As a sponsored spouse, I'm pretty glad I filed my application already and will not be subject to this rule. Not because I'm planning to leave my marriage within two years, but because I am sure there will be more paperwork (and fees, you can bet on it) and evidence required by CIC to lift the conditional status after two years have elapsed.
I'm not convinced that this acts as a particularly strong deterrent against marriage fraud. I've read about some cases where the sponsored spouse has been married to the sponsor for several years before PR is granted and then the sponsored spouse leaves the sponsor immediately or soon after landing. If someone is prepared to play the part for all those years before getting PR, I can't see any reason why tacking on an extra couple of years of pretending afterwards is going to cause them any trouble. I can see a lot of marriages suddenly failing after two years of PR. :
One situation where I think this will act as a deterrent, is perhaps situations where the relationship/marriage was indeed genuine, and perhaps the sponsored spouse wanted to leave much sooner but decided to stick around until PR was granted as they figured they might as well get
something out of the failed relationship. I imagine somebody would be less inclined to sit it out in a relationship, when sitting it out becomes perhaps a matter of years instead of just months. That is a good thing, because the sponsor in that situation is likely to feel just as used as the sponsor in a total fraud situation.
I think the trouble with this is that it does give the sponsor a degree of leverage over the sponsored person ("do as I say or I'll kick you out and have your PR revoked", etc) which is pretty much handing a potential abuser the tools for abuse (and nobody shows themselves to be an abuser right away, at least not until they've somewhat isolated and trapped their victim, so McDutch's post is pretty silly... "hey, I know I just got done beating the crap out of you but do you wanna marry me and move to Canada and leave your entire support network and live in fear for the rest of your life" said nobody, ever :
).
It would be rather difficult to prove to CIC that your sponsor is abusing you unless physically, so are CIC really going to waive the two years to let you leave the relationship and retain PR in a 'your word against theirs' situation? The thing is, they have to, lest they be seen as enabling abusers, so the door is flung wide open for 'crying wolf' situations.
I guess it's not like CIC can really give any detail on what will and won't be an acceptable situation for the two years to be waived. It should be very very interesting to see what cases come through in that regard. And the thing is, once a few cases have been seen, everybody will know what will and won't work and will follow suit, so I don't really understand how this will be effective after a few years.
