I do LMO applications for employee's of my company regulary. It is costly to the employer but this is how it goes and its highly recommended a company uses a lawyer for the process, the total cost is around $3000 cnd.
The employer needs to send the labour market opinion form to CIC, a letter stating why a canadian is unable to fill position and information about the company on company letterhead, they will need to post the position in a local paper or employment source and provide the resumes received to confirm there is no Canadian that can fufill the position.
Generally a request for a work permit is submitted at the sametime as the LMO, however depending this can back fire as it did recently with us, the decision on the LMO took longer than the time limit for the work permit so even the LMO was approved the work permit was denied. We had to re-apply for the work permit, no big deal, just took some extra time.
Its also a good idea to take a look at the NOC number for the kind of employment he is seeking, Once you obtain the number you can see if this is a preffered skill for immigration, if so it will certainly speed up of the process as there are cetain sectors that we as Canadians do not have the qualified citizens for and require to emigrate people for them. I have put the link below for you:
hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/workplaceskills/noc/index.shtml
I hope all this helps
