Work permit lapsed 5 months before PR - does that impact citizenship eligibility?

[west_to_east]

I am aiming to apply for citizenship end of this year, to be able to count my worker days from 2019-2021 towards the required 3 years.

Because of pandemic backlog, IRCC never approved my work permit extension request, and technically my work permit expired 5 months before getting my PR in 2021.. At this time, I continued working as a full-time employee at the job I had been in and have salary slips to prove this.

Do those 5 months of being status-less still count as my being on the worker status?

 

[forevermore76]

I am aiming to apply for citizenship end of this year, to be able to count my worker days from 2019-2021 towards the required 3 years.

Because of pandemic backlog, IRCC never approved my work permit extension request, and technically my work permit expired 5 months before getting my PR in 2021.. At this time, I continued working as a full-time employee at the job I had been in and have salary slips to prove this.

Do those 5 months of being status-less still count as my being on the worker status?

If you had applied for work permit extension before it expired and never received a response in those 5 months, you were on implied status and not without status. Implied status allows you to continue working while waiting for decision.

Now, if there was a gap between your refusal of WP extension and PR you could be out of status for that period but you would have been notified in the refusal about your status and asked to leave.