you a two-year work permit. The two documents carry different dates, set by different rules, and the gap between them catches out workers and employers in roughly equal measure.
IRCC refreshed its officer guidance on 21 August 2026 setting out exactly how the validity of an LMIA-based work permit is calculated. It is written for officers rather than applicants, which is precisely why it is worth reading. Here is what it says, and where the traps sit.
An LMIA carries two dates, and they do different jobs
The first is the validity date, printed as “Valid to”. That is the deadline by which IRCC or the CBSA must receive your work permit application. It says nothing about how long you are allowed to work.
The second is the duration of employment — the total period the employer has said they need the worker for, expressed in days, months or years. That is the figure that sets the length of the permit.
Confusing the two is the most common error in this area, and the guidance is blunt about it: the validity date “should not be confused with the duration of employment specified in the LMIA”. An officer must not issue a permit longer than the duration of employment, full stop.
Miss the validity date and the application is refused
This one is unforgiving. A work permit application received after the LMIA validity date has passed “should be refused”, because it no longer meets the requirements of section R200. There is no discretion being invited here. At a port of entry the position is the same: once the validity date has passed, that LMIA can no longer support the application.
What the validity date does not do is constrain IRCC after you have filed. Provided the LMIA was valid on the day your application was received, a long processing time does not retroactively spoil it. The date is a filing deadline, not a decision deadline.
Your passport is the ceiling
Section R52 requires a passport valid for the entire length of your stay, so where the passport expires before the LMIA duration runs out, the permit is cut to fit. The guidance gives the example plainly: an LMIA for two years against a passport expiring in one year produces a one-year work permit.
There is genuine relief attached to this, and it is widely missed. Where the permit was shortened only because of passport expiry, you can renew it without obtaining a new LMIA once you hold a passport with longer validity. Because you met the original filing deadline, the permit can be extended for the duration set out in the original LMIA, measured from your initial entry. Getting a new passport early is often the cheapest immigration step available to a worker in this position.
A permanent job does not mean a permanent permit
Where an employer files for a permanent position, the duration field reads “indeterminate/permanent”. That does not translate into an open-ended permit. The officer issues a maximum of two years, on the reasoning that this gives the worker reasonable time to file for permanent residence.
The consequence is a hard deadline that nobody sends you a reminder about. If no permanent residence application has been submitted inside those two years, a new LMIA is required. Employers who assume a permanent role produces a permanent permit tend to discover this with a few weeks to spare.
Filing while the LMIA is still pending: the 90-day window
This is the part worth knowing in advance, because it only helps you if the timing is already right.
Ordinarily you need a positive LMIA in hand before you file. By exception, IRCC will allow 90 days from submission for the applicant to produce one, holding the application rather than refusing it, and making a final determination at the end of that period. Four conditions have to be met together: the current work permit expires in two weeks or less; the prospective employer has submitted a complete LMIA application; that application went in far enough ahead of published processing times that a decision could realistically be made; and no decision on it has yet been issued.
Note what that second and third condition rule out. The guidance says directly that employers “should not submit the application for an LMIA immediately prior to the work permit application and expect that IRCC will allow for concurrent processing”, and that such requests are assessed on an exceptional basis. Concurrent processing is a remedy for an LMIA that is genuinely in the queue, not a way to buy ninety days by filing something at the last minute.
One practical detail: applicants are asked to enter the code CPTS2026 in the occupation field. It is used for tracking only, and its presence or absence does not affect the decision — but including it costs nothing.
Extending with the same employer
Where a worker is extending with the same employer on maintained status, the officer calculates the new period from the expiry date of the previous permit, not from the date the extension is approved. That keeps the total time worked aligned with the duration the LMIA authorised, and it means a slow decision does not quietly extend your authorisation at the far end.
What this means in practice
Three habits prevent most of the damage. Read the two LMIA dates separately, and diarise the validity date as a filing deadline. Check your passport expiry before your employer files, because that single date may be what caps your permit. And if permanent residence is the destination, treat the two-year permit on a permanent-position LMIA as the real deadline for filing, not as a comfortable runway.
If you are unsure which date is doing what on your own paperwork, the LMIA section of our help centre covers the common cases, and you are welcome to bring the documents to a consultation before anything is filed.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules and processing times change — confirm current requirements on canada.ca before filing. IRCC and the CBSA make all final decisions.
