Hello, I applied for the Canadian passport application. What questions do they ask from the references apart from number of years known and relationship? Do they also ask questions like where do they work or provide the exact date of birth or spouse details?
As far as I'm aware, they mainly/only ask questions to determine that you actually know the person (eg how long have known/how do you know each other), they may ask questions to confirm description (height hair colour etc), occupation and the like.
Now the main thing: this is NOT a test that the reference has to 'pass.' FOr example - they might ask the reference if they know the date and/or place of birth; that doesn't mean they expect the reference to KNOW the date/place of birth, or all life details of the person, etc.If you know each other from golfing, not knowing the occupation isn't fatal, same with residence - they might expect them to know which city/town, not necessarily exact home address. Info about spouse - same, if it makes sense (if the reference has never met spouse, that can be normal). All in context. (So a problem if eg the reference describes someone of completely different age/sex/place of residence, or if they don't seem to know each other, or the place they know each other from doesn't make sense, etc.)
If they ask questions about the reference, it's basically to confirm the person is the person named in the form.
Or to put briefly, they mainly just want to confirm that they know each other, each person is the person in the form, and that the reference confirms what details they can and are appropriate.
Also - keep in mind a LOT of references never get contacted; for those that do, I've only heard the most simple of questions being asked, and from what i can tell, most is about confirm identity, how long they've known each other (i.e. at least the minimum as required for references, they're not fussed about whether exact number of years as long as more than minimum), and perhaps one or two innocuous questions that are checks. So you can tell your references to relax, they don't need to study up or prepare.
