The pandemic has delayed our move to Canada for both personal reasons and for reasons having to do with moving our business. My wife and son are both Canadian citizens and they are looking forward to the move, but for now we continue to spend a bit more time here in the States until a move later this year. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act spells out the compliance requirements for the residency obligations for a five-year period, and being physically present in Canada is the first of them. However, until we can make that happen, I may have to rely on the second provision governing the residency obligation, that is to say, being "outside Canada accompanying a Canadian citizen who is [my] spouse." If I were take this on its face, I would seem to mean that every day here in the U.S. when I am accompanying my wife counts toward a day in satisfying the physical presence requirement. This seems too good to be true. Do any of you have knowledge or experience that can confirm this is indeed the case?
satisfying residency obligation - outside Canada accompanying a Canadian citizen spouse
- Thread starter TMELL
- Start date
It depends a bit on circumstances. It can work bit in some cases is too good to be true.
Here's a recent thread on the matter:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/renewing-wifes-pr-as-spouse-of-canadian-citizen.754078/
That sub forum on residency obligation is the most useful for this topic.
Here's a recent thread on the matter:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/renewing-wifes-pr-as-spouse-of-canadian-citizen.754078/
That sub forum on residency obligation is the most useful for this topic.
Thank you for all of this. Enlightening to say the least. The statute seemed so clear and simple and prima facie. Who knew there could be so much nuance! The best thing that can happen now for all concerned is that the pandemic finally ease up, so we can get out of this limbo and on with so many plans that were previously paused. Thank you again, and stay well.
Note that I'm not saying it will not work or apply to your circumstance - but that they may approach differently based upon the facts of each case.
You said the pandemic has 'delayed your move to Canada'. This implies that basically you never settled in Canada at all, but just did the formalities and remained in the USA.
I think you can understand that the statute's term 'outside Canada accompanying a spouse' could be stretched to cover your case. Or it could be interpreted as requiring some action of ... actual movement from initial state including (potentially) going somewhere other than the starting point. (I.e. some actual action of accompanying).
Or in more simple example: would likely be a relatively clear cut case if you'd moved to Canada and then departed on a job posting to, say, South Africa.
I don't have any special insight into how IRCC will approach and I'm not a lawyer nor a parliamentary historian (i.e. I've no position on the semantics of the statute or the intent of the legislature when this was adopted). But enough to know it's ambiguous.
Anyway: there is nothing wrong with you attempting to make use of this (not forbidden to intrepret as you have). You don't give specifics of your stituaiton but if, say, you return to Canada and settle and apply for PR card renewal sometime after that, sure, document your time together abroad and include those days. If you're in Canada when you do this, I think the only substantial risk would be delayed processing, and at least some chance IRCC would give you the benefit of the doubt since residing and settled in Canada. (And if in Canada, worst case would hopefully be that you'd meet the residency obligation a bit later)
(I say this because I reckon intuitively IRCC would look more closely and skeptically at cases where the PR has essentially no evidence of residing in Canada and particularly where never left home country.)
Our intent has always been to get to the GTA as soon as possible to reunite with family there, hopefully we can make that happen sooner rather than later, and not have to worry about counting any days outside Canada. But it's nice to know IRCC's real requirements in case this runs closer to the deadline than we'd like, so that we can plan accordingly. This is a great forum, and you have been abundantly helpful!
You didn't say what the validity of your PR card is - if your PR card is still valid when you return to settle, you probably won't have that many problems. Might still be inconvenient when renewing PR card but hopefully not critical.
Good luck.
I've had my PR card since mid-2020, so there's still time. Our goal for a move is later this year, and if that works out, we'll be in good shape. But if we can't get up there until later in 2023 or beyond, the 730 actual physical days present in Canada won't be achievable, so we'll be looking toward a plan B at that point. We've got plenty of time to plan for that though, and this information will certainly help with that.
You have plenty of time and there are options. Even without a valid PR card you can cross without too much difficulty at land borders. Wouldn't worry too much - but, it will all be much easier if in compliance.