CasioLottoMax said:
Hi Mthornt,
but this is exactly the point where we have a different statement.
The PCC from Country A which was issued in 11//15 and uploaded in 01/16 is considered valid and has not triggered the need for a new PCC to be issued after the holiday trip 12/15 to 01/16 to Country A as long as there is no residential status in Country A.
Here is the statement from the official CIC website:
Who needs a police certificate?
In general, you and all the people in your family who are 18 or older need to get a police certificate.
You may need a police certificate from any country or territory that you have spent six months or more since the age of 18.
For example: if you visited, worked or lived in a country for two months, left for a few years, then returned for four months, that counts as spending six months there. In this case, you would need a certificate.
If you need a police certificate from a country or territory and:
are currently living there, or received the police certificate before leaving, the police certificate must be issued within six months before you apply.
have lived there in the past, the police certificate must be issued after you last lived in that country or territory.
Now first check exactly how the requirement for a PCC is worded together with a suitable example:
visited, worked or lived
This means that you may need PCC from a country where you never had any stable adress (for example visiting your family abroad regularly can trigger this).
Next check the first acceptable type of the PCC (less than 6 months old):
or received the police certificate before leaving
Since a simple visit of a foreign country can trigger the request of a PCC, so any PCC that was issued before you left that country if only valid for 6 months (for Canada immigration of course). And it may not matter if later on you only transited that country.
And last, check the wording on the second acceptable type of PCC (older than 6 months):
must be issued after you last lived
And again, this wording is equal to visit, because living somewhere technically means being physically present (regardless how long that presence was).
The reason behind this is simple:
They might be able to contact some organisations and check upon your recent criminal activity (lets say 1 year). However the older the data, the harder to get the exact information. That is why PCC needs to be recent. And the only exception is given to older ones that you get after leaving that country. The logic behind is that if you were not physically present, you could hardly commit any crime there. But then again with current possibilities of white collar crimes, where you do not need to travel to the other country anymore, that might be questioned in the future).