Agri-Food Pilot

Agri-Food Pilot

The federal government committed to implementing an Agri-Food Immigration Pilot in the 2019 budget to help fill labour shortages in agricultural businesses. The three-year experimental programme will accept new applications in early 2020.

The Agri-Food Pilot Program provides agricultural employees in Canada with a road to permanent residence. In recent years, the Canadian agriculture and agri-food industries have battled to meet labour shortages, forcing workers to rely on temporary, seasonal work permits to obtain work. The pilot programme intends to recruit and retain workers by providing a road to permanent residence in Canada, allowing workers and their families to work and live in the country for as long as they choose.

Each year, a maximum of 2,750 primary applicants and their families will be admitted. This equates to a total of 16,500 potential new permanent residents over the pilot's three-year length.

Participants in the trial will be eligible for a two-year Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA).

Agri-Food Pilot Program Requirements

Candidates must meet the following criteria to be eligible to participate in the pilot:

• Work Experience: 12 months of full-time, non-seasonal Canadian work experience in a qualified occupation such as processing meat products, keeping animals, or cultivating mushrooms or greenhouse crops in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
• Language A Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) level 4 in English or French
• Education Canadian equivalency of high-school level or greater
• Job Offera full-time, non-seasonal job offer in Canada, outside of Quebec, at or above the prevailing pay.