Business Visitor
A business visitor is somebody who comes to Canada for business without entering the Canadian labour market. Meetings, a conference, a trade fair, training, negotiating a contract, inspecting a supplier, attending a board meeting — all of these are business visits, and none of them needs a work permit.
There is no such document as a "business visitor visa". You are admitted as a visitor. If your passport is visa-required you apply for the ordinary visitor visa and give business as your purpose; if it is visa-exempt you need an eTA to fly. What makes you a business visitor is what you do once you are here, not a different application.
The line between a business visit and work
This is the whole of it, and it is worth reading twice. The test is not how long you stay, and it is not whether you are paid. It is whether you enter the Canadian labour market.
You are generally a business visitor when your employer is outside Canada, your pay comes from outside Canada, your main place of business stays outside Canada, and you are not performing work that a Canadian employee would otherwise be hired to do. Three days of hands-on work for a Canadian company is work and needs a permit. Three weeks of meetings is not.
Some activities sit close to the line. After-sales servicing of equipment your company sold is usually allowed, and often turns on what the sales contract says. Training Canadian staff on your own product is usually allowed; being embedded in a Canadian team to deliver a project is usually not. If your visit is anywhere near that line, it is worth checking before you fly rather than explaining it to an officer who has two minutes.
What gets people turned around
Border services officers decide this, and they decide it at the counter. The most common failure is not deception — it is somebody who genuinely believes they are visiting, describing their trip in words that sound like employment. "I'm going to be working at our Toronto office for a month" is a sentence that ends a trip, even when the underlying facts were fine.
The second most common is arriving with nothing. A business visitor who cannot produce a letter explaining why they are coming, who is paying, and when they are leaving is asking the officer to take it on trust.
Where Skylam comes in
Two things. The first is telling you, honestly, which side of the line your trip falls on — and if it is work, saying so, because a refused entry is on your record for every later application. The second is preparing the letters: an invitation from the Canadian company and a letter from your employer, written so that they describe a business visit accurately rather than raising the question they were meant to answer.
Requirements
Who qualifies
A business visitor meets the same requirements as any visitor, plus a few of their own.
- A valid passport, and either a visitor visa or an eTA, depending on your nationality and how you are travelling.
- A stay of six months or less. Longer than that and you are no longer in business visitor territory.
- No intention of entering the Canadian labour market. Your main source of income and your principal place of business remain outside Canada.
- Enough money for your stay and your return, and evidence you will leave at the end of it.
- Admissibility — no criminal or security bar, and good health.
What to carry to the border
None of this is filed in advance. It is what you should have in hand when you arrive.
- A letter of invitation from the Canadian company: who you are meeting, why, for how long, and confirmation that you are not being employed by them.
- A letter from your employer abroad: your role, that you remain on their payroll, and that you are returning to your job.
- Evidence of the purpose — conference registration, meeting agenda, the contract being negotiated, the purchase order behind a servicing visit.
- Your return ticket and details of where you are staying.
When it is not a business visit
You need a work permit, not this, if you will be employed by a Canadian company, if you are being paid from a Canadian source for the work, if you are filling a role a Canadian worker would otherwise fill, or if you are staying beyond six months to do it. Intra-company transfers are their own route and have their own permit — see Intra-Company Transfers.
Requirements change without notice. Check IRCC’s own page
Every case turns on its own facts. Book a consultation and a licensed consultant will tell you where you stand on Business Visitor.
Book a ConsultationLast updated 22 September 2026
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Current processing time
Across all countries the current range runs from 1 day (Palestinian Territories) to 560 days (Botswana). Choose your country above for the figure that applies to you.
Published by IRCC and last revised 1 October 2026. These are averages over applications IRCC has already decided, not a promise about yours — an application missing a document, or one referred for further checks, takes longer.
This is the current time for a visitor visa, which is the document a business visitor from a visa-required country applies for — there is no separate business visitor visa. IRCC does not break these figures down by the purpose of the visit. If your passport is visa-exempt you need an eTA instead, which is usually approved within minutes.
Published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada · last checked 2 October 2026. These figures describe decisions IRCC has already made — a consultation is where you find out what Business Visitor means for your own case.
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