working remotely from within Canada

benderson wrote: I am Canadian and if I am sponsoring my Common Law partner (British) for Permanent Residency from within Canada, can she legally work for a US company remotely during the application process?

Technically, temporarily, yes, a visitor in Canada can continue to work for their abroad employer so long as . . . well that is where it gets a little complicated, and enough complicated that even if the individual is fully complying with the technicalities of the law a CBSA or CIC officer may interpret things differently.

I used to be more familiar with the details of this, in part because I had done this some many years ago. I have not kept up with the practical side of how this tends to go, so I cannot offer much more than what I just did.

I can say, however, there is a lot of room for differing inferences in this area, so it can be a bit tricky. If the sponsorship application has already been submitted, your partner is visiting while the application is being processed, and there is no Canadian connection to the work other than the fact that your partner is doing the work while temporarily present in Canada, there should be no problem.

But, if a person is entering Canada and tries to explain this to the officer at the POE, odds are high that it causes problems, which, again, is due to differing inferences . . . POE officers tend to approach this simplistically, as in visitors simply cannot work while in Canada -- part of the problem is that even though the entering Foreign National (visitor) describes a situation in which the law allows them to do such work, the POE officers tend to infer that regardless of what the individual is saying, there is a likelihood the individual will "work" illegally while in Canada and thus does not qualify for admission as a visitor.

Once the PR visa is issued, and your partner lands, if the employer abroad wants to continue employing your partner even though your partner is working remotely, from across the pond, that is not a problem at all as far as Canada is concerned. Of course as a resident of Canada the individual must file a Canadian tax return. Impact relative to country of employer, depends on laws of that country.