thanks depenabil for this very informative thread, could you please let us know what do you personally recommend as an extra waiting time before applying to citizenship ?
This is a very personal decision which should be based on the individual's particular situation, including immigration history, address history, work history, ties in Canada generally, and much more.
I am not qualified to offer personal advice so I do not make recommendations other than basic principles, like always be truthful, follow the rules and instructions, and very general suggestions like be sure to have a comfortable margin before applying.
A very common mistake is approaching the decision about
WHEN to apply based almost entirely on when the PR has reached the minimum threshold for qualifying. There are many factors a prospective applicant should consider in making the
WHEN to file decision.
All that said, many participants in this and other forums tend to think a week or two margin is fine for applicants who otherwise do not have foreseeable issues. My sense leans more to a month or two. Example of someone who should foresee potential issues, and thus would be wise to consider waiting much longer, is a PR with ongoing business or employment ties abroad, particularly if self-employed. This was my situation, all my clients for my self-employed business are abroad (I export what I do) . . . so I waited long over a year, in fact nearly two years past when I was first eligible. But that was during the Harper-Kenney-Alexander purge when one in four applicants were getting RQ and RQ'd applicants were bogged down in three to four or more years of processing.
The latter illustrates that among considerations, obviously there are factors which a prospective applicant can and should take into consideration which the PR has no control over and indeed which have little or nothing to do with him or her personally. The Harper-Kenney-Alexander purge from 2011 to early 2013 is an example of such a factor, and during that time it was prudent for almost all prospective applicants to wait longer, and some much longer.
A similar factor looms now, with a push in the opposite direction. While, unlike many others, I do not anticipate a devastating slowdown in processing when the 3/5 rule takes effect, due to the sudden surge in new applications (the pool of eligible applicants will suddenly increase by a quarter million or more), some slow down can be anticipated. Thus, for those who qualify under the 4/6 rule, perhaps they will prefer to apply with a smaller margin rather than wait and end up with their application in the much larger batch of new applications coming when the 3/5 rule takes effect.
There are, however, way too many individual factors to consider to try enumerating them. They include things like planning a move to take a new job, or anticipating having to go abroad for an extended period of time, among many more. The main thing is to approach the
WHEN decision recognizing that there is much more to consider than just the date when the presence calculator shows the prospective applicant is eligible.
Edit to add: A big factor is the thoroughness and accuracy of the prospective applicant's accounting of dates. PRs who have kept contemporaneously made, complete and accurate records of dates of exit and entry are not risking so much when they apply with a small margin. As I noted before, in contrast, this forum is rife with tales of woe from applicants who were absolutely sure they had all their dates right except they did not. A thing to remember about this is that what causes concern is discrepancies, particularly outright omissions . . . even if what is missed actually suggests the applicant was in Canada at a time the applicant did not calculate as in Canada, that will often really hurt. I have addressed this in many discussions before. IRCC does not add those days to the applicant's calculation, but rather will tend to doubt the applicant's credibility. Once the applicant's credibility is in doubt, the dates in between last entry and next exit do not automatically get credited as in Canada (they do in the online calculator, that's how it works).
