New Work Permits Issued for Workers After Media Coverage: Takeaways for Newcomers

Background: What Happened Here 

On October 1, CBC (and a few other news sources) ran an article covering the story of three construction workers in Nova Scotia. Here’s what happened: 

Three Filipino employees of Brycon Construction in Dartmouth faced losing their status in Canada after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) rejected their work permit renewal applications due to administrative oversights by their employer. The company failed to pay a $230 employer fee in two cases and omitted a required Labour Market Impact Assessment in a third. 

The rejections abruptly halted the men’s ability to work, leaving them with 90 days to reapply or leave the country. Operations manager at the construction company, Dave Hiscock, described the outcome as disproportionate, arguing that IRCC should allow applicants to correct minor mistakes rather than enforcing such harsh penalties.  

IRCC maintained that applicants are responsible for complete submissions and that any errors must be resolved through appeal or reapplication — a process that typically takes six months during which applicants cannot work or access provincial health coverage. 

The workers — Jafferson Palabasan, Raddy Adams Manicadao, and Rene Logrinio — had come to Canada in 2022 and were in the process of applying for permanent residence. Each faced significant financial and emotional strain as a result of the disruption: Palabasan worried about supporting his wife and young daughter; Manicadao struggled to afford his wife’s diabetes medication; and Logrinio was uncertain how to survive without income. 

New Work Permits to The Three Construction Workers 

Then, on Sunday of this week, the construction workers were issued their temporary work permits and their employer asked them to return to work on Monday, 6 October 2025. This is an incredibly fast turnaround for a temporary work permit from IRCC.  

Processing times for work permits from inside Canada (initial and extensions) are list as around 200 days on October 8, 2025. So, the timeline for these workers was incredibly short.  

The operations manager, Dave Hiscock, noted in a Yahoo article, “I’m glad we made a little extra noise because I don’t think with past experience that it would’ve expedited the process. I think the right person read it and thought it was wrong.” 

Don’t get us wrong, we are happy for these workers. It’s incredibly difficult to have uncertain status in Canada, and the heartache that comes with applications for being returned incomplete or rejected due to an employer’s mistakes. This is an amazing outcome for them.  

But, we are concerned about the message it sends to the countless others in a similar position. There are two major issues that this situation brings up for us:  

1. Should IRCC allow applicants to fix minor errors in their applications?  
2. Should IRCC respond to media pressure for certain applicants?  

Let’s dig into those:  

Should IRCC Allow Applicants to Fix Minor Errors in Immigration Applications?  

Immigration lawyer Elizabeth Wozniak is quoted in the initial CBC article covering the story of these workers, noting that rejections for small, fixable errors have become increasingly common as officers exercise less discretion. She also said that years ago, immigration officers would use their discretion to flag a missing piece of an application that could be fixed within minutes.  

Moving2Canada employee, and Registered Canadian Immigration Consultant, Rebecca Major (who has over 15 years experience in Canadian Immigration) noted that this is right – immigration officers used to request minor missing documents instead of rejecting or refusing applications. However, she said that this was many years ago and hasn’t been a common practice in recent years.  

Wondering why this practice changed?  

While there hasn’t been an official published notice, as far as we know, we would guess that it’s due to the significant increases in the volume of applications IRCC needs to consider each year.  

If IRCC had to request minor fixes, it would increase the inventory backlog – unless they were given additional resources. Given that the federal government’s current priorities include reducing governmental spending and reducing overall immigration levels, this doesn’t seem like a realistic ask, nor would it likely be a popular choice for Canadian voters.  

So, would you prefer (as an applicant) to have the opportunity to fix minor (and only minor) issues with your application but have to wait much longer for processing of your application?  

Or, should we instead focus on other ways to minimize hardships from incomplete applications being returned or rejected?  

Our Suggestion: Thorough Completeness Checks within 30 Days 

We think that a good approach would be for IRCC to provide thorough completeness checks within 30 days of receiving an application.  

In our view, this approach would increase efficiencies. It would mean that, when applications are being decided, IRCC officials are only looking at applications that are complete and ready.  

Plus, it reduces the risk of hardship in the case of innocent mistakes, since applications are reviewed quickly and thoroughly for completeness.  

We would love to see a thorough completeness check, however. At the moment, applications are returned incomplete for the first mistake found – the check doesn’t actually check your entire application. Ideally, changes would be made so that the entire application is reviewed for completeness, so applicants can address all potential minor mistakes when reapplying.  

IRCC’s efforts to modernize and digitize (and outsource tasks to artificial intelligence) would be welcome here, since the decisions being made are much lower stakes – and still subject to human review.  

Another benefit of this approach is that applicants would be incentivized to submit their new applications at least one month prior (but likely earlier) to their existing permit expiring. This is because they would receive information about a completeness check prior to their existing permit expiry, which would give them the opportunity to reapply if needed and maintain status – instead of losing status.  

This approach has the potential to reduce the risk of lost status, and all the benefits that come with maintained status, such as healthcare continuation and continued rights to work or study.  

Should IRCC Respond to Media Pressures When Deciding Immigration Applications? 

This is more complex and nuanced.  

On one hand, it sends a confusing and difficult message to newcomers waiting on their applications. “If we just find the right journalist, we can get our applications decided faster – and potentially have greater likelihood of getting a positive result”. This isn’t a good benchmark for a fair immigration system. It’s also not likely to work, en masse.  

News media outlets can only put so many stories about immigrants waiting on decisions out there until readers become tired of reading them. The reality is that the ‘news’ is a business, and they will run stories that they think will receive clicks. If they publish more and more stories about applicants waiting on a decision, readers are likely to get tired reading them and they will get fewer clicks. So, unfortunately, having a lot of applicants try to put pressure on IRCC through the news media isn’t a strategy that’s likely to work. Only a select and very lucky few might succeed this way.  

Again, we aren’t saying this is fair or right. We’re just saying that it’s how the system currently is set up.  

On the other hand, a fair immigration system would ideally be responsive to extreme hardships placed on applicants by very long processing timelines.  

Typically, we would suggest that court systems would be the better forum for these decisions – instead of the court of public opinion. But Canada’s court system is already inundated with immigration–related decisions, and timelines there have ballooned to longer than 14 months for many applicants.  

So, this brings us back to our usual message – if you’re in this position, focus on what you can control. It is your responsibility to ensure your application is complete, submitted in a timely way, and that it tells a compelling and complete story to the immigration officer who will be considering it.  

IRCC has committed to improve its systems and processes to make them more effective and efficient, using AI. Ideally, IRCC would also prioritize decreasing hardship for applicants over time too. However, these changes are always slow to come, so focusing on what’s happening here and now and controlling what you can is always your best option.