Canada offers work permits to out-of-status and at-risk Manitoba nominee candidates

The federal government will provide work permits to up to 2,700 temporary foreign workers in Manitoba, including to workers who have lost their status, or who might otherwise have been at risk of losing their authorization to work in Canada.

Open work permits will be issued under a temporary public policy, the “Manitoba Workforce Transition Bridge public policy” (MWTB), to provincial nominee candidates holding provincial support letters.*

Schedule a Work Permit Consultation

The policy, which was published on the federal government website on August 5, 2026 and came into effect on July 6, 2026, offers a lifeline to qualifying foreign nationals under consideration for provincial nomination for permanent residence under the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP).

To apply under the MWTB, a foreign national must submit a letter of employment from their current employer, along with a support letter from Manitoba which

• was issued on or before December 31, 2025; and
• indicates that the foreign national had been screened by the province and placed in the MPNP’s Expression of Interest (EOI) pool on or before December 31, 2025.

The foreign national must also fall into one of the following three situations:

• Situation 1 – Valid work permit: The foreign national holds a valid work permit.
• Situation 2 – Expired work permit: The foreign national held a valid work permit on May 7, 2024, which has since expired.
• Situation 3 – Maintained status: The foreign national applied to renew a work permit on or before May 7, 2024, and has maintained status.

A foreign national eligible under the MWTB can submit an application for an open work permit, along with an application to extend their authorization to remain in Canada as a temporary resident.

A foreign national who qualifies under the expired work permit situation also has the option of submitting an application for restoration of temporary resident status.

Schedule a Work Permit Consultation

In qualifying under the MWTB, applicants are exempt from the conditions normally required to be allowed to apply for a work permit from within Canada, such as holding an existing work permit or study permit.

MWTB qualifying applicants may also be granted work permits even if they’d normally be ineligible on account of

• Having engaged in unauthorized work or study; or
• Having violated conditions associated with their previous permit or work authorization.

They may also be granted restoration of status even if they’d normally be ineligible on account of

• Having missed the usual 90-day window to apply; or
• Having failed to comply with one or more mandatory conditions on their work authorization, specifically including conditions that are not waived in a typical restoration of status application.

The MWTB is set to remain in force until December 31, 2027, after which time it will expire. As is typical with temporary public policies, it may be revoked at any time without prior notice.

The operation of the policy is reliant upon a letter of intent signed by Manitoba and by the federal government's immigration department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

As of August 6, the federal government has also updated its webpage, titled “Open work permit for prospective Provincial Nominee Program candidates with a support letter from Manitoba,” intended to provide high-level summary guidance to MWTB applicants.

The federal government’s official publication of the MWTB on its official temporary public policies webpage comes nearly a month after two federal Winnipeg members of Parliament announced the scheme on their personal social media accounts.

The MWTB is the successor to a provincial nominee work permit policy that was in effect Aug–Dec 2024 applicable to Manitoba, Alberta, and Yukon, which had expired with no announced renewal or replacement, but may have been silently extended through to the end of 2025.

The earlier policy, now archived, was put in place when many temporary foreign workers faced the risk of losing status while pursuing provincial immigration.

In the wake of several years of massive international student cohorts, provincial EOI pools faced a supply-demand squeeze in 2024, as hundreds of thousands of post-graduation work permit (PGWP) holders sought to transition to permanent residence status, while the federal government slashed PNP PR admissions targets by 50%.

Prior to the 2024 policy, Canada’s immigration system had no specific mechanism serving to provide work authorization to foreign nationals at the candidate stage of pursuing permanent residence through the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).

In most cases, a candidate cannot simply apply for provincial nomination at the time of their choosing. They must first be invited. Their path forward is simply to create a profile in the province's EOI pool, and then wait.

A nominee candidate has few options when faced with work permit expiry during the period in which they are under consideration in the province’s EOI pool, in contrast to those who have submitted applications for provincial nomination or for permanent residence, who in many cases have the option of obtaining work authorization by means of a work permit support letter or bridging open work permit (BOWP), respectively.

In June 2026, the federal government put in place a new measure to expand work authorization for provincial nominees who would otherwise be at risk of losing status in the period between the time they submit their permanent residence application and the time the immigration department issues an acknowledgement of receipt (AOR) confirming the application’s completeness.

Prior to the June measure, the AOR was a hard-and-fast requirement to apply for a BOWP, and base PNP applicants were at risk of being left in limbo, with some unable to apply for work permit extensions while facing waits of upwards of 12 months for AORs.

Schedule a Work Permit Consultation

*If a foreign national has been issued a support letter by Manitoba which has since expired and they require it to be re-issued, they can follow the instructions described on the province’s website.