A funding or project date is a planning fact, not immigration authorization. Confirm the person’s permitted employment and actual admission before relying on it.
Explain dates that differ
Record the proposed employment period and any earlier academic visit separately. Do not describe work already performed as a future assignment or assume an institutional timetable changes government requirements.
A Canadian citizen applying in person pays the border charge; an employer that prefers a petition pays the filing fee, with premium processing available at additional cost where a start date is tight. What goes wrong at this point is a calendar error with real cost: non-refundable flights and a moving date are booked around the start date in the offer, as though that date and the date work may lawfully begin were the same thing. Renewal is also the step most often started last, once the offer, the credentials and the travel dates are already settled, and that ordering is exactly what turns a routine errand into an emergency. Once admitted, record the TN expiry and the licence and certification expiries side by side; the renewal sequence should begin several months before the earliest of them so the second entry does not repeat the first delay.