CIC has just sent us an email requesting a police clearance for my Japanese wife from the Philippines as she lived there for year. The email stated that "the documents must be received in our office within 30 days from the date of this letter" and then said "Please reply directly to this email and put your application number in the title".
We're a little concerned about being able to submit the documents within the 30 days as my wife must travel to Tokyo to do the clearance paperwork at the Philippines embassy in Japan (which she can only do this coming Friday as she needs to take time off work to travel there) where this paperwork then gets sent to the Philippines to get processed, and then sent back to us in Japan. We're really not sure if this can get done within the 30-day time frame given (although we've seen that the turnaround time could be as fast as 2 weeks), so we wrote back to CIC (at the email address provided) explaining our case. We immediately got an auto-reply saying that they cannot process our email right away and that "the turnaround time for a response is of 10 business days." We also wrote to CIC as a case specific enquiry explaining the same thing.
CIC also says in the email that "If we do not receive a response within the time allotted to you from the date of this notice, a decision will be made based on the information on your file, which could result in the refusal of your application." By writing to them and explaining our situation, does this count as a "response", or is the "response" sending a reply with the documents requested.
Just a little confused about all of this. Any thoughts or suggestions?
TL;DR: Will our application get tossed in the bin if we don't send requested police documents within the required timeframe for a response, or is any kind of response considered a "response" so nothing happens to our application (minus a delay in processing)?