Possibly a silly question re spousal sponsorship

[prairiechicken]

I'm planning on sending in our application for spousal sponsorship in about 10 days, after my husband's medical. We live in the UK at the moment, and plan to move back to Canada next summer.

However, I don't have a valid Canadian passport, either for me or our son, at the moment. I'm filling in the forms for those, but here's my possibly silly question:

Does it matter that we don't have a valid Canadian passport at the time of submitting the application? Obviously we'll have them well before we are ready to go to Canada, but I want to get the sponsorship application in asap, rather than waiting for the passports to be issued.

 

[zardoz]

Yes it will. You have to prove within the sponsor documents that you are entitled to act as a sponsor. Your passport is normally the only way to do this. I don't know if CIC will accept an expired one, but I wouldn't put money on it.

See IMM 5491 (The sponsors checklist), Item 13. It's possible that you might have one of the alternatives but that's not usually the case. Do you? Actually, you might indeed have your birth certificate with you. That would do.

 

[prairiechicken]

I have my birth certificate as proof of citizenship. So that's fine.

I just wondered if there was something I'd missed somewhere about needing to have a valid Canadian travel document.

 

[zardoz]

I don't believe so.. It's only proof of right to sponsor. The form does ask for the Name information from your Passport or Travel Document but it doesn't ask for the number as far as I remember, so your old one is probably OK.