Some clarifications:
The CIC website information is about two elements, one is about the
prohibitions which preclude eligibility for citizenship. A PR subject to an
existing prohibition is
not eligible for citizenship and cannot be granted citizenship. The prohibitions are specified in
Section 22 of the Citizenship Act (this should be a link). One of the specified prohibitions is prescribed in Section 22.(2)(a), which prohibits the grant of citizenship to anyone who has been convicted of an indictable offence within the four years preceding the date of application.
The other element is about excluding credit toward the residency or physical presence requirement; periods of time on probation, incarcerated, on parole, and such,
do NOT count toward meeting the residency or presence requirement. (see Section 21 of the
Citizenship Act)
The website identifies circumstances which
MAY trigger one or the other of these elements. Many criminal convictions affect
both elements, since there is usually at least a period of probation for any conviction, that period of time essentially counting as if
absent.
Thus, for example, regardless whether the conviction was for an indictable offence or a summary offence, a period of probation does not count toward presence or residency. Thus, for the pre-June-2015 applicant, for example, a day more than one year of probation within the four years preceding the date of the application precludes eligibility for citizenship
even if the conviction was for a summary offence. (Note,
Koo cannot be applied to allow a shortfall resulting from being on probation or in jail, since this time is precluded from counting toward residency itself . . . in contrast, the
Koo criteria allows time outside Canada to still count as time resident in Canada.)
Indictable versus Summary Offences, and DUI:
To be clear, DUI is an
indictable offence in Canada, meaning it can be prosecuted by way of indictment.
Many say it is a hybrid offence, which makes sense but I have not personally looked at the statutory provision specifying this. A hybrid offence
may be prosecuted as either an indictable offence or a summary offence.
I have not seen any definitive decisions regarding how
convictions for hybrid offences are treated by
Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship (previously CIC, and for now still typically referred to as CIC) relative to
citizenship applicants.
There is no doubt about how hybrid offences are treated for purposes of inadmissibility provisions in IRPA (the
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act), and that is based on the fact that the offence
can be prosecuted as an indictable offence, it is thus considered an indictable offence even if the Crown elects to prosecute it as a summary offence.
The reasoning is simple. The offence is
indictable, meaning it can be prosecuted by indictment. The statute does not specify that only a conviction obtained by indictment triggers inadmissibility. That is, it is the nature of the offence itself, and not how serious the particular violation was, which triggers the consequences.
I have seen no authoritative or definitive source as to how hybrid offences affect the prohibitions specified in the
Citizenship Act. On its face, the statute, like in IRPA, refers to a conviction for an
indictable offence, not a conviction pursuant to indictment.
I would tend to trust the opinion of a reputable immigration lawyer regarding this issue. Moreover, my understanding is that a DUI conviction within the preceding four years is likely to invoke probation for a period of time which, at the minimum, is almost certain to result in probation constituting an absence long enough to preclude eligibility anyway.
