Canadian immigration regulations include a Work and Study program which allows foreign students to use the language skills they acquired in class and practise English or French in a real-life working environment. The benefits are immense: you gain Canadian work experience which will serve you either back home in your native country or will give you a head start in your search for a permanent job in Canada later on.

You may work in the city where you take your language class, being Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal. The period of work can be from 3 to 6 months, depending on the duration of your language course. For instance if you studied French 20 hours a week for four months you will be able to work 20 hours a week for four months, for a total stay of eight months.

You may not study and work at the same time under this program – first you study then you work. In all cases you must have reached at least a high intermediate level of English or low intermediate level of French to be allowed to work after your language course.

There are two kinds of work experience you may acquire. One is through an unpaid internship and usually takes place in notorious Canadian businesses in various fields such as computer science, hospitality, tourism, business administration and marketing, among others.

The other option is to work in paid, lower-level positions in the service industry. Even though it is not impossible, it is difficult to obtain high-level positions because most companies will be reluctant to hire employees who can only stay for a couple of months. Average salaries in the service industry tend to be from 12 to 16 dollars per hour.

To register for a Work and Study program you must first register for a language course.