Common Law Sponsorship - Inland OR Outland (HK)??

[jmbobo2017]

Hi Everyone!

I am a Hong Kong citizen and my boyfriend is a Canadian citizen.
We lived together in HK from Jan 2016 to July 2016 but we have no proof of address for that period, we moved to Canada in July 2016 and have been living together since, I'm currently on a visitor status (visa-exempt), we are planning on submitting our common law sponsorship application in July/August 2017, so by then we will have one solid year of living together with proof.

I noticed that CIC is trying to speed things up and changed the inland processing time from 24 months to 12 months, which would be around the same amount of time as applying through outland in HK (well according to CIC website). Can anyone advise me which would be a better/faster way?

On a side note, I am currently applying for a masters at UBC. If I got in and had to apply for a study permit, lets say around April 2017, should I declare my boyfriend as my common law partner on my study permit application?
Since we don't have any address proof for the Jan-July 2016 period, I'm quite confused here.

Thank you in advance for your help!!

 

[GFLiam]

I can't give much advice on the common law relationship part, but I do have a few points that I think you shall consider first:
1) You seemed to think the time for living together in the common law relationship tally at the point of approving your PR. Is that what's stated in the definition of common law relationship application? Or the tallying happens at the time of application?
2) Find out if you need to head back to Hong Kong to apply for the student visa and then come back to Canada. Make sure you find out about this! If CIC have any doubts about activities not allowed with your current status (i.e. Study or work with a visitor status), it can greatly jeopardize your eligibility to apply for PR.
3) If you are not intended to leave Canada during the time for the application, it's probably better to do inland, as you won't need to go to HK if an interview is required. In addition, you will be granted an "implied status" during the application and no need to extend your visitor status once the 6 months visitor limit is due.