If your wife is a Canadian citizen, she can apply to sponsor you even while living abroad. If she is a Canadian permanent resident, though, she has to be resident in Canada in order to be eligible to sponsor a family member.
There are no minimum income requirements for spousal sponsorships - so proof of support is not necessary. Your wife
will need to provide proof of her intention to return to Canada and re-settle, though, and the two of you will have to provide information supporting your "genuine" relationship - in other words, prove that you are not together just so that you can get back into Canada. (Everyone has to do this.)
The application for the CSQ is mailed to the sponsor, along with the sponsorship approval letter, from the Case Processing Centre in Mississauga after the sponsor is deemed eligible. The CSQ forms have to be filled out, then, and submitted with the additional fee and, once the CSQ is issued the overseas embassy will begin processing the applicant's portion of the application.
You can always
apply for visitor status, but whether or not you're approved will depend first on whether or not you are
visa-exempt or
non-visa-exempt, and then on whether or not you can prove that you only intend to stay in Canada temporarily. Most non-visa-exempt nationals are not issued TRVs to visit Canada once they are married to a Canadian and/or have an application for permanent residence in process because they can no longer prove that their intended stay is only temporary. Visa exempt nationals have to "apply" at a Canadian port-of-entry by undergoing examination by the officer there. It's up to his/her discretion whether to allow entry or not.
