Proof of Living Together - Common Law Partner Application

Hi everyone,

My Canadian common-law partner and I submitted our application to CIC in Mississauga a couple of weeks ago (the application arrived in Canada last week). I have an Australian passport. We're both working and living in Germany.

I have a quick question about proof of living together. We've lived together since the end of February 2009. The first documentary evidence of our mutual residence that we submitted to CIC is dated 28 April 2009 (confirmation letter from our bank re opening of joint account). We've a number of of bank / other documents after that date which confirm our residence at the same address (although we didn't get around to adding me to the lease until November 2009 as neither of us speaks good enough German to deal with formal documents and only one lady at the rental agency speaks some English - and we didn't really think it a big deal as we hadn't decided about moving to Canada at that point. We included a copy of the signed (and translated) lease with our application too).

We included three notarized statutory declarations from a) his father b) our (mutual) boss (we work together too, that's how we met) and c) a friend / colleague to confirm when we began dating and to confirm that we've been living together since February 2009.

Will the stat decs be considered weighty enough evidence to confirm that we've been living together for over a year?

Also, who looks at the evidence of living together - Mississauga (during the sponsorship assessment) or Berlin (for the applicant assessment)? If the latter, I guess that by the time the file is transferred there, the bank letter hopefully be a year old by that point...

Thanks a million in advance for any advice