Your treatise on criminal procedure makes for an interesting read, but perhaps a bit more detail than the OP's query calls for.
The post of mine you quote is no treatise on criminal procedure. It barely scratches the surface of criminal procedure (it was not me, for example, who quoted the provisions of criminal procedure verbatim and in full), but rather is focused on offering context for how criminal cases impact citizenship and immigration (the latter to distinguish how it works for citizenship), more in response to the ongoing discussion and for clarification. Hybrid offences have long been a source of confusion, both in terms of defendants fully understanding just what the disposition was in the court proceedings, and even more so in regards to the impact in immigration contexts.
Besides, actually it was my earlier post that was a response to the OP's query. I made no reference to the OP's query in the post you quote, as I had addressed that fairly exhaustively in my earlier post and the OP had not been back. In the post where I was responding to the OP's query, my first post, it was not me who went into depth listing details about misrepresentation, removal orders, imprisonment, war crimes or crimes against humanity, revocation of citizenship, among other prohibition subjects clearly not relevant to the OP's situation; rather, I made an effort to clearly focus on
what was most likely to be relevant information for the OP:
-- summary offence conviction does not constitute a prohibition
-- being on probation does constitute a prohibition
-- period of time on probation does not count as days in Canada for purposes of the actual physical presence requirement
-- adding the caution about making sure the conviction is for a summary offence (given so many so often are confused about the precise details of what happened in their court proceedings)
It is worth noting that the observation about time on probation not counting toward physical presence is among the potential explanations for the probation officer's view that the OP would need to wait three more years to qualify; the probation officer was presumably familiar with many of the OP's details, and how long the OP will need to wait to apply for citizenship depends in part on how much the OP had been in Canada during the year prior to the conviction.
The latter brings up the scope of what the OP's query calls for. Most questions posed in this forum probably have a relatively well defined scope and the answers are typically fairly direct. You would have to go deep into the back pages here, six or seven or more years ago, to find me participating much in those exchanges, and even then I generally deferred to others for responding to those questions.
Actually the OP's query here opens questions which tend to make it difficult to offer precise answers. Even at to its most simple element, that a summary conviction does not constitute a prohibition, just what that means in terms of its impact on the prospective citizenship applicant can be confusing or at least not entirely obvious. I do not think that
@rajkamalmohanram was attempting to make an assertion, but the manner in which
@rajkamalmohanram referenced this is telling: "
because summary offenses do not (apparently) affect citizenship applicants."
But they do. Just because the summary offence itself does not constitute a prohibition, where probation is imposed, for example, that definitely has an impact (no credit toward presence) on the applicant's eligibility, and as I attempted to illuminate in the post of mine you quote, it is quite likely to trigger non-routine processing, which typically means delays. (Perhaps I was not clear enough that was about citizenship application processing, not criminal procedure.)
Beyond that, in some respects the OP seemed to be asking for an explanation of the probation officer's advice about having to wait three years, but was otherwise not focused on the key question. The OP was right, though, that questions about the impact of criminal charges comes up in this forum again and again and again. The OP, it seemed, was asking whether the probation officer was correct or wrong. In contrast you referenced the right question: what was the probation officer's authority for her advice about waiting three years.
It is possible the probation officer was simply mistaken. But actually the odds are typically greater that the defendant, the to-be-a-citizenship-applicant, is the one more likely to be mistaken . . . which could be about whether it was actually a summary conviction or some other element of the criminal case. However, there is NO need to presume EITHER was mistaken. If the OP makes sure the conviction itself was for a summary offence (which seems to be one of the more common error points for those in similar situations), the OP can be sure it does not constitute a prohibition, the OP can then work through the application form and physical presence calculator, in the latter properly detailing the information about being on probation, and figure all this out, relying on the physical presence calculator to do the arithmetic.
None of which is academic. This is practical, figuring out how to navigate the process stuff for those prospective applicants who have a wrinkle or three in their past. After all, these questions do come up quite often (maybe not a thousand times, as the OP opined, but rather often).
Among what might be an interesting academic question though:
Why in the world does the IRCC prohibitions information page (the one you linked) suggest that anyone who is not certain if any of the prohibitions applies to them, contact the "arresting police officer." Contacting the arresting police officer makes little sense. A police officer is no lawyer, does not decide what the formal charge is, does not determine the outcome of the case, does not necessarily know what the disposition of the case is, and cannot be expected to know the collateral consequences of criminal charges generally let alone the particular effect in specific areas of law like immigration and citizenship.
