10 b) In the past four (4) years, were you in another country (other than Canada) for a total of 183 days or more?
If yes, list each country in the chart below. You must provide a police certificate for each country where you have been present for 183 days or more. If you cannot get a police certificate, tell us why below.
We became PR in May 2014. We intend to submit our completed application in December 2017. That's 3 years and 6 months. Our answer would be YES, since the remaining 6 months in that past 4 year question we were still in the Philippines. Would the police certificate we submitted to MPNP when we applied for PR suffice for this purpose? Or do we need to get a new set of police certificates from the Philippines?
The simple and probably best answer is that you need to obtain and submit a PCC. There are some proponents of a contrary view, but frankly there is no viable support for it.
Thus, since you meet the IRCC criteria, in another country for 183 or more days within the preceding four years, the odds are high that IRCC will require an original police certificate which has been issued within the preceding six months (IRCC may be liberally flexible about this) or issued since the last time you were in that country.
If you happen to have the
original police certificate from your PR application process,
and you have
not been in the Philippines since the date the certificate was issued, sure, submit that. It should suffice even if years old. But I am guessing you do not have the original since that was probably submitted to CIC (before the change to IRCC).
While Item 10.b does not state the certificates need to be original, the checklist refers to the submission of
original police certificates. If what you have is a copy, rather than the original, you could try submitting that. If you do this, probably better to include an explanation that it is a copy of an original police certificate previously submitted to CIC, and reference the application it was submitted with. That might work.
Or you could simply check "yes" and in the explanation part of the chart explain a police certificate was already submitted and that you have not been in the Philippines since the date it was issued. And see how this goes. Application might be returned, or accepted for processing but a police certificate requested later. Or IRCC might accept the explanation and not require a PCC. My guess is that this is not how it will go, but this approach will not cause the application to be rejected (as long as you submit the PCC if IRCC still requires you to do so).
I suspect, however, that
razerblade is correct, that it is likely the old police certificate was issued before you left the Philippines, and is thus not current enough.
In any event, the proposition that for PRs who landed less than four years ago and have not been to the other country since the PR visa PCC was submitted, has been discussed in depth often, in multiple topics, some going back months . . . but including some more recent conversations as well, such as my most recent contribution:
The Short, Best Answer: Respond to item 10.b truthfully. If the truthful response is yes, check "yes" and follow the instructions, and thus either provide a police certificate or an explanation why one could not be obtained.
In deciding how to answer item 10.b, count all days in another country during the preceding four years, including days prior to becoming a PR. If the total number of days in another country is 183 or more, check "yes." And again, follow the instructions.
In other words: If in doubt, follow the instructions; otherwise, yep, follow the instructions. A key instruction to follow: be truthful.
Some propose an alternative approach for those who are confident they do not need to submit a police certificate, even though the truthful answer to the yes/no question in item 10.b is yes:
The main versions of the proposition are, essentially, that there is an exception for applicants who have not left Canada since landing as a PR, or that days prior to landing do not count when adding up the total number of days in another country.
I would caution against conflating arguments about why there should be such an exception (such as these individuals have already provided PCC covering that time in that country) versus what IRCC actually requires from citizenship applicants. No matter how strong the argument is about why there SHOULD be such an exception, what matters is whether or not IRCC actually recognizes such an exception.
There is nothing in the form, help, instructions in the Guide, the PDIs, or the FAQs, which even hints that IRCC recognizes such an exception.
