Hello,
So, I've been following this thread for quite a while, given that I'd applied for PR from within Canada as the common law partner of a Canadian about 13 months ago. I got my medical request recently, and saw that I'd passed that today. And then, an hour or so later, I received a message saying that I'd provided inadequate proof of our common law relationship. I've lived in Canada for six years now, almost entirely as a student (I've had a post-graduate work visa for the past year and a half), always with my partner. So, we gave proof of the two leases that we'd signed (on the two apartments that we've lived in), the tenants insurance for the apartment we currently live in that started in 2014 (i.e. about two years before we applied), a lot of photos, a host of statutory declarations from people who know us and have known of our relationship since we moved, and some other more ephemeral evidence. Plainly this isn't enough. So, we called and found out that they have travel stubs and the leases listed as our proofs of common law relationship. The question then is: what more should we do?
The problem is that our finances have been relatively separate. I've lived off savings, scholarships and parental support for most of my time here, and we've only recently (i.e so recently as to be inadmissible) merged our finances in a more robust way (paying half of the bills through our bank accounts, sharing a credit card, filing joint taxes) because there was just no reason to do it before. I didn't file taxes until last year, for example, because there was no need, and given that we had to pay our rent in cash, and mine was coming from an account overseas, there was really no need for a joint account to do that. Her parents paid most of the utility bills for our first place, as well.
So, the question is: does anyone have an idea of what might constitute adequate proof, given that there's not so much we can do on the financial side. So, far, we have the idea of T4s, since we both have T4s with the same address information going back from when we first moved, a letter from our insurer (since unless that counts as a lease, it appears to have been missed as proof of shared residence), some further proofs of address, and a signed declaration of common law relationship for the two of us. This seems, prima facie, like it would be enough, but my concern is that the CIC believe that (for example) I may have lived with my partner out of convenience (i.e. she seemed a tolerable roommate across the two provinces we've lived in, and that it just so happened that we moved at the same time) without actually being in a relationship. If that were the case, any ideas on how to show otherwise?
Thanks