Saga said:
I think you are actually right. Reading what is specifically mentioned on the link and I quote:
"Applicants must hold this intention to reside if granted citizenship from the time they sign their application to the time they take the Oath. The intent to reside is required to obtain citizenship but no longer applies once citizenship is granted. Once citizenship is granted, a citizen has the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada as guaranteed by the Charter."
Further proves that one should not be leaving the country while his/her citizenship application is being reviewed. They need to show intent by residing in Canada for the duration of the processing which I think might take up to a year (or so mentioned on IRCC's website).
But one should be very aware of the law and how it is interpreted as I have known a lot of Canadians who lived in the Gulf countries (especially Dubai) who have been heavily questioned and investigated on their intents of holding the Canadian citizenship after entering the country or renewing their Canadian passport after long periods of residence outside of Canada (even under the old immigration and citizenship laws). In other words, it is highly recommended that you don't take anything for granted and don't assume that because it is mentioned as such on teh IRCC website that you will not be questioned and investigated on your intentions in the future.
Unless the "intent to reside" clause is revoked "as if it were never there", one cannot guarantee how the clause will be enforced in the future. While all citizens have full rights of mobility, how one exercises those rights, after becoming a citizen, may provide IRCC with cause to question whether one's "intent to reside" was a misrepresentation, at the time it was made. Once it becomes a question of whether citizenship was obtained by misrepresentation, IRCC may use how one exercised their mobility rights as part of the evidence evincing misrepresentation.
We have all read news articles about how Canadians find out that they are not Canadians because of some obscure clause, action (or lack thereof) in the distant past. Whether it's some 50 year old trying to get their first passport to travel abroad, or some 80 year old trying to access healthcare benefits, they are informed by Government (and often astonished at the information) that they are not Canadian citizens. I've read of at least a dozen such cases in the past five years or so -- some of them cited right here on this discussion board.
Canada's citizenship laws are a convoluted, tangled mess. Instead of rewriting a simplified, streamlined law; Parliament enacts "patches" that fix one part of the law, while breaking another part. Is it possible for any one citizen to fully comprehend our citizenship laws? Perhaps it is, but I have never met such a one.
