TA/RA and Summer Breaks (Continuous?)

[SatNight]

Hello,

There are many talks about TA/RA work experience and whether it counts as continuous if there are summer breaks, but I couldn't find anything definite.

This is my wife's situation:
A PhD candidate at a Canadian university.
Worked as a principal instructor 12 hours per week May 2018-June 2019 (no breaks)
Break in July 2019-August 2019 because there are no summer classes to teach
Will work as a principal instructor 24 hours per week September 2019-April 2020

When accumulated, those are more than 1560 hours.

My question is:
- Does work experience count as part time if it's under 15 hours per week?
- Is there a way to argue it was continuous even with the summer break? There are no classes to teach. She already knows she will teach in the next academic year. (She is hired on semester basis; that's the nature of the contract).

Would this make her eligible for FSW or not?

 

[DelPiero07]

1 - Yes, it counts.
2 - The only argument that you could make is that due to the nature of the job it is not possible to obtain a year of continuous work experience under the FSW program. This has helped some obtain their PR but I cannot make any guarantees.

 

[SatNight]

Hello,

Thank you for your fast reply.

Yes, I understand there is no guarantee. I am asking more so we can prepare in the future to know whether we should try applying or not. I know TA/RA jobs are a curious case as they are. Do you think a letter of explanation or maybe supervisor's letter explaining the situation would help the matter.

I understand it's not technically continuous. Professors who have permanent jobs simply have May-August free each year but they receive payment even though they don't teach. There are simply no classes for my wife to teach in the summer semester (July-August). But it is the same job, same NOC, same university (the classes are different but it is of no importance here).

Oh, and one additional question: how many CRS points does one year of experience get? (We would need to exclude those points because work experience is obtained while on a study visa).

Thank you for your help!