About 2,700 workers in Manitoba will have the opportunity to obtain work permit extensions, according to statements made by two Winnipeg members of Parliament (MPs).
The extensions are to be offered to workers in Manitoba who are in pursuit of permanent residence through the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP), according to Kevin Lamoureux, the federal MP for Winnipeg North.
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Lamoureux announced the extensions in a post on his Facebook page on July 6, 2026.
The extensions will be “till the end of 2027” and will provide workers authorization “to continue working while their provincial applications are being processed,” according to a July 7 post on X by Terry Duguid, federal MP for Winnipeg South.
As of the time of writing, the government has provided no details on how work permit holders are to apply for these extensions. Nor has the government said which requirements must be met to qualify for these extensions, or when the measures will come into effect.
According to an image of what appears to be an undated draft federal government news release posted by Lamoureux, the announced extension measure is to be named the “Manitoba Workforce Transition Bridge” (MWTB), and has been positioned as a follow-on initiative to a temporary public policy from 2024.
The earlier policy, “Temporary public policy to facilitate work permits for prospective Provincial Nominee Program candidates” (2024 PNPC WP policy), had enabled the issuance of open work permits to provincial nominee candidates for up to two years.
According to the image of the MWTB news release, over 1,600 workers who had been issued work permits through the 2024 PNPC WP policy have since become permanent residents, while a further 2,700 “are still awaiting provincial nominations,” with the province currently expecting it will be unable to meet the Dec 31, 2026 deadline that had been established for issuing nominations to this set of work permit holders.
The 2024 PNPC WP policy had been put in place on August 11, 2024, and had been set to expire on December 31, 2024.
The policy expired at the end of 2024 without having been renewed, and with no replacement policy having been put in place.
Nevertheless, it appears that the policy, or a comparable replacement, may have been quietly extended through to the end of 2025, by means of an update in January 2025 to the federal government’s unofficial summary page, “Open work permit for prospective Provincial Nominee Program candidates with a support letter from Manitoba or Yukon” (OWP PNP page).
As of the time of writing, the OWP PNP page lists the status of the work permit as “Open until December 31, 2025,” although the page itself specifies its last date modified as “2026-03-05.”
The image of the MWTB news release posted by Lamoureux reads, “The proposal is currently before the Province of Manitoba for consideration. The measure could only be implemented following provincial acceptance.”
This summer’s proposal of the MWTB follows two years of federal government cuts to Manitoba’s quota of provincial nominations, which stood at 9,500 annually for the years 2023 and 2024, and dropped to 6,400 for the year 2025, and 6,239 for the year 2026.
Obtaining permanent residence through a PNP requires first applying for and receiving a nomination from the province, and then applying to the federal government for permanent residence.
Foreign workers who pursue permanent residence through a provincial nominee program (PNP) can often find themselves at risk of losing work authorization while under consideration for provincial nomination, as the start-to-finish process from entering consideration by a PNP to receiving permanent residence can often take two or three years.
International student graduates typically obtain work authorization through the post-graduation work permit (PGWP), a once-in-a-lifetime open work permit that can be issued for up to a maximum of three years, and which may not be extended barring exceptional circumstances.
In June 2026, the federal government announced a new measure expanding work permit eligibility to provincial nominees who would have otherwise been at risk of losing work authorization during the period between the submission of their application for permanent residence and the immigration department’s issuance of an acknowledgement of receipt (AOR).
As of the time of publication, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has not responded to CIC News’ request to clarify details of the measures announced by Lamoureux and Duguid.
This is a breaking news article. CIC News will update this article as details emerge.
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