Mark Holthe 0:02
Welcome back everyone to another edition of the Canadian immigration podcast. This is episode 167 of our Express Entry getting it right series. In this case, we're going to talk about Canadian work experience. And normally people think, what's the big deal? Well, there is a big deal, isn't there? Alicia,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 0:19
yeah, especially that we've had an educators draw, so we actually had the first round of invitations for people who are in education. And so I was thinking about this, and Igor and I were chatting, and he said, Oh, yeah, thinking about teachers and what happens during summers, and can they claim full time work experience, or what happens to their hours of work when they're creating their Express Entry profile, or if they did it on their own, and they now have an ITA and they're trying to make sure that they meet those points. What are they going to need to think about when they are looking at claiming Canadian work experience points?
Mark Holthe 0:56
All right, let's dive right in here. So right off the bat, let's talk about what it takes to qualify at least with your work experience that you're getting in Canada. What are some of the requirements and what are some of the things that are going to be excluded?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 1:11
Yeah, and so the big thing on this is that there's no self employment. And so if you are claiming Canadian high skilled work experience points that has to be within the high skilled tier level. So that means tier 012, or three, anything within a tier four or five. So that's the second digit in your five digit, not code is not going to qualify. So again, it has to be high skilled work, and there is no self employment. So it has to have been when you were paid by a third party employer, and that is super important. And
Mark Holthe 1:45
this is something Alicia that we run into problems with when people are coming in, and let's face it, there's a lot of people, if you can't find work, then people think, well, you know what, I'll start my own employment like, you know, I had a client who started a food truck, and while he was on his post grad work permit, and it was super, super profitable for him. He was making really good income, and so we worked at this food truck that he'd started. You know, I don't know if it was tacos or what he was selling, but, but he did this for over a year, and it was so sad having to tell him, you're gonna have to sell this business and then have the owner rehire you in order to start claiming Canadian work experience, and we run into this a lot with people who are looking to immigrate to Canada, and they think, or they get advice from someone, come set up a business, and you can, you know, or most, in most cases, when people are on open work permits already, like spousal open work permits, and then the family starts a business, right? But this doesn't work for Canadian Experience Class No.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 2:42
And the reason it doesn't is because of regulation 87.1 sub three, and that one says that any periods of self employment, also unauthorized work in Canada, will not be included in calculating periods of work experience. And that's further reiterated in the ministerial instructions. And so it is important to know that also under Regulation 87 that applicants don't have to have been employed at the time that they submit their eapr application, but they must have had temporary resident status during the qualifying period of work experience acquired in Canada. And this is going to come back, because we're going to talk about vacation.
Mark Holthe 3:21
All right, let's slide over here. Okay, so let's talk about hours of work. Alicia, so what is actually required?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 3:32
And this is something that can become extremely difficult and fraught, and so you and I, Mark, literally, we have like a CEC hours of work calculation tool. We get people to put it in the spreadsheet. Sometimes, when it gets really complicated, I have people put it in their own Excel spreadsheet, and they literally do a very detailed hours of work calculation that includes the actual hours, that includes hours per week or part of a week, whether it's a half week or a full week, and then they look at their full months and then years of employment, because what we're dealing with is it has to equate to a full year. So within it a 12 or 24 month period, it has to equal 30 hours per week, 1560 hours. And there's a few ways that people can meet that requirement, either the nicest, cleanest, easiest way, of course, would be one year. You work for one employer. It's continuous. You work over 30 hours every single week, Monday to Friday. There's no breaks. It's all in one job. It's full time, for sure, that would be great, but we know that life is messy and you don't always work 52 weeks for one employer, 30 hours a week. But that would qualify for sure, because then we know yes, it meets all the requirements. There are other ways of calculating it. And if you actually look at the IRCC website, when it looks when you look at CEC qualifying work experience and minimum eligibility requirements. Yeah, the second option is equal amount in part time work. So it says, yeah. You can scroll down here and there's that little gray box, exactly so equal amount in part time work. For example, they say 15 hours a week for 24 months equals a year of full time. 1560 hours. You can work as many part time jobs as you need to meet this requirement, keep in mind, they still have to be high level, so high skilled tier, level 012, or three jobs, but you could cobble different ones together here, however, is the caveat. The caveat is that the ministerial instructions and the regulations say that you cannot in any given week, you cannot claim more than 30 hours. So let's say you work 25 hours in one job and 25 hours in another job, you can't claim you worked 50 hours in that week, and then it gives you extra credit for the next week. So you're capped at a 30 hour in any given week, no matter how many jobs you're working. This also comes up when I've had clients who are working in Canada jobs, and then they were working remote jobs outside of Canada as well, like in IT consulting, for example. So be super careful if you're kind of banking on the fact that you've got foreign work experience and Canadian work experience, but you're looking at exactly the same week for both of those, only one of them will count. So you'll have to decide whether that you're going to go for the Canadian work experience or the foreign work experience for that particular week. The last scenario,
