PCC
- Thread starter monster33
- Start date
Police certificatesmonster33 said:
As part of a complete application, applicants, their spouse or common-law partner and their dependent children 18 years of age or older (including non-accompanying dependents) must submit a valid police certificate for all countries or territories (except Canada) in which they have lived for a total of six months or more, since the age of 18.
Note: This includes the requirement to provide a police certificate for countries in which the individual has traveled for six months or more, whether or not the individual had an established residential address during this time.
Applicants are instructed to indicate that their education was completed by correspondence by typing in brackets {by correspondence} on the same line as the education institution name found in the Education Background Information tab of GCMS. The discretion remains with the officer to decide if a police certificate is required for the country of the education institution.
The IRCC website provides instructions to applicants on how to obtain a police certificate.
Police certificates are typically valid for one year from the date they are issued.
For the applicant’s current country of residence, the police certificate must be issued no more than six months before submission of the e-APR.
For countries in which the applicant no longer lives, the police certificate must have been issued after the last time the client lived in that country.
The personalized document checklist provided to applicants in their online account does not prompt applicants for individual police certificates based on their declared residence and travel history; rather, applicants must determine which police certificates are required as part of their application and must compile the police certificates into a single file to upload as a single supporting document.
Exceptional circumstances
The IRCC website provides country-specific instructions on what documentation must be provided to that country’s policing agency in order for them to initiate the request for a police certificate.
Applications that do not include a required police certificate and do not provide supporting documentation where required should be rejected as incomplete.
The officer’s discretion may be required in assessing whether police certificates that do not fall within standard IRCC parameters may still be required to process the application. For instance, the war in Syria has made it extremely difficult for former residents to obtain a police certificate; officers may need to use discretion on how to best fulfill this admissibility requirement.
Some countries will not issue police certificates to applicants, and instead will only communicate directly with the relevant Canadian authorities. In such cases, existing IRCC procedures to obtain documentation should be followed.
In exceptional circumstances, some applicants may experience delays in obtaining police certificates within the 60-calendar-day timeframe allocated to submit a complete e-APR. In such situations, applicants should submit a letter of explanation as part of their application and include proof of having requested a police certificate (e.g., a copy of the receipt obtained when they requested the police certificate from the prescribed authority). The officer’s discretion may be required in assessing whether police certificates that do not fall within these time limits are valid and reliable for the purpose of evaluating admissibility.