This is part two of The Logic’s in-depth series exploring how Canada is faring in the global competition for tech talent, as economies reopen and companies and governments jockey for advantage in a remote-work world. Read the rest of the series here.

Canada’s fast-track program for highly skilled foreign workers is picking up again following a COVID-19-induced slowdown. While more companies have embraced remote work during the pandemic, startup and scale-up executives say they will continue to bring new hires from around the world to them. In the fevered and ever-more global competition for tech talent, location still matters.

The federal government launched the Global Talent Stream (GTS) in June 2017, following years of complaints from fast-growing tech companies that long wait times were costing them skilled foreign candidates. The program has “made those highly talented folks really accessible to us, to the point where we don’t even consider [the immigration process] to be a hindrance,” said Arif Virani, chief operating officer of Waterloo, Ont.-based DarwinAI.

Firms can use GTS to bring in international hires for in-demand jobs like software engineers, web developers and database analysts, provided the companies commit to improving the domestic labour market (by spending on skills and training, for example). The federal government promises to process initial GTS applications in 10 business days, and process prospective recruits’ work permits two weeks after that.

In 2020, employers were given the green light to fill 2,747 positions via the program, down almost a third from 3,984 the previous year. The drop was particularly sharp in the second and third quarters, after COVID-19 began to spread in Canada, with approvals down by more than half compared to the same period in 2019.

But the trend is reversing. Employers were already approved to fill 2,068 positions via the program in just the first half of 2021, approaching pre-pandemic levels.

Immigration lawyers say that during the early months of the pandemic, processing times lengthened for the initial approvals that candidates must obtain, although they’ve since returned to near normal. Recruits from some countries continue to face delays getting work permits and visas, in part because the offices where they are required to provide biometric information have been closed.

“It’s a really frustrating process for employers, because it’s just taking so much longer,” said Jacqueline Bart, managing partner at BartLaw, whose Toronto-based firm primarily handles GTS applications for tech clients, in a June interview. “Getting someone here [from] some of the Asian countries is really hard right now.” As of early July, 12 of 164 visa-application centres were fully open and 142 were providing partial services, said Peter Liang, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; in April, the government met its two-week service standard for work-permit applications in about three-quarters of cases. Immigration lawyers expect processing times to return to normal as the pandemic recedes.

Companies also faced practical challenges. “Borders were closed for some time, which caused delays,” said Michael Cheng, co-founder and CEO of Vancouver-based Lumen5, a marketing video-creation platform. “Even things like finding accommodation [for arriving hires] was tricky during lockdown.” He estimated the time between offer and arrival for the company’s GTS hires expanded from two to closer to three months during the pandemic, although he still considers that reasonable.

The Canadian tech sector largely avoided the mass pandemic job losses seen in the wider economy. Domestic startups and scale-ups—flush with record amounts of funding—as well as multinationals with a local presence are once again hiring in earnest, particularly for technical roles. Employment in professional occupations in natural and applied sciences—a category that includes software developers, engineers and web designers—was 15.9 per cent higher in August 2021 than in February 2020, before the pandemic.

Forced to send staff home to work due to COVID-19, many companies have grown increasingly comfortable with distributed teams, and seized opportunities to bring on key personnel remotely. But startup founders say they want at least some of their new hires close to headquarters, and immigration lawyers expect they’ll still have plenty of corporate clients.

DarwinAI—whose technology helps manufacturers build usable AI models from their own data—has used the GTS several times. “When you’re looking at these highly skilled individuals with experience in AI [and] machine learning, there’s only a handful of those people in the world,” said Virani.

During the pandemic, the company has seen increased interest in jobs it’s posted from candidates in the U.S., U.K. and Asia, according to Kelly Pritchard, director of people operations. But hiring remotely has practical challenges, such as setting up payroll in another country. “We would want them to be able to access the office [and participate in] in-person meetings,” she said.

Companies who bring in staff on work permits typically need them physically present or at least in the same time zone, noted David Garson, managing partner of Toronto-based Garson Immigration Law. “I don’t see it slowing significantly.”

Lumen5 will “continue to relocate people overseas to Canada,” said Cheng, noting that the experience of staff working from home during the pandemic highlighted the importance of in-person collaboration. “The creative aspect is really hard to replicate remotely.”

A quarter of the Lumen5’s 40-person workforce have come through the GTS, almost all developers, arriving from countries such as Belarus, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom. Location is part of the draw. “The promise of being able to bring their families to Canada has allowed us to really win talent,” said Cheng. He expects to hire as many as 20 people in the next 12 months, and hopes that about a quarter of those will be via the program. The company has received approval for five positions already this year.

Workers who arrive on temporary GTS permits “tend to want to immigrate to Canada,” said Bart, noting that they’re competitive candidates for permanent residence under the country’s points-based system for economic migrants.

The GTS was designed for technical occupations—programmers, graphic designers, and software engineers make up three-fifths of the positions employers have looked to fill during its lifespan. But COVID-19 has accelerated economic digitalization, which coupled with disruptive technologies, is creating demand for workers with new, hybrid skill sets, according to Naumaan Hameed, Canadian practice leader for immigration at KPMG Law.

For example, a firm working on autonomous vehicles might need “someone who understands how a car operates in terms of the structural components, but with a computing mindset.” Such a candidate would “fit nowhere in the program.”

Other countries have introduced similar fast-track streams for skilled foreign workers. The GTS must continue to evolve to meet the labour needs of companies in Canada, said Hameed. “Otherwise, the rest of the world will catch up and it’ll be tougher to compete for talent.”