Foreign workers and international graduates in Canada can now look up personalised processing times tailored to when they applied.
Pan-Atlantic Kompass reports that the personalised processing times became available after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) updated its processing times web page in late September 2026.
The date-based estimate is available only to in-Canada applicants extending an existing work permit, or submitting a first post-graduation work permit (PGWP) application as an international student graduate.
In-Canada workers applying to change the conditions of their current permit are counted among the extensions.
How it works
Visitors to the government web page who select “Temporary residence” as their application type can now select “Work permit extension in Canada” from the drop-down menu, and can see an estimated remaining wait time, in weeks, based on the date they applied.
A visitor to the page can also see the number of work permit applicants ahead of them, and the total number of applicants awaiting a decision.
The page estimates 202,900 applicants as awaiting decisions as of Sept. 26, 2026, the date at which the data was most recently updated, as of the time of writing.
Those who have not applied can see the estimated wait time if they were to apply at the time of lookup.
The estimate based on time of application is only available for in-Canada applicants who are extending existing work permits, or who are submitting their first application for a post-graduation work permit (PGWP) as an international student graduate.
Among those counted in the extensions are also in-Canada work permit holders who are applying to change the conditions of their existing permit.
Prior to the update to this page, there was only a single drop-down selection, “Work permit in Canada,” which provided only a processing time estimate based on the time of lookup.
The “Work permit in Canada” drop-down selection remains active on the page, but is now applicable only to non-PGWP applicants who are applying from within Canada for their first work permit.
When a work permit holder in Canada submits an application for a work permit prior to the expiry of their existing permit, they can benefit from maintained status, which provides them authorization to work under the conditions of their existing permit until a decision has been made on their application for an extension.
Maintained status, formerly called implied status, enables the applicant to be legally authorized to work in Canada if their current permit expires before their new permit has been issued, so long as they remain in Canada.
On June 9, 2026, the federal government put in place a temporary measure which provides relief to many provincial nominees seeking extensions for soon-to-expire work permits.
The measure allows an applicant for permanent residence through the base Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) to apply for a bridging open work permit (BOWP) months sooner, by exempting them from the typical requirement to have first received an acknowledgement of receipt of their permanent residence application. The measure is set to remain in place until Dec. 31, 2026.
The immigration department launched personalized processing times for citizenship and permanent residence applicants in October 2025.
