Well, that's what I would think also. It would appear that what is being sought is tantamount to an accelerated PR application on compassionate grounds. Does such a thing exist?
...
To me, the whole thing looks like an application for something very different in nature from a TRV. The plain intent appears to be that it won't be temporary at all.
I think conceptually there are of course several different 'grounds' or categories, which may not be explicitly stated as such, or formally exist, but clearly on some level are in practice there. Also note: they overlap between each other substantially, the dividing lines are not always so clear.
And my intuition is that the policymakers at IRCC do not want to formalise this, particularly the category I'm not naming but basically what is referred to rhetorically by government as 'family reunification.'
Most obviously category is: ETA/existing TRV holders (plus US citizens who aren't formally ETA but let's group 'em in with the ETAers). They're let in and as long as they're not too obvious about intent to stay forever like showing up with all their belongings. Roughly, IRCC already believes they're not a 'risk'. (I'd simplify and say 'risk' here not just of overstaying but also of being something akin to public charge or nuisance.) Also probably roughly: mostly from wealthy countries or to the wealthy end of other countries, or having many of the social characteristics thereof.
I said 'existing' because those who apply when married
might qualify just as before, and others might find the 'visiting my spouse' box puts them in the 'doubt' category that gets them rejected. This doesn't seem obvious to many. LIkely a large proportion of these decisions are done by algorithm, and only cursory review by a human. (Those humans might override, but they don't like to do it too often).
What's also unclear is what might get a 'no decision, refer to human' from the algorithm (or even if this exists, or if all are rejections subject to review, and some get review). I'm just guessing at how their process works.
Then there's what I called family reunification. They've never made the criteria for this perfectly clear. It varies with political winds. It gets caught up in headlines, and also 'waves' of fraudulent intent (when IRCC notices patterns that are fraudulent, and if you happen to fit that profile, you have close to zero chance.)
Roughly, it's going to mean 'clearly bona fide relationships where the way the decision goes is obvious' (and there are no other significant bars like criminality or security). In simple terms, to extent it 'exists', we can infer they do give some TRVs - at some point indeterminate to outsiders - on basis that all looks in order and no issues. One of those points appears to be after AOR - at which point we know from gcms an initial summary review has been done, and one of the things that comes out of that is eg interview recommended/not required. But not only that.
On some level IRCC wants to support 'family reunification' or 'FR.' Politicans are always going to say FR is good, but avoid being nailed down (or the senior bureaucrats will have to walk it back later). Because it's hard work and they don't want to let the criteria be known, because (they believe) it will be abused by malicious actors (and to some degree it's probably true). My guess is how strictly applied or pushed for is going to depend a fair bit on somewhat-random things like personnel (senior program managers and the like within IRCC) and other factors.
Within this: there are going to be holds and no-gos for things like criminality and security flags, etc. You can guess the way this goes: as each additional 'sign-off from so-and-so needed' is added, the filter/funnel gets narrower and narrower, and so FR still not 'fixed.'
Because it can't be 'fixed' - to some degree FR is and will always be at odds with (what IRCC sees as) essential, controlling/keeping out potential risks with imperfect/unavailable information. (The old decision making with imperfect information).
They can work to improve it - name some criteria like number of FR TRVs granted, speed, etc - but at expense of other things.
So in the end: for the applicant, apply for TRV, it
might help just aftr AOR, but it's still going to be somewhat random.
