The obligations a PR must meet to retain Canadian PR status are remarkably flexible and, actually, rather generous: to retain status to be a Canadian
permanent resident, all an individual needs to do is spend not even half his or her time in Canada, and not engage in criminal activity.
A PR who is in compliance with the PR Residency Obligation, and can readily prove this, and who does not otherwise have admissibility issues, can travel abroad without a PR card. The necessity of obtaining a PR Travel Document for the return flight to Canada is, of course, an inconvenience. But so long as there is no issue about admissibility, no problem submitting objective documentation with the PR TD application showing a life being lived in Canada, there should be no problem.
Bottom-line, Canada does not in any way preclude or even restrict a PR's right to travel abroad.
But sure, those who have not settled permanently in Canada, as indicated by spending less than half their time in Canada, are more or less likely to face elevated scrutiny when applying for a new PR card or for a PR Travel Document. For obvious reasons. There is a PR Residency Obligation and, for anyone who has spent less than 900 days in Canada within the preceding five years, it is reasonable to infer that individual was outside Canada any time that individual does not affirmatively establish his or her presence in Canada . . . after all, if there is any question about where a person was, it is reasonable to infer that person was where they were most of the time, and thus reasonable to infer he or she was outside Canada if they were otherwise outside Canada more than they were in Canada.
Some PRs have more compelling reasons for why they were outside Canada. For the most part, the rules are designed to avoid weighing or assessing those reasons. The PR RO is intended to be flexible and generous enough to accommodate a broad, broad range of contingencies in life which are nonetheless consistent with being a Permanent Resident in Canada. And there is allowance beyond that, in
extremely exceptional cases, for some contingencies which compel a PR to be abroad more than that accommodated by the generously flexible PR RO.
Thus, at the risk of coming across as harsh or unsympathetic, but more to the point that the decision to become a PR, and the ongoing decisions one must make to continue to be a PR, may involve some very difficult choices
but those are choices the PR gets to make. And some choices entail risks.
Relying on H&C reasons to retain PR status, for example, when one has not actually been living in Canada at least 40% of the time (well less than half time), entails the risk of losing PR status. Regarding this, however, just the fact of being abroad so much of the time is strong evidence, in itself, that there is no great hardship imposed if status in Canada is lost.
For those who have a PR card application in process, which has been referred to secondary review, usually but not always there is an
issue of some sort. Thus, IRCC is not as likely to process the PR card replacement application on an urgent basis despite the PR's imminent travel plans. There is, after all, no statutory entitlement to urgent processing, let alone a right.
As to why this process has gotten bogged down, blame those who abuse the system more than blaming IRCC, or the Canadian government generally. That is blame those who do not actually settle permanently in Canada but who make a concerted effort to retain PR status. Sure, more than a few of the latter have compelling reasons for not settling in Canada. But those reasons are rarely, very rarely, due to the Canadian government (even career opportunities, or more to the point the lack of opportunities in Canada, is not government action). And indeed, those reasons may very well be reasons why that individual's circumstances are not consistent with retaining PR status.
teko expresses the view that "
they simply don't care," as if IRCC is a social services agency or it is the Canadian government's job is to accommodate PR's ties abroad. IRCC is a bureaucracy with a mandate to implement and enforce
immigration laws, not provide social services.
teko said:
. . . for multiple business trips that I was going to lose my job for . . .
Blame the employer's lack of flexibility, not IRCC for doing its job as mandated by law. Moreover, IRCC does not dictate which job a PR takes. That's the PR's choice. Life is full of choices, some more difficult than others. And again, IRCC does not prohibit a PR from traveling abroad without a PR card, and will issue a PR TD to a PR who, as the law prescribes, can prove compliance with the PR RO.
Let us be clear: Canada does not impose criminal or even civil sanctions on those who become PRs but whose lives compel decisions inconsistent with continuing to be a
Permanent Resident of Canada. There is no harm, no foul, none imposed by the Canadian government anyway, for failing to meet the PR Residency Obligation and losing PR status. If and when the circumstances of life are such that a PR's best choice is inconsistent with meeting the obligations to retain PR status, or such as to risk being able to meet the obligations to retain PR status, IRCC does not dictate what choice that individual makes. Within a range of reasonable contingencies and probabilities, IRCC does communicate the consequences: PRs who are not permanently settled in Canada and who do not spend at least 40% of their time in Canada risk losing PR status.
In contrast, again, the obligations a PR must meet to retain PR status are incredibly flexible if not generous: as long as one spends an average of five months a year in Canada and does not engage in serious criminality, PR status can be retained.
In any event: Those PRs with a PR card replacement application in secondary review can nonetheless travel abroad without restriction (none imposed by Canada), and so long as they can prove admissibility (including compliance with the PR RO),
they will able to obtain a PR TD for their return flight to Canada.