Open Work Permit Pilot Scheme extended for one more year

Ottawa introduced a Pilot Scheme that allows skilled professionals residing in Canada and want to settle in Canada permanently as a spouse or common law partner of a person with Canadian PR or citizenship to do a job while they wait for their petition to be processed. This Open Work Permit plan was launched in December 2014 and was supposed to close down by December 22, 2016.

The good news here is this Open Work Permit Pilot plan has been extended for one more year. Sources reveal that the validity of this scheme has been extended to December 21, 2017. Through this Open Work Permit Pilot Scheme, spouses or common law partners getting sponsorship from their partners who are either a Canadian permanent resident or Citizen can get an open work permit that allows them to work anywhere across the nation.

While discussions on this prevailed, it was official when John McCallum, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada made an official announcement about the processing times for the petitions under the SCLPC category. As of now petitions are associated to a processing time of 26 months but with the coming year, the processing time is likely to decrease to just one year.