Police Certificates for Citizenship Application

[prash42]

My question concerns this requirement "Within the last 4 years, if you spent 183 days or more in another country (other than Canada), you must provide a police certificate."

Hypothetically, if my citizenship application is dated March 2018, should I consider each prior year as March to March? Or calendar years?

 

[Seym]

March 2014 to March 2018.
And just in case there are doubts : 183 days in total over the last 4 years, not if you spent 183 days or more in one of the specific years in that period.

 

[qorax]

My question concerns this requirement "Within the last 4 years, if you spent 183 days or more in another country (other than Canada), you must provide a police certificate."

Hypothetically, if my citizenship application is dated xx March 2018, should I consider each prior year as March to March? Or calendar years?

xx March 2018 minus (-) 1460 days

 

[prash42]

Thank you for the clear responses. Getting police certificates from Qatar (where we last lived before immigrating) is a hassle I'm keen to avoid! Does CIC care if I spent (say) 180 days there, i.e. close to the threshold of 183 days but numerically lower? Could that trigger secondary reviews, etc?

 

[btbt]

Thank you for the clear responses. Getting police certificates from Qatar (where we last lived before immigrating) is a hassle I'm keen to avoid! Does CIC care if I spent (say) 180 days there, i.e. close to the threshold of 183 days but numerically lower? Could that trigger secondary reviews, etc?

It's not public what exact elements in an application trigger closer scrutiny, so it's impossible to say with certainty. But I know of some people that spent quite a bit of time in one single country (over 5 months, but not enough to need to submit a police certificate) and their application went through without delay.

I myself would leave a bit more margin (say 170 days rather than 180, so you've got about two weeks of buffer), just to play it safe. Not so much out of a worry about possibly triggering a secondary review, but more to make sure I have some leeway in case I miscalculated time periods. And as an extra advantage: it'll likely keep away from any such conditional secondary reviews, too, should they exist.

And it means delaying the application by a week or two at most, compared to submitting at about 180 days.

 

[prash42]

Thank you