It depends on which entity legally employed you during the secondment. Employment with a qualifying member of the same organization outside the United States can count; employment by an unrelated company generally does not. The answer comes from the contracts and payroll records, not from how the assignment was described internally.
Establish the employer of record for every month
Ask human resources for the paperwork behind the secondment: was there a new employment agreement with the affiliate, an assignment letter that kept the original employment in place, or a straightforward continuation of the Innisfil payroll with a change of location. Those three arrangements look identical from a desk in another country and have different consequences here. Collect the payslips, the tax slips issued for each year and any assignment letter, and lay them out month by month. Where the picture is mixed, an adviser can look at whether the qualifying year can be found elsewhere in the three-year window instead. The question can be answered only from the records, so gather them before relying on the secondment.
Hypothetical example: Yara, a semiconductor yield specialist, describes her expertise as industry-standard certification rather than internal methods. The record must show qualifying foreign employment and genuinely specialized knowledge tied to the proposed role; L-1B classification has a five-year maximum period. The first review should produce a yes-or-no issue list, identify the record that resolves each issue, and state what must change before a filing or travel plan is chosen. A job description, contract, ownership record, or credential may settle one point while leaving another open, so conclusions should name the document relied upon rather than rest on a general impression.