With North American trade agreement under review, report calls for expanding list of professionals eligible for special work permits
As North America’s major free trade agreement enters review, stakeholders are calling for the “modernization of the existing list of covered professionals to reflect digital and clean‑tech professions.”
An expansion of the list might enable the inclusion of professions such as cybersecurity analyst, data scientist, and UI/UX designer.
The agreement, typically referred to as the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) in Canada or as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in the United States, succeeded the former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020, and provides for facilitated work permits for professionals in select medical, technological, and white-collar occupations.
A total of 63 eligible under the current agreement, whose list of professions was last updated in the original NAFTA agreement in 1994.
Get help applying for a USMCA/CUSMA work permit
Under CUSMA, workers of eligible occupations can obtain CUSMA professionals work permits under Canada’s International Mobility Program (IMP), making it much easier for them to obtain work authorization than going through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which requires an employer to obtain a favourable result in a labour market impact assessment (LMIA) for each worker for which they want to obtain a work permit.
Under the current agreement, workers in the following professions are eligible for these special work permits:
To qualify for these work permits, workers must have pre-arranged employment in Canada, and must demonstrate certain qualifications according to their profession, such as minimum requirements for education, work experience, and/or licensing.
With CUSMA up for review in 2026, Global Affairs Canada sought consultation from stakeholders from September 20 to November 3, 2025, and published a report summarizing its findings on February 6, 2026.
In addition to the expansion of the list of eligible professions, stakeholders also expressed desires for streamlined import/export and border procedures as well as a simpler origin certification process.
CUSMA is set to remain in place until 2036, at which point it will expire if not renewed.