Mark Holthe 6:33
Alicia. This comes up a lot for people who are trying to find ways to stay in Canada. And one of them, as people are kind of clueing in, is, hey, if I can gain foreign work experience up to one year, then I could potentially get those extra points within the comprehensive ranking system. And some people are looking at, well, if I can get foreign work experience in one of the category based draws, which is arguably that's much more different difficult these days, in the in the days when we had tech in STEM, maybe you could argue that. But this is a problem. So they're trying to claim both Canadian work experience and foreign work experience at the same time, which can be problematic
Alicia Backman-Beharry 7:11
Exactly, exactly. And so this is where we need to look at the work in excess. Because in the third scenario that IRCC gives us, it says, Well, you could be working full time at more than one job, 30 hours a week for 12 months at more than one job, but you're not going to be able to claim double right? And so this is where, when we look at the ministerial instruction section 15, sub six, it says, For the purposes of this section, and you go down to it actually has a heading of work in excess. So we'll scroll down to 15, sub six, and here we are work in excess for the purposes of the section, a period of work experience that exceeds full time work in one occupation, or simultaneous periods of work experience in more than one full time occupation are to be evaluated as a single period of full time work experience in a single occupation, right? So you can't double up. Yeah,
Mark Holthe 8:06
this is perfect Alicia, because I can't tell you how many times I've seen online, where does it say you can't do that, right? People are always saying this where? Well, it's in the actual ministerial instructions. It's in the legal provisions that have set up this whole regime, and people are so reliant on what's on the government website, which is no longer indexed, which makes it really hard for people to find information when they're Google searching. But this is it right here. It's this section.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 8:36
So this is important to know, because if you're thinking that you're meeting your minimum eligibility criteria, or you're thinking that you actually have your one year of Canadian CEC, and you get invited in a category based draw, and you don't actually meet the eligibility criteria for CEC, you're toast. You've got to decline that ITA, go back into the pool, make sure that you do hit your one year mark before you can continue with your eapr application.
Mark Holthe 9:01
And Alicia. I've also seen situations where the calculator like when, when people are getting their automated assessments based on the information that are submitting into their Express Entry profile. I have seen mistakes with the calculation. You know, we know already that it rounds up time, so it rounds up by months, and so you could be receiving an ita before you've actually hit that one year or two year or three year mark, just because of the way it rounds up. And sometimes it struggles as well assessing this actual provision, Alicia. So when people are putting multiple work histories in, sometimes the system, and I can't put my finger on it, because I don't understand exactly how the algorithm works, but sometimes it will give bonus points for people or or give credit when, really, when it comes to an officer assessing it, although the system gave credit, the officers are going to say, ah, because of this subsection six,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 9:53
yeah, and I literally am working on that right now with somebody who got invited under the last healthcare category draw. So. And we took a look, and the problem was that he was working as a healthcare aid in Canada, but he was also working in IT, job, self employed outside Canada, and he had both of those periods concurrently. And I said, Oh, man, we've got to, we've got to separate this end your foreign work so that you clearly have your CEC period of work, and then start your foreign work after your CEC work is done. And you do have to be careful with how you set up your profile.
Mark Holthe 10:26
You bet. All right, authorized work. We've kind of covered this a little bit, but let's, let's really focus in on this. Yeah,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 10:35
and so a lot of people may not realize that you can only claim authorized work for Canadian experience qualification points. And here is where you have to have valid temporary resident status. So yes, you may maintain that valid temporary resident status the entire time if you're physically in Canada, if you're claiming qualifying Canadian work experience under CEC, you also have to have the ability to legally work in Canada, which means most of the time that you have a work permit, sometimes you could have implied or maintained status to continue to work. Let's say students. If you have already finished your full time studies, you have your letter of completion, you've submitted your application for a post grad work permit and your study permit was still valid. So in those circumstances, you can then start working, even if you don't have your PGWP issued yet, as long as it was a complete application, and you can count that, but you cannot ever count time where you were a full time student. So internships, even if they're paid, do not count any periods of unauthorized work. So if you didn't realize the rules about when you can and cannot work after graduation, and you were working without authorization before you submitted your PGWP for months, that's not going to count for qualifying Canadian work experience. And so that's one of the things I always go through with my clients. When did you graduate? What was the letter of completion? Date Did you stop working until the day you submitted your PGWP, and only then can you start to claim Canadian work experience points. The other thing to keep in mind is that you have to disclose any unauthorized work, right? You can't misrepresent in your application. But keep in mind that if you fail to comply with Section Three of the immigration and Protection Act in terms of engaging in unauthorized work, you could be found inadmissible under Section 41 so that's always a risk to start to do an analysis with your client and see was there any period of unauthorized work and is submitting this application right now going to jeopardize their immigration status.
