It is not like labels are applied or that labels mean much.When I moved to Canada, I had to stay in a hotel for the mandatory quarantine. After that I rented a room in a house for less than 2 months. I moved to an apartment after that. All this time I was unemployed and also was unemployed beyond that for a few more months too.
Would all this period be considered transient?
If there is nothing to indicate a newly landed PR left Canada soon after the landing, a rather common, typical transient period of time is not going to tickle a bureaucrat's nose. Common sense plays a big, big role.
Context matters. Perceptions matter. Impressions matter. But there is no formula for identifying how these things matter. No equation, for example, for calculating the weight being unemployed for three months has.
What I think is generally overlooked a lot in forum discussions is that the travel history itself does not carry anywhere near as much weight as most seem to give it.
But for the vast majority of us (even me, despite my personal business having minimal ties to Canada, the only real tie to Canada being that this is where I was physically located doing the work), we leave a rather obvious paper and digital trail showing a life being lived in Canada. Not much there to question. So some transient periods (whether in address or work history, or both) can make total sense in the overall picture of the individual's life (in the preceding three to five years). And that's what matters. Does it add up? Make sense? Is the information the applicant has provided consistent with who the applicant is and the life the applicant has been living.
Compare, for example, the PR who reports being employed in a manufacturing job, say for a car parts manufacturer in the GTA, compared to the PR who is a university professor. If the latter reports taking three month long holidays abroad, corresponding to breaks between university sessions, shrug. If the assembly line worker reports periodically taking three month long holidays abroad, even though employed at a job where typical holidays are three weeks not three months, yeah, a total-stranger bureaucrat might scratch her head and decide to follow-up, checking the applicant and the applicant's information a bit more thoroughly, and then deciding whether to actually investigate or initiate RQ-related non-routine processing.
It's a lot about what just plain makes good sense.
How much buffer to apply with to more or less pad the bill, again that is a very personal decision. It's easy, damn easy, for most anyway, to wait an extra month, and for many that is actually more than needed to make it "safe."
So, yeah, the guy who has a steady job for a well known employer, and whose whole family is living with him here in Canada, smooth sailing is virtually guaranteed as long as he is qualified and he has completely and accurately provided the information asked for. No need for much of a buffer.
In contrast, the guy whose family lives outside Canada, who has gone from job to job with some big gaps in-between, well, he probably would be wise to wait longer and apply with a good buffer.
In-between, where many of us fall, it varies. It's personal. It's about whether a total stranger bureaucrat will look at our information and scratch her head, go "huh?" or whether that information makes total sense, no need for questions indicated.
Did I mention that the good news is that absent something triggering a cause to question the applicant's information, for the qualified applicant who has completely and accurately given the information requested, the odds are very high there will be no residency investigation and no RQ-related non-routine processing?