To be clear: under the current law, the Minister of IRCC does NOT have any authority to grant citizenship to a PR, pursuant to a Section 5(1) application for citizenship, UNLESS the applicant was ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY PRESENT for at least 1095 days in the relevant five years. With only very narrow EXCEPTIONS for government employees (such as members of the military). Absolutely NO exception for any days totally spent outside Canada while employed by a Canadian business.
While I do not recall the specific case you might be referring to, my sense (with a lot of confidence, absent some aberrant anomaly, recognizing that in real life stuff-happens) is that was for an application made prior to June 11, 2015. For those applications there was a RESIDENCY requirement rather than the explicit PHYSICAL PRESENCE requirement implemented as of June 11, 2015.
Even though the Harper government, supported by many of the Federal Court Justices appointed during the Harper government (and some appointed by the previous Liberal government), pushed a policy to aggressively impose a physical presence TEST for citizenship, requiring applicants to have spent 1095 days PHYSICALLY PRESENT in Canada (during a FOUR year time period prior to applying) to qualify for citizenship, NONETHELESS, prior to June 11, 2015 the Citizenship Act prescribed a RESIDENCY requirement, requiring applicants to be "resident in Canada" at least three years in the four years preceding the date of the application.
A resident of Toronto, Ontario does not cease to be a resident of Ontario days she spends driving truck into the U.S. any more than she would days spent driving truck into Quebec. Hard to say a person is a resident of Ontario but not a resident of Canada.
That is, unless one defines "resident in Canada" to mean days physically present in Canada. Which is the interpretation the Harper government pushed (until it changed the law to make it, explicitly, a physical presence requirement). While there was some support for this interpretation in Federal Court decisions going back to the 1980s, for decades it was left to the discretion of Citizenship Judges to decide whether a particular citizenship applicant met the RESIDENCY requirement based on being a resident for at least three years DESPITE not being physically present in Canada for at least three years in the relevant time period (which again, then was four years). Many called these "short-fall" cases.
There was no shortage of short-fall cases since the information provided by CIC failed to make it clear that applying based on residency for three years, but short of 1095 days physical presence, would result in full blown RQ and a much longer processing time, and especially failed to make it apparent that the government policy was against granting citizenship unless the physical presence test was met. All the CIC information did was inform applicants that a short-fall application had to be decided by a Citizenship Judge . . . when, in fact, ALL citizenship applications had to be approved by a CJ. (Since 2015 the Minister has had authority to grant citizenship without the approval of a CJ.)
Participants in multiple forums, including this one, attempted to make it clear to prospective applicants that applying short of 1095 days physical presence was RISKY. BUT even into 2015 there was a steady stream of applications made by short-fall applicants (actually there was a surge of such applications made in late 2014 into 2015, in attempts to become a citizenship under the 3/4 residency requirement before the Harper era 4/6 rules took effect).
Despite uniform and emphatic admonitions, scores of PRs dismissed the caution and proceeded to make short-fall applications . . . again, well into 2015.
In any event, between 2008 (when the Harper government began more aggressively pushing the physical presence test policy) and when the last of the citizenship applications made prior to June 11, 2015 were completely processed (which probably was not that long ago, and perhaps some are still lingering in the system), CJs still had the final say (subject to appeal by either CIC or the applicant), so despite the Harper government policy pushing the physical presence test, a significant number of citizenship applicants were still being approved for a grant of citizenship. It is likely there were actually a significant number of similar truck-driver-with-regular-U.S.-route cases during that time.
Thus, the outcome of the "short-fall" citizenship applications varied widely, even wildly. Some applicants who spent only a few hundred days total in Canada were granted citizenship, while others who fell short of 1095 days actual presence by merely a week or so were denied. There was great disparity and much injustice. As much as many of us felt the changes implemented by the Harper government were excessive, even draconian, there was no doubt that the residency requirement needed to be changed to make it clear and to eliminate the wide disparity in outcomes (Federal Court justices had been urging the Parliament to make changes for many, many years, again and again).
Nonetheless, again, under the current law, the Minister of IRCC does NOT have any authority to grant citizenship to a PR, pursuant to a Section 5(1) application for citizenship, UNLESS the applicant was ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY PRESENT for at least 1095 days in the relevant five years. With only very narrow EXCEPTIONS for government employees (such as members of the military). Absolutely NO exception for any days totally spent outside Canada while employed by a Canadian business.
