Section 14 of application cross-referenced with Document Checklist.
Section 14 asks for passport info (I have that)
Document Checklist asks for past 5 years of biographical pages of passports. I only have 3 years because I renewed my passport in 2015. Doc checklist says - fill out section 14-B if you don't have the pages.
So - do I claim on application section 14
YES - I have documents
or
NO - I do not.
Do I fill out section B if I say YES to 14-A?
Short answer: in your situation, you check "Yes," and then fill in BOTH Table A and Table B, each respectively with the relevant information per the instructions.
Longer explanation:
Since the answer to the question "
Have you held travel documents and or passports during your eligibility period?" is
YES, obviously you check "YES" and then follow the further instruction to fill in Table A. So, you need to fill in Table A to list
ALL "
your travel documents and/or passports covering your eligibility period."
Then the instructions specifically state: "
If you do not have a travel document or passport that was/is valid during your eligibility period or if there is a gap between your passports, please explain why here." This is followed by the box labeled Table B.
Since you do not have a passport that was valid during your eligibility period, obviously this instructs you to explain why in this box. Not complicated. Identify which passport of those listed in Table A (which should include ALL passports which were valid or could have been used during any of the previous five years, with as much information about each passport as you can) you do not have AND state simply, truthfully why you do not have it.
Example:
Passport abc##########d surrendered to [name of country] [date] with application for new passport and [name of country] retained passport this passport.
Not complicated.
Effect of not having a passport valid during part of the eligibility period:
In the past the absence of a passport which could have been used during the relevant/eligibility period was sometimes a problem. CIC (before it became IRCC) considered all passports to be important evidence to support the application and of course the absence of important evidence makes it more difficult to meet the applicant's burden of proof.
BUT that was largely because passport stamps were considered important evidence of travel dates (and back when the requirement was a period of RESIDENCY rather than total actual PRESENCE, it was important that passports typically revealed residence status in other countries as well) .
In recent years passports are stamped less and less often during border crossing events and have become a less informative item of evidence, and thus their absence does not have the same negative impact it did before.
ALL possibly relevant passports are still important. Passports can still show a lot of information about status and time in other countries, and thus IRCC still wants to see (during interview usually) ALL passports which could possibly have been used during the eligibility period. And thus, not having one or more of them can still raise questions or concerns.
A clearly innocent reason for not having an older passport, like the country which issued it has retained it, helps. But of course the evidence is still, nonetheless, missing, not available. And the burden of proof, which of course includes the burden of presenting evidence relevant to proof, is on the applicant.
For an applicant whose presence in Canada exceeds or is close to exceeding the minimum SINCE the older passport was no longer usable (since it was surrendered and retained, for example), there should be very little if any negative implications, since the older passport could not show time outside Canada contrary to the presence calculation declarations.
This is mostly a problem for applicants applying with a recently issued passport who do not have an older passport they could have used for a big part of the time they claim to have been in Canada.
