Hiatus at work - Would it affect my Work Permit?

[hys17]

Hello,

After 6 months, I finally got my 2-Years Work Permit(from an LMO) approved. Unfortunately, my company will probably go on a hiatus by the end of the month since they have no new shows coming in possibly 2 months or even longer, which consequently they won't be able to pay me during that period.

So my question is Would the gap be risky for my Work Permit, or in another word, Would CIC take away my Work Permit just because my company doesn't pay me for a certain period?

I can probably survive during the hiatus. But I really don't want it to screw up my immigration process since it took me over a year of struggling to get this Work Permit.

Any help would be so appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

 

[Leon]

You are allowed to stay in Canada until your work permit expires, regardless of getting laid off. If you want to wait until your employer calls you back, that is fine but you are not allowed to work for anybody else in the meantime. If you have enough hours, you can try applying for EI. Foreign workers are often denied but if you are laid off only temporarily, you might have a better chance.

 

[hys17]

You are allowed to stay in Canada until your work permit expires, regardless of getting laid off. If you want to wait until your employer calls you back, that is fine but you are not allowed to work for anybody else in the meantime. If you have enough hours, you can try applying for EI. Foreign workers are often denied but if you are laid off only temporarily, you might have a better chance.

Thank you so much for your answer Leon. So regardless whether my company meet the condition when they applied for LMO, I'll still be able to keep my work permit, correct? Would that be bad for my company though?

Also, I'm planning to apply for PR under CEC once I have 2 years work experience. So the hiatus won't count into the work experience right? What if my company treat this as a paid vacation(4% according to LMO), would it count then(even if the vacation is longer than 2 months)?

Thanks a lot. Really appreciate this.

 

[Leon]

They already got the LMO and you already got the work permit so nobody is really checking into if they got slow and had to lay people off. It will not be bad for the company, only for you because you will be sitting at home without a pay check until they get busy again.

For CEC, you need 3900 hours. If you are laid off for a while, you are not working any hours and so your hours can not count. You can make that up by working more overtime when it is busy. It is possible that you will not manage to get 3900 in two years so you might have to work a couple of more months in order to have them done.

 

[jes_ON]

Also, I'm planning to apply for PR under CEC once I have 2 years work experience. So the hiatus won't count into the work experience right? What if my company treat this as a paid vacation(4% according to LMO), would it count then(even if the vacation is longer than 2 months)?

For CEC you need 2 years of employment experience AND a minimum of 3900 hours. Working "overtime" will not reduce the amount of time you need to be employed (2 years = 24 months = 104 weeks).

If you take paid vacation, you're still considered employed, you don't need to worry about that.

But if it's unpaid and/or your employer submits the Record of Employment (required to do that with any work stoppage), then you will have to treat it as a gap in your employment. It's not a problem as far as CEC is concerned, you just won't be able to count that time off toward fulfilling your experience requirement.

As Leon said, there's no problem with the work permit, you can go back to work for the same employer (as long as it is the same position) and/or stay here until it expires, but you'd have to get a new LMO/permit to work for a new employer...

 

[hys17]

Thank you guys so much for the great info... Now I can chill down for a bit.

Financially I think I'll be fine since I've planning for 2.5 years to go back to my home country to visit my family anyway. So as long as it doesn't affect my immigration process, I'm good.

Thanks again for the great help.