So I have a question. I want to leave Canada to study in Czech for 4 years. I have a PR and will be applying for citizenship on September. How will me leaving to study in Europe effect my PR and the process of getting citizenship?
https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=911&top=5
There is no problem leaving Canada after mailing your citizenship application to pursue whatever you want.
You will still need to maintain your PR (2 years in the past 5 years)
until your citizenship application is approved and you take oath. The "past 5 years" is a constantly sliding scale. If you application takes a while to be approved, and you take oath on Jan 1, 2024, you should've resided in Canada for 2 years in the period Jan 1, 2019 to Jan 1, 2024 and so on. Obviously, no one knows when your application will be approved. Just note that if you're short by even one day, you will have a lot of trouble becoming a citizen or most likely, even returning as a PR.
If your PR card expires/is lost while you're outside Canada, you will not be able to get a replacement card which could affect your travel if you need to come back for oath (of it they remove the option to take the test from outside Canada). You cannot take oath from outside Canada, you will need to come back for that last step. So you need to make sure you won't be tied up for that. You can still travel without a PR card by applying for a PR Travel Document at the local consulate but it might not be readily available.
In certain cases, there are some reports of of certain IRCC officers temporarily stopping processing your citizenship while you're outside but it doesn't seem to be a trend and it is clearly contrary to the spirit of IRCC's assurances. Whether to change your address on the citizenship application or not is something I'm not sure about. Just know that almost all correspondences are online. You can go through IRCC's advisory on change of address and decide for yourself if you want to do that. I've also seen some folks giving a friend's address but it's simply something I don't have enough knowledge on.
If possible, you could prepare in advance certain documents - which are
not necessary but if they decide to do a QA or an RQ (both very rare), these documents will come handy. If you want to get those, some of them will be much easier to get while you're here than from Czech.
1. Take a back up of all estatements (or physical) of your bank accounts for the time you stayed in Canada. Rent payment check copies if available.
2. Rental agreements and Phone/Other utility bills
3. Health Insurance Summary or Statement of Benefits (you will have to ask this from the province)
4. Tax return backups
5. Your travel related evidence such as boarding pass, hotel receipts etc for any travel during your stay in Canada.
Anything you can think of that proves your residency.
There are extensive discussions in this forum on this topic, just search for
RQ
Again. it's very rare to get these requests but it can happen at an inopportune time.
This is the template -
https://residencequestionnaire.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cit_520-e.pdf (External link, open at your own risk)
This version is even rarer (I don't remember seeing any recent discussions about anyone getting this):
https://residencequestionnaire.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cit-0171-7-2014-e.pdf (External link, open at your own risk)
Other than that, just don't lose any important documents like passport or the PR card and you should be fine. Good luck!
