There are many, many kinds of residences, from rental to owned, seasonal and recreational, temporary boarding (school dorm residences and army barracks) and vacation homes, deemed and actual, primary and secondary, among others.
A person can have more than one residence. Some well-known personalities are known to have six, eight, or more "residences."
Types of residence should not be confused with types of immigration status. Visitors with no residence and no residency in Canada are typically in Canada with "Temporary Resident" status. But some visitors to Canada have PR or citizenship status. They live elsewhere and are literally just visiting.
Leading to "residency" which is closely linked to a person's residence, and can be subject to immigration status, but is yet another separate thing, and is typically about the person's relationship to a jurisdiction (city, county, province, state, country) in which the person maintains a residence, but which can vary depending on the context or purpose . . . as in residency for tax purposes, residency for purposes of qualifying for government benefits like health care or a resident-fishing-license.
A person may have residency in one place for one purpose and not for another.
All these terms are often used casually, descriptively rather than technically, and in casual conversation often interchangeably.
Even in more formal contexts, there is often overlap or the use of one for another.
Except in the way Canada's immigration system refers to "resident" (which in some contexts is like a variation of "present" but not a synonym), "resident" and "residency" are often used relative to essentially the same underlying factual situation. A person is typically considered to be a "resident" where that person has legal "residency" or maintains "residency." Exception: resident or residency for tax purposes.
Where there is a legal consequence attached to residency, what residency means in that context is usually defined or understood to be the place where an individual's primary residence is located. For many if not most purposes, an individual is considered to be a resident for one location at a time. Tax residency is the big exception for this. And this does not solve contested residency issues in many other contexts (perhaps the most litigated is in probate, in determining jurisdiction for litigating the estate of a deceased person, which can affect not only which court gets to decide but which laws apply).
During border crossings I have been asked "where do you live" dozens and dozens of times. Never been asked "where do you reside," or "what is your residency" or any variation of the latter. Always, if at all, it has been "where do you live?"
Obviously immigration status is a common question asked in different ways.
But here's the bottom-line: Few, very few, are all that confused about how to fill in official forms asking for their residential address. Or asking for the individual's address history. These requests are not vague, let alone steeped in deep mystery. Providing answers to these items is not like giving a bank or prospective employer the address of a family member or friend. Sure, there is no shortage of situations in which answering directly, as to the address of the residence where one was actually living during a given month, including the current month, might invite questions or issues, but we know where we live and where we have been living. And that is the address IRCC is asking for (unless the item and context otherwise indicates). There are times we may have been boarding for an extended period of time in a location other than where we maintain our primary residence. Depending on the form, the context, the instructions, these situations may call for overlapping address periods or including an addendum/supplemental explanation. Rarely is this complicated or to difficult to sort out how to best answer.
Most expressions of confusion otherwise are rooted in evasive maneuvering. Or at least that is how they are likely to be perceived.
Overall, disclosing the place a person actually stayed at most of the time for a given month as they place where one was living, as their residence, their residential address, works for IRCC, that is as an accurate answer. If and when that does not match other information, ranging from the address on a person's ID, to tax filing records, to what the person has posted in social media or sites like LinkedIn, or the address on the individual's banking records, well yeah that can invite questions. That does not change the truthful answer to where one is living or where one has been living in reporting address history.
And then there is driving a car registered in one country, as a resident in that place, and claiming to be a resident of a different country for other purposes. Still does not change what the truthful answer is to a question asking for one's residential address or address history.
We can make our lives complicated. That does not make the question complicated.
