Sir, please do not spread the scare / uncertainty by using something like "who knows".
No country that is welcoming Immigrants to fill up their manpower requirements and keep their economies rolling, would think of keeping families apart, that way it would be counter-productive for them. Understand this that they are asking whether your spouse will accompany you or not only to figure out what choice depending on your personal situation, are you going to make when you are making the application (different people in different situations will make different choices - applicants in EE come from world over, not a few select countries). Their objective is not to get one person in Canada who has declared spouse as "Non Accompanying" and then make life difficult for them by making spousal application hard / impossible so that couples / families are separated.
I had already said that the process might be different / slightly lengthy and all, consuming some more time or money, but on the long run (when you are intending to permanently settle in another country for your betterment), it shouldn't matter. Think about it.
On a lighter note (no offence), your name has the word hope, be like one!!
Actually it might happen, that some changes will put additional conditions.
Why do I think so.
1. When it comes to economic immigrants, most of them are now using Express entry (when you do not talk about Quebec). And the way things are going, more and more PNP programs are being aligned with Express entry.
2. Canada has currently yearly targets for all types of immigrations. That includes refugees and spousal sponsorship (and children as well). In some cases like EE, live in caregivers or parents and grand parents sponsorship, they can properly manage the demand simply by setting up rules and caps.
3. However in spousal and children sponsorship this is not possible. But now they are between the stone and the hard rock. On one side they have the maximum quota and they are supposed to keep it. On the other side they cannot really forbid the Canadian PR and citizens to marry somebody from abroad (they could do it but that would make it a plain dictatorship). And on the top of that they have the target that most of the cases will be decided within certain period of time.
4. Now imagine, that they will observe surging trend of non-accompanying spouses that would change their mind right after the main applicant would get his or her PR. That is something they did not put that much into consideration when calculation just how many people would want to sponsor somebody.
So such trend would mean that they would not be able to keep the quota, leave the rules as they are and to everything within requested period of time.
So it might be that in the future, they will either limit spousal sponsorship for non accompanying (for example for first 3-5 years).
Another option would be to exclude the non accompanying option all together except for those legally separated and introduce Quebec system (where there is no such thing marrying fast after your AOR and keeping your points intact).
Because lets be honest, both of these are loopholes and many people are using them because of it.
All this depends on how visible the abuse of these loopholes will be and how the new government after 2019 will look like.
good luck
Its 30/30 in our case
