Inland sponsorship February 2020 - Passport expires May 2021 together with visitor visa

[ilya.can.visa]

Hi all,

Hopefully someone on this forum can provide some guidance on the following situation:

• We applied for inland spousal sponsorship together with open work permit in February 2020 (my wife is on a visitor's visa in Canada)
• We have not received any communication on the application until mid-June, when we received biometrics fee reminder (which is already paid)
• There are currently no biometrics taken by Service Canada so the application is in hold, just as many other applicants' applications
• We have also applied for visitor's record to keep the status beyond 6 months visitor threshold, with confirmation of receipt from IRCC, but that is also is on hold due to biometrics not being collected at this time

Since we do not know when biometrics collection will resume and it may potentially not be collected until next year, we need to know how to approach the situation where my wife's passport expires in May 2021 and the visitor's visa will also expire at that time. She has to renew her passport via consulate, and the visa won't be in the new passport any longer. The consulate appointment for renewal is in December this year.

What should we do in this case?

1. Proceed with passport renewal in December and keep the old passport with visa until the visa expires in May 2021? In this case, can my wife stay in Canada without a visa while application for permanent residence (via spousal sponsorship) is still in undefined status due to IRCC not operating as normal?
2. After passport is renewed, without visa or travel history / stamps, should we submit photocopies of the new passport to IRCC via their contact form, as the original passport will no longer be valid?

Thanks in advance