Mark Holthe 12:47
Another thing that we see, Alicia, I'm just going to pull this up right on the government website. So if you worked remotely, you must have been physically in Canada and working for a Canadian employer. So they go out of their way to actually explain this. So when it comes to claiming this Canadian work experience, some people will go back home for a month or two months, and we'll cover this a little bit later. But the issue I I've seen in the past is sometimes people have a contract with a Canadian company and they're outside of Canada, and they I've had one client who actually got an ita because they had claimed Canadian work experience, because they listed the location of work as being Canada, where the employer was, even though they were working remotely. And so they got the ITA, and I had to, unfortunately, tell them, you know, yes, it gave you points for this, but you should have listed the location of your work is actually your home in the US or wherever you were working, and not in Canada. And so we see this coming up. So both of these things have to be true. It has you have to be physically in Canada and working for a Canadian employer. And we'll, we'll expand on this just a little bit, Alicia, but let's, let's talk a little bit about this vacation and unpaid work.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 13:56
And this is a question mark I think you and I get almost every week in our live streams almost every week. So if so, the only policy guidance that I can find on this is within the operational guidelines on express entry. And so maybe mark you can pull that up and it does mention vacation. But again, all of this is discretionary, and it depends on all the circumstances when the officer is reviewing it. So this is on the main page. It's just under, right, all right. They start to talk about, what about vacation? So it does say an allowance for a reasonable period of vacation time will generally be made in qualifying. You know that 52 week period? So they give an example of two weeks of vacation within a 52 week, one year period. And they say that's probably going to be okay, but keep in mind that if you are not physically in Canada, so just like Mark was saying, I've had some clients who decide to go. Home, and they work remotely for a month or two months, and they use the vacation, but then the rest of the time they're not physically in Canada. They are getting paid, but they count that as their Canadian work experience. And I always tell them, No, take that off. So divide your period of Canadian work into two. Have up until you were physically in Canada, and then have when you come back physically to Canada and take out the period where you are not physically in Canada, it does say an allowance for normal vacation time during a period of qualifying work experience cannot be used as a substitute or proxy for meeting the in Canada requirements. So this is exactly what we're talking about. You can't just say, Oh, I was in Canada because I was getting paid in Canada, even though I was physically, I don't know, sitting somewhere in India, for example, yeah.
Mark Holthe 15:48
And then you can see at the end here, Alicia, yeah, it says, well, officers will account for a reasonable period of vacation time. This is always difficult, you guys. Oh, I was on paid vacation for six weeks. Well, there may be some jobs out there where you can take six weeks off and still be paid. But immigration is going to substitute their you know, their vision as to what reasonableness is. So it says they will they account for reasonable period of vacation time in calculating qualifying work experience. Each application is considered on its own merits with a final decision based on a review of all the information available to the officer. So that means that there is no guarantee. And so Alicia and I are constantly telling, constantly telling our clients that it is better if you are counting two or three weeks or four weeks of paid vacation and you are right at the beginning stages of eligibility for CEC, just hold off a little bit, just to hold off a couple weeks or three weeks, and then there is no doubt as to whether or not you've met the requirements for entry into the CEC or otherwise. So that's something Alicia that, you know, I think is just prudent. And I never like to skirt the edges. I never like to drive my wagon right on the edge of the cliff with the wheel hanging off, even though maybe I'm an expert driver and I can really push the line, I want to keep that wagon as far away from the cliff as I possibly can.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 17:10
And the key word that you said in that sentence, Mark was paid, right? And so if you have a situation where somebody has an unpaid vacation game over. You can't claim any of that work experience. You can't say, oh, even though I had two weeks of unpaid vacation, I'm going to say that I still hit my 52 weeks if there was unpaid vacation that is subtracted from your requirement to hit that 52 week eligibility period for your one year of work.
Mark Holthe 17:40
All right, no student or Co Op work experience can work for CEC, yeah.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 17:47
And so we alluded to this already, but if you are a full time student, so you still have full time student status, and there are many incarnations and permutations and combinations, variations of theme, because sometimes, just like you said, Mark, you have the principal applicant who's here on a study permit, but then you have a spouse who's trying to get work experience, and then you try to get the spousal points for Canadian work experience for the other person. Well, that doesn't count. So if somebody has full time student status, any period of paid work, whether it's in an internship or whether it's just authorized work, because you can work up to 20 or now, given the public policy, sometimes 24 hours per week, that does not count. It does not start the clock running on your CEC qualifying work experience.
