Got my visa last friday and did the flag poling this Monday.
I never applied for a visitor visa. My employer applied for a temporary work permit for me in June, only 3 days before my working holiday visa expired. If you apply for a new work permit with your current employer, you automatically obtain a so-called "implied status", meaning that you can legally continue to work for your employer until a decision on your application is made.
Due to current changes of the laws by the government (rising unemployment rate in Canada), all labour market opinions are being returned as negative. The government wants to prevent foreign workers from doing jobs which could potentially be done by Canadians and permanent residents. Hence, I got my refusal in mid-August and immediately had to stop working. Because I was out of status from then on, the government asked me to restore my status within 90 days or leave the country immediately if I wasn't planning on doing so. I could have applied for a new temporary work permit (no point in doing so since LMO would have been negative anyway) or a visitor visa. However, the restoration fee is $200.
The trick here is: when you apply under the IEC initiative, you pay the application fees at the IEC stage already since it is a work permit made from outside Canada and needs to be approved by your country of citizenship in first place. IEC didn't know I had to restore my status and CIC received an application form made from outside Canada. Meaning, I never had to pay the $200 for the restoration of my status.
As for the CV: I took the IEC CV and made some adjustments since CIC requires some additional information (e.g. current occupation and such).
