why don't they just stamp our passports on the way in and the way out. wouldnt that be alot easier for them than looking for proof or residence and all that..
that being said, can I request that my passport be stamped on my way in and out just as a proof for my residency renewal ?
You can request your passport be stamped. That will not accomplish much. If you enter and exit Canada three or four times a year, that will prove you were in Canada six or eight days those years. If your presence in Canada is questioned, proof of forty days in Canada will fall way, way short of proving PR Residency Obligation compliance.
Very few PRs will have their accounting of presence in Canada challenged. All are at risk of a challenge. But whose travel history declarations will be challenged is not a lottery. Some PRs have a very low risk. Some have a much higher risk. No advanced degrees in mathematics necessary to grasp which scenarios increase the risk. Some rather dramatically.
The problem, if and when challenged, is proving presence in Canada IN-BETWEEN dates the PR went through border controls.
In the meantime:
CBSA does attempt to capture and maintain a record every time a PR enters Canada from abroad.
Most exit events are also captured one way or another. For example, the U.S. captures a record of travelers entering the U.S. and for PRs who are not U.S. citizens this information is shared with Canada, the entry into the U.S. effectively constituting a record of the exit from Canada.
A PR's CBSA travel history is indeed an important, extensively relied upon resource. Over time it has become increasingly complete, at the least capturing a record of each time a PR enters Canada, at least usually (and for many this is indeed a complete record of entries). In respect to many if not most PR card applications, and many if not perhaps all citizenship applications, IRCC will compare the PR's reported travel history with the CBSA travel history.
That said, the CBSA travel history is NOT relied upon to be complete. After all,
there are many, many ways in which a person can travel in or out of Canada without the border crossing event being captured at all, and many more ways it might be captured but not recorded under the same client number, such as recorded under a different name or client number.
Canada, like many governments, has been using passport stamps less and less. The trend is toward electronic/digital capturing of event-records and there is NO sign at all that Canada will reverse course toward relying on physical stamps in Travel Documents (recognizing that in certain types of border control transactions the officers still stamp Travel Documents).
Stamping passports slows border control procedures down considerably. Canada experiences nearly a
HUNDRED MILLION applications for entry into Canada every year, and it is critical to the Canadian economy these applications are processed as efficiently and quickly as practically possible . . . so much so that the majority of these applications are made and granted with zero paperwork (applicant merely arrives at the PoE and presents a proper Travel Document, which is scanned, and then is waived into Canada), and there are even tens of thousands of frequent travelers who will be issued passes which allow them to make the application for entry and proceed into Canada just by slowly driving through certain designated lanes at U.S. border crossings (the NEXUS program).
Extensive exit control is expensive and will excessively slow travel. Little or no likelihood Canada will adopt more comprehensive exit controls just so PRs will be relieved of the burden of proving what only the PR is in the best posture to prove anyway.
Passport stamping is prone to human-error. Passport stamps are too easily altered or outright forged. And many travelers have multiple Travel Documents which means there is no one document which will for sure contain all entry, exit, or other border control stamps. And the latter, in particular, is one of the ways in which historically many people have gamed the system, using alternative Travel Documents to, in effect, conceal absences from Canada.
In the meantime, all a passport stamp proves is that the traveler/PR went through border control
that day. It does not directly prove where the PR was any other day. An entry stamp into Canada does not prove the PR stayed in Canada.
Again, there are many, many ways in which a person can travel in or out of Canada without the border crossing event being captured. There are some city streets with little more than a marker to indicate where the border is, which people can casually walk across without going through any border control (albeit not legally, with some exceptions such as to use the Haskell Free Library and Oprah House in Stanstead/Derby Line); and literally thousands of miles of rural open border. And, as already noted, scores of ways to use alternative travel documents which will evade complete border control record-keeping. Moreover, given nearly a HUNDRED MILLION or so traveler-entry-into-Canada events each year, it is readily recognized the record-capturing system cannot be relied upon to be perfectly complete.
There is ONLY ONE PERSON in the whole world who is FOR-SURE capable of capturing a record of each and every border crossing event for any particular person: that is that individual himself or herself. A PR is there, in person, each and every time that PR crosses the border. He or she is the ONE PERSON in the whole world who can for-sure capture this information.
Which leads to my previous observation:
Proof of entry into Canada on a particular date directly proves ONLY that the PR was present in Canada that day; it does NOT directly prove the PR was present in Canada the next day, let alone a week later or a month later.
Many if not most conflate proof of presence and the INFERENCE of presence during the days between a known date of entry and the next known date of exit.
As noted, CBSA does attempt to capture and maintain a record of every time a PR enters Canada from abroad. And IRCC often compares the PR's travel history with what the PR reports in a PR card application or citizenship application. PR's can request a copy of their CBSA travel history. With very rare exceptions, this information generally is accurate.
However, the CBSA travel history is NOT relied upon to be complete. Thus, IRCC will compare this information with what the PR declares LOOKING FOR DISCREPANCIES. That is, IRCC uses this information to verify the PR's reporting. And, obviously, when there is a discrepancy, that will lead IRCC to have questions or, depending on the nature and extent of the discrepancy (in conjunction with other information), outright suspicions.
Of course IRCC also uses other information to verify the accuracy and COMPLETENESS of a PR's reported travel history. This is where the PR's work history can influence things. The absence of a work history in Canada tends to suggest the PR may have been outside Canada. The lack of home ownership or rental in Canada tends to suggest the possibility the individual was NOT living in Canada. And so on. So weak evidence of work or personal residence in Canada can and typically will lead IRCC to engage in non-routine processing of an application for a new PR card, to request and consider additional information in order to verify whether the PR was actually in Canada during this or that period of time.
THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON THE PR. For obvious reasons. Again, the PR is the ONE BEST PERSON in the world to have the relevant information which will prove where the PR was on any given day.
Many of those who have
cutting-it-close border-straddling lifestyles tend to underestimate how difficult it can be, IF CHALLENGED, to prove actual presence. The absence of evidence of presence is sufficient for IRCC to conclude the PR has failed to meet the burden of proving presence. IRCC does not need to prove anything to determine a PR has failed to prove sufficient presence to comply with the PR RO, and is thus inadmissible.
As I have oft quoted elsewhere, from a certain movie character: "
It's not what you know, it's what you can prove."
And to be clear, Canada is NO Nanny-State. Canada will not prove a PR's case for him or her.