Mark Holthe 18:38
All right, moving on here, let's just talk a little bit about the, you know, claiming the correct Knock Code. And this is something Alicia that people run into problems with all the time. We know that if someone is applying for a work permit to come on an LMIA based work permit, the employment requirements listed in the NOC are an important part of that assessment. If the person doesn't have those minimum employment requirements, whether it's education or work experience that is mandatory to work in that occupation in Canada, then often that work permit will be refused, even though the LMIA was approved. We know that the regulations are clear that any work experience that's gained foreign work experience. Specifically, it says the employment requirements are not to be used in the purposes of calculating whether or not that that work experience has met. You know, the person has met the knock there, to focus on the lead statement, the activities there, and a substantial number of the main duties. But how are we treating this in Canada? Alicia, this is a real sticky area,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 19:45
yeah, and it really depends upon what is the substance of the lead statement. And this is where I find most people fall apart, or the employer falls apart, because they never look at that opening paragraph. They only look at the bullet points. So. But we know from the regs that it actually has to be the majority of so the activities, the lead statement, and a substantial number of the bulleted main duties for that job. And you're right. Mark, there's many circumstances where people have come on a previous work permit, so they have an ICT, or they have an other sort of free trade agreement, work permit, they've come as a professional, and then they go to do their Express Entry application, and they re characterize their job, or they pick a different not code, or they say their job duties were different than what they could put in the work permit. And this is where, again, we go back to unauthorized work. So remember what we talked about at the beginning, that any period of unauthorized work does not count for CEC qualifying Canadian work experience points. So if somebody came on an intercompany transfer specialized knowledge, and they said their not code was one thing, and then then they try to go and submit their Express Entry profile, but they've forgotten what was actually on their work permit in the first place, and they choose a different knock. That's very well a situation where both things can't be true at the same time, either they're working without authorization on the work permit, or they've incorrectly characterized their job duties and experience and chosen the wrong knock on their Express Entry application. So be super, super careful when you're looking at your not codes.
Mark Holthe 21:25
All right, just about wrapping up here Alicia, one of the things I've noticed, at least recently, people are trying everything they can to acquire more French language skills, which is probably the most prudent thing you could do as a potential, you know, aspirant for permanent residence in Canada, start learning French. Some people actually moved to Quebec, and they they get work experience there. They're studying French. They're doing everything they can, we know. And just to clarify that there's no restriction on gaining Canadian work experience in the province of Quebec, you can do that, but there is a critical component to express entry in that you must demonstrate an intention to reside outside the province of Quebec when you become a permanent resident. So just be aware of that as your people are making those decisions when they're on their open post grad work permit applications that yeah, it's there's nothing better to immersing, you know, to learning French than to immersing yourself with French. But be aware that that intention is very, very live. And yes, you can count your work experience, but just be, be aware of that that's that's important. Any other kind of final wrap ups before we kind of put a, put a bow in this, this little discussion,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 22:42
yeah, I would say this is one of the most complicated areas of express entry, and every little detail matters. And so this is something where I normally cross reference an applicant's travel history with their work experience, right? If you were physically not present in Canada, there's going to be a problem on claiming CEC, qualifying work experience, we also cross reference, okay, are you working other jobs at the same time, right? Are you claiming foreign work experience for the same month? And then the third thing I always cross reference is, when did you end your full time studies? Right? Making sure that that full time studies was ended, you didn't have a period of unauthorized work while you were trying to claim your CEC, and then going on from there, then we have those hours of work making sure you're meeting that 1560 hour threshold within either a 12 month period or a 24 month period if you're looking at combining part time work. So lots of things to consider. Please book a consult if you are confused. You bet,
Mark Holthe 23:41
as always, we would like to express appreciation to the Canadian Immigration institute that is the sponsor of these podcasts. And right now, our Express Entry accelerator DIY course is our flagship course. If you're thinking about applying for Express Entry and you're a DIY er and looking for just a little bit of assistance, the Express Entry accelerator is a full, comprehensive step by step instruction tool on how to do it yourself. It's chock full of helpful tips, templates, sample documents, everything that you need, including a detailed video series walking you through every step of the way. If you've ever played video games in the past, I used to love role playing games when I was a kid, Alicia and I would always look for the cheats, the walkthrough that basically tells you where to find all the good stuff, so you don't have to waste time, and you just go right zipping through it. Well, that's the Express Entry accelerator. The description in the in the podcast, you can go there, and there will be a link if you wish to subscribe. But thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you. Alicia, another great topic, wow. Express Entry. You need to get it right the first time, folks, because there may not be a second chance, especially these days. All right, take care. We'll talk to you again soon. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
