On a closed work permit in Canada when a PIP ends

Does a PIP affect my work permit?

No. Being placed on a performance improvement plan has no immigration consequence at all. Nothing is reported, nothing changes, and no clock starts. What matters is the employment ending, and everything below applies only if it gets that far.

If that is the thing keeping you awake, it is also the whole answer to it. The rest of this page is about the ending.

First, which permit you hold

This is not a formality, and the two answers point in opposite directions.

An employer-specific permit, usually called a closed permit, names the employer, the location and the occupation you may work in. This page is written for that document.

An open permit does not. A post-graduation work permit and a spousal open permit both let you work for almost any employer in Canada, subject only to the list of ineligible employers. If that is what you hold, none of what follows applies to you, and nobody should tell you to stop working.

So the question to answer before reading further is which permit — never whether you are on one. Your permit says so on its face.

The day employment ends, you stop working

For a closed permit the instruction is unqualified. If the job ends you must stop working for that employer and for any other employer, until a new work permit is approved. Working outside the conditions printed on the permit is unauthorised work, and it is one of the ways status is lost.

Three things a reader is likely to assume here, and none of them is true.

• That there is a grace period. There is not. The American sixty days have no Canadian counterpart, and no IRCC page describes any period in which a closed-permit holder may keep working after the job ends. Nothing counts down, because nothing was granted.
• That the permit is cancelled. No IRCC page says that either. What IRCC states is the prohibition on working, and this page states the same and no more.
• That severance buys time. It does not buy work authorisation. It buys runway, which is a different thing and still worth having.

If you arrived here having read American advice, the correction is the important part — you are not counting sixty days, and the thing to be frightened of is not the same thing.

Getting back to work needs a new permit

Working for someone new means a new employer-specific permit, which means a new job offer and, usually, the new employer's Labour Market Impact Assessment or an exemption from one.

A temporary public policy is what makes this survivable. It lets a worker begin the new job before the new permit is decided. Its conditions, none of which requires that you still hold the old job:

• You are in Canada with valid temporary resident status.
• You have submitted a work permit application on which no decision has been made.
• You intend to work for the employer named in that application's job offer.
• You have requested the exemption through IRCC's electronic means.

The request carries the code PPCHANGEWORK2020, and IRCC's guidance says it cannot be prioritised without it. The exemption lasts until the application is decided or withdrawn.

Two things about that policy are commonly stated wrongly. It was signed on 4 March 2025 and it revoked and replaced the 2020 pandemic-era policy it is still named after, so the request code is older than the instrument. And it runs until the Minister revokes it, with no expiry date and no assurance that it will still be there when you need it.

And here is what the public text does not settle. The policy describes itself as being for workers changing jobs or employers, and it says nothing about a gap between the two, so the conditions and the stated purpose pull in different directions. Whether it reaches somebody whose employment has already ended is the difference between starting a new job in weeks and waiting months, and it is exactly the question to put to an immigration lawyer before relying on it. This page will not guess at it.

The two-week route is not available from inside Canada

The Global Skills Strategy publishes a two-week processing standard, and it covers this population precisely: highly skilled roles, employer-specific permits, exemptions from the labour market assessment. It reads like the answer.

It requires applying from outside Canada, with narrow exceptions that do not include software work. Somebody already in the country cannot use it to shorten the wait in place. That is counter-intuitive enough that a hopeful reader will otherwise assume their way into it, so read IRCC's own page before you build a plan around it.

Processing times for an ordinary employer-specific permit move constantly. Read them from IRCC's tool on the day you need them, and treat any figure you find in an article as out of date.

Restoration is a repair clock, not a cushion

If status is lost — because the permit expired with nothing filed, or because its conditions were broken — there is a 90-day window from losing status to apply to restore it. You may stay in Canada while that application is decided, and you may not work until status is restored and a new permit issued.

Two reasons not to read that as ninety spare days. It is a repair mechanism, entered only once something has gone wrong. And by definition the period it covers is unpaid and unworkable, so ninety days of restoration is ninety days without income or authorisation.

Maintained status is the other side of the same coin, and it does less than people hope. Applying to extend or change a permit before it expires lets you keep working under the same conditions until a decision arrives. For a closed permit, the same conditions means the same employer, the same occupation and the same location. It preserves the job that has ended and unlocks nothing new.

In an exit negotiation, the date is the lever

The Canadian lever is the same word as the American one and does different work. In the United States a later termination date buys more days of status. Here it buys more days in which you may lawfully work for your current employer — income, and time to find the next offer and file the application while you are still authorised.

That is frequently worth more than a larger lump sum, and it costs an employer very little to agree. Two asks that cost nothing and matter later:

• Written confirmation of your exact last day of employment.
• Whatever reference or employment letters the next employer's application will need, obtained while the relationship is still cordial.

What the ending is worth in money is a separate question, decided by your contract and the common law rather than by your permit. The Canadian jurisdiction page covers it, and the severance page covers what to ask for.

What this changes about the plan itself

Two things, and they run in parallel rather than in sequence.

Engage with the plan. If it is a real one, meeting it is still the best outcome available, and the record of having engaged with it is worth having either way.

And start looking on day one, whatever you are hoping for. The reason is arithmetic rather than pessimism: the day the job ends you stop working, a new permit needs an offer and usually an employer's application behind it, and none of that can begin after the fact. The job-search page covers doing that while a plan is running.

Resigning deserves one line of its own here. It ends the employment, so it ends your work authorisation on the same terms as a dismissal, and it costs you the notice claim as well. The resignation page has the wider decision.

Two questions this page leaves open, and both need a lawyer

Fairhanded is not a law firm, and immigration is the area of this guide where that matters most. This page is a map rather than the territory.

Two questions are open on the public record and both change what you should do. Whether the changing-employment policy reaches a worker whose job has already ended. And what happens to the permit document itself once the employment ends, which IRCC states nothing about in either direction.

Take both to an immigration lawyer or a regulated consultant, and take them before you agree an exit rather than after, because the thing you would want changed is the last day, and that is only negotiable while there is still a negotiation.

The ten-question read is free and takes a few minutes, and it asks which permit you hold before it says anything about stopping work.