Foreign Skilled Trade

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Foreign Skilled Trade

The Federal Skilled Trade (FST) program is one of the three programs within Canada’s Express Entry system for processing permanent residency applications. All programs within Express Entry are competitive and use the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) to rank candidates. Based on their credentials, applicants are awarded CRS points.

The processing time for the FSW stream is 6 months.

To be eligible to apply, you must meet the program requirements:

Full-time work** means at least 30 hours of work over a period of one week, or an equal amount in part-time, paid work experience. For example:

Once you receive the Invitation to Apply, applicants and the accompanying dependants must also undergo medical examinations and obtain security clearances as part of application process.

Eligible Occupations

In Canada, only provinces and territories can issue certificates of qualification in the skilled trades. To get this certificate, the provincial or territorial trades authority must assess your training, trade experience and skills to decide if you are eligible to write an exam to be certified.

Further, in order to qualify, your occupation must be on the most recent list of eligible occupations:

GROUP A – JOBS WITH SUB-CAPS OF 100 APPLICATIONS EACH (NOC CODE)
GROUP B – NO SUB-CAPS (2011 NOC CODE)

In an attempt to avoid backlogs and ensure fast processing timesCIC will accept no more than 3,000 complete federal skilled trade applications for processing each year.

Within the 3,000 cap, no more than 100 new applications for certain jobs will be considered for processing each year. There is no sub-cap for other skilled trades